Zuck your feelings

Summary

Today, Explained: "Zuck Your Feelings" Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: Today, Explained
• Host/Author: Vox
• Description: Today, Explained is Vox's daily news explainer podcast. Hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King guide listeners through the most important stories of the day.
• Episode: Zuck Your Feelings
• Release Date: January 16, 2025

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Introduction

In the January 16, 2025 episode of Today, Explained titled "Zuck Your Feelings," hosts Sean Rameswaram and Ben Wofford delve deep into the transformative changes unfolding at Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook). The episode examines Mark Zuckerberg's strategic shifts in personal branding and corporate policy, the controversial role of Joel Kaplan within Meta, and the broader implications for free expression and content moderation on the platform.

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Mark Zuckerberg's Transformation and Policy Overhaul

Personal Branding Shift: The episode opens with a vivid description of Mark Zuckerberg's evolving persona. Notably, Zuckerberg has adopted a more flamboyant style, sporting longer hair, black T-shirts, and gold chains—a stark contrast to his traditional "hoodie" image.

Mark Zuckerberg [00:02]: "Mark Zuckerberg's in his cool era. He's letting his hair grow out. He's wearing black T shirts with a gold chain..."

This transformation is symbolic of Zuckerberg's broader strategic realignment as Meta navigates a complex socio-political landscape.

Policy Changes: Zuckerberg has initiated significant alterations in Meta's corporate policies, particularly concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The company is phasing out DEI programs, removing tampons from men's bathrooms, and eliminating non-binary and transgender themes from Meta's Messenger app.

Mark Zuckerberg [00:20]: "He's ending Meta's DEI initiatives. He's taking tampons out of the men's bathrooms at his offices. He's getting rid of the non binary and transgender themes on Meta's messenger app."

Content Moderation and Free Expression: A focal point of the episode is Zuckerberg's revamp of Meta's content moderation and fact-checking policies. He likens content moderation to "oxygen," essential yet invisible, aiming to eliminate illegal, hateful, and spam content.

Mark Zuckerberg [02:01]: "Explain Content moderation and fact checking on Facebook and Instagram is kind of like Oxygen. You can't see it, but it's out there and it's essential to your user experience."

John Herman from New York Magazine underscores the critical role of content moderation in preventing real-world political violence, highlighting past failures when moderation was lax.

John Herman [02:34]: "Without it we have seen real world political violence."

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Joel Kaplan: The Influential Shadow at Meta

Introduction to Joel Kaplan: Ben Wofford introduces Joel Kaplan as a pivotal yet under-the-radar figure at Meta. Kaplan oversees a vast policy team and plays a crucial role in shaping Meta's interactions with governmental bodies and regulating content policies.

Ben Wofford [16:40]: "Hani Farid, who's a professor at UC Berkeley, calls Joel Kaplan the most influential person at Facebook that most people haven't heard of."

Kaplan's Background and Influence: Kaplan's career trajectory from a progressive Harvard student to a conservative Republican aligns with Meta's nuanced approach to policy and lobbying. His bipartisan prowess makes him indispensable in navigating Meta through politically charged scenarios.

Mark Zuckerberg [18:11]: "Kaplan's singular achievement... finding a way to accommodate the brash ugliness of MAGA Washington and MAGA conservatism with the elite Burnish and professionalized corporate values of Facebook."

The Common Ground Initiative: One of Kaplan's notable interventions was his response to Meta's ambitious "Common Ground" project, aimed at reducing polarization through algorithmic adjustments. Kaplan's scrutiny led to the shelving of most of the initiative, demonstrating his significant influence over policy directions.

Ben Wofford [22:30]: "Kaplan's role for the first three years...has increasingly realized that the reach of his company is going to be entangled in policy matters in Washington."

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Historical Context and Content Moderation Challenges

Past Failures in Content Moderation: The episode revisits instances where inadequate content moderation on Facebook fueled political unrest and spread misinformation, such as anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya propaganda in 2012 and the proliferation of conspiracy theories during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

Ben Wofford [03:15]: "During the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake or false news headlines actually generated more engagement on Facebook than true ones."

Zuckerberg's Critique and New Initiatives: Zuckerberg criticizes legacy media and government interventions, advocating for a return to free expression. He introduces a community-driven fact-checking system inspired by Twitter's model under Elon Musk.

John Herman [07:22]: "Joel Kaplan is going to be the person in charge of figuring out a way to accommodate Trump and Maga conservatism..."

However, experts like Joel Kaplan and John Herman express skepticism about the effectiveness of such systems in adequately moderating content.

John Herman [08:04]: "It's an interesting and frankly, kind of useful feature on X, but it is not nearly up to the task of broad platform moderation."

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Reactions and Future Implications

Ben Wofford's Analysis: Wofford posits that Kaplan's strategies position Meta to adeptly navigate the anticipated Trump administration's policies, balancing free expression with corporate survival. Kaplan's ability to mediate between conservative demands and Meta's corporate values suggests a future where the platform may increasingly accommodate MAGA-related content until it potentially becomes untenable.

Ben Wofford [25:24]: "Kaplan's singular achievement... finding a way to accommodate the brash ugliness of MAGA Washington... pushing the breaking point further and further before it becomes untenable for Facebook."

Community and User Experience: Comparisons are drawn between the transformed Meta and the altered landscape of Twitter under Musk, highlighting concerns about increased misinformation, spam, and a decline in content reliability.

John Herman [09:54]: "Is that what people should expect from their experience on Facebook or Instagram right now?"

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Conclusion

The episode "Zuck Your Feelings" provides a comprehensive exploration of the significant shifts occurring within Meta under Mark Zuckerberg's leadership. By focusing on policy changes, the influential role of Joel Kaplan, and the broader implications for free expression and content moderation, the hosts offer listeners an in-depth understanding of the challenges and strategies shaping the future of one of the world's most influential social media platforms.

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Notable Quotes

• Mark Zuckerberg [00:02]: "Mark Zuckerberg's in his cool era. He's letting his hair grow out."
• Ben Wofford [03:15]: "During the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake or false news headlines actually generated more engagement on Facebook than true ones."
• John Herman [07:22]: "Joel Kaplan is going to be the person in charge of figuring out a way to accommodate Trump and Maga conservatism..."
• Ben Wofford [25:24]: "Kaplan's singular achievement... finding a way to accommodate the brash ugliness of MAGA Washington..."

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Additional Credits

• Production Team:
  • Producer: Amanda Lou Ellen
  • Editor: Amina Al Saadi
  • Senior Researcher: Laura Bullard
  • Mixing: Andrea Christensdotter and Rob Byers

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This detailed summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the "Zuck Your Feelings" episode, providing a comprehensive overview for both regular listeners and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Mark Zuckerberg's in his cool era. He's letting his hair grow out. He's wearing black T shirts with a gold chain he covered get low with T pain three six nine Damn you're fine that's him singing Hoping you can.

[Ben Wofford]

Sock it to me baby one more.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Time get along Mark Zuckerberg is also in his Maga era. He's throwing a party at Trump's inauguration next week. He went on Joe Rogan to say company need more masculine energy. He's ending Meta's DEI initiatives. He's taking tampons out of the men's bathrooms at his offices. He's getting rid of the non binary and transgender themes on Meta's messenger app. But perhaps most important of all, he's changing Meta's content moderation and fact checking policies. We are going to poke around the new Zuck youk Feelings Metaverse on Today Explained.

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[Mark Zuckerberg]

Explain Content moderation and fact checking on Facebook and Instagram is kind of like Oxygen. You can't see it, but it's out there and it's essential to your user experience. It's getting rid of all the illegal material, the hateful material, and the spam. John Herman has been writing about the changes Meta's making to content moderation for New York Magazine. And if you're like content moderation is boring. A reminder that with without it we have seen real world political violence.

[John Herman]

Exactly. And the fact checking piece was intended to sort of close a little bit of a loophole that existed with news content where if you know false or inflammatory stories about, say, an ethnic minority in a country going through political strife were going viral again and again and again. They could feed into real political violence and have.

[Ben Wofford]

While the persecution of the Muslim minority continued for years, the picture changed drastically once Facebook entered the fray. In 2012, anti Muslim and anti Rohingya memes and propaganda have spread through Facebook, eroding support for the Rohingya's plight.

[John Herman]

And, you know, in 2016, there was a lot of domestic pressure on Facebook to address similar issues.

[Ben Wofford]

During the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake or false news headlines actually generated more engagement engagement on Facebook than true ones. People actually believe a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager John Podesta ran a child sex ring at a Pizzeria in D.C. this is a lie.

[John Herman]

To borrow Facebook's language, it was creating a less authentic environment, which is an incredible euphemism for a place that was just full of garbage. And so for a while, the critics of Meta and Facebook and Facebook and Meta were sort of aligned. That is no longer true. That is very pointedly not true.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Now Zuckerberg is killing this program. Zuckerberg posted a video explaining his reasoning. What did you make of the video? He looked so good with his hair and his T shirt.

Hey, everyone, I want to talk about something important today because it's time to get back to our roots around free.

[John Herman]

You know, you see this video and truly, if you haven't been watching this closely, it is. It is crazy. It's like, okay, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, hoodie guy, plain shirt guy, Caesar haircut guy. He's got curly hair, he's got a gold chain, he's big now. He's got a little bit of a tan. Like, okay, he's. Something's going on here.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

But a lot has happened over the last several years.

[John Herman]

There's been wild and, you know, it's funny, but it's also a signal. It's sort of slightly right wing coded. It's more of an obvious performance of masculinity circa 2025, before these platform changes, I think there was a tendency to treat this as just like a personal rebrand, maybe like an early midlife crisis type thing. But now, in hindsight, we can sort of understand this as perhaps part of a more personal and authentic political transformation, or at least a sense of personal freedom, catharsis of getting ready to sort of tell everyone to just deal with it because we're going to do what we want now.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on Reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.

[John Herman]

And then he starts using terminology that again is slightly right wing coded. He's sort of complaining about the quote, unquote, legacy media.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.

[John Herman]

He's talking about how, you know, he was being sort of pushed around and bullied by the Biden administration.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

And that's why it's been so difficult over the past four years when even the US Government has pushed for censorship in this announcement.

[John Herman]

And then elsewhere on, on posts, on threads and on the Joe Rogan experience, talking about how, you know, maybe if people are going to leave over these changes, they're just virtue signaling.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Society has become very like, I don't know, I don't even know the right word for it, but it's like kind of like neutered or like emasculated.

[John Herman]

And, and so, you know, probably the most striking thing about this video is how on one hand it's, it's really familiar. This is Mark Zuckerberg after an election, sort of laying things out and saying, you know, we are listening, we are working on this, we're trying to fix things. His, his audience is just different now. It's a different group of people. It's not a critical press or potential regulators that he, he thought were important in, in 2016. He is now sort of, you know, looking in the imminent future and saying, all right, like, how can we, how can we work with you?

[Mark Zuckerberg]

I'm looking forward to this next chapter. Stay good out there. And more to come soon.

And tell us exactly what the new policy is. Is it just. We're going to let you guys hash it out in the comments, kind of.

[John Herman]

So the two lanes for this are. One is that the fact checking program is being discontinued. This got sort of like top billing from Zuckerberg. But the bigger changes are to Facebook's basic and much broader moderation systems. So there are a few new carve outs. You are allowed to use more dehumanizing speech about transgender people, immigrants. You are allowed to more broadly use harsher language in your interactions on the platform.

[Joel Kaplan]

We do allow content arguing for gender based limitations of military, law enforcement and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation.

[John Herman]

Mark Zuckerberg says that they will be rolling out a community notes style program. If you've been on X through Elon Musk's sort of takeover and remaking of the site, you'll know that they have a system that sort of allows users to weigh in on posts and say, you know, this is true, this is misrepresented, this is not true. The posts then carry this tag, things like that. It's an interesting and frankly, kind of useful feature on X, but it is not nearly up to the task of, you know, broad platform moderation. It tends to be slow. And I think the circumstances on Facebook, for example, are much less conducive to a good community notes program. We'll see what they build, but it is, I think, a partial replacement at best for the fact checking program that existed before, which was already not doing a whole lot.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

You brought up the transition Twitter made when Elon took over. My experience as a user of that regrettable platform is my feed started getting more confusing, quite frankly. There was more spam coming in to my dms. There were more verified users who were just, you know, random people who wanted to amplify their voices. It got harder to tell misinformation or even disinformation from reliable information. I started seeing porn in my feed more often. Like, the whole thing just got messier. Is that what people should expect from their experience on Facebook or Instagram right now?

[John Herman]

In some ways, I think yes. And what's funny is I've had the same or similar feelings about the transformation of X. One thing that kept coming to mind is that this platform, which was certainly always flawed and full of all kinds of stuff that you didn't necessarily want to see or whatever, you know, it's always a complicated product. It felt kind of familiar. It kind of felt like pre2016 Facebook, where you're just scrolling around, things are kind of out of order, like literally not chronological. You don't know where things are coming from, why you're seeing them. It's just sort of like an unstable but in some ways very engaging environment. So in rolling those back, there's. There's a return potentially to this version of Facebook that the company left behind nearly 10 years ago. And yeah, the most useful current comparison is certainly X, which, you know, in some ways is probably doing very well in the eyes of its owner, but is used by far fewer people, is now a sort of fairly hostile political environment for a lot of its previous users. It is far less useful in, for example, a disaster like the fires in LA county county or recent hurricanes. It is just full of untrustworthy information from untrustworthy people who are often there with malign ends to misinform, to make money, to spam. It's a different kind of place. Euphemistically, it's rougher around the edges, it's rowdier. Functionally, it doesn't work as well. And if you take seriously Elon Musk's commitment to free speech, if you take seriously Mark Zuckerberg's sudd commitment to free expression, maybe you can conceptualize this as just a trade off. But the reality of these platforms is much more complicated than that. They are not built with enabling free speech in mind. These are commercial advertising and subscription platforms with tons of restrictions on what you can do and what you can say. And that fundamental fact hasn't changed. The sort of flavor of censorship is what's changing.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

John Herman is a tech columnist at Intelligencer from New York Magazine. You can read and [e-mail] there's one guy over at Meta who's in charge of getting the flavor of censorship just right. And his name's not Mark.

[Ben Wofford]

It's Joel.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

We need to talk about Joel next on Today Explained. Foreign.

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[Ben Wofford]

You're listening to today, explained Sean Ramasvoor.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

I'm here with Ben Wofford, who considers himself a Kaplanologist, which is to say he's written a lot about a guy named Joel Kaplan for places like Wired and Business Insider.

[Ben Wofford]

Hani Farid, who's a professor at UC Berkeley, calls Joel Kaplan the most influential person at Facebook that most people haven't heard of. There's no question that the things that happen at Meta are coming from Mark, but there's also no question that there has been a change over the last Kaplan, for the last 15 years or so, has had this extremely important role at Facebook, and formally his role has been to forecast and manage policy risk. Functionally, his role in the last 10 years has grown to be as sprawling basically, as Facebook's reach itself, and it involves overseeing a prolific lobby in Washington, D.C. which is managing relations with the federal government and state capitals. And he leads Kaplan, a team of about 1,000 policy staff worldwide in Facebook, shaping and massaging and sometimes thwarting the international laws and regulatory bodies and policies that graze any part of Facebook's enormous business. But it's this third role that has made Kaplan so controversial, and that is helping design and arbitrate Facebook's policies on political speech, which have changed so much and so dramatically over the last 10 years.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Ben says Joel Kaplan is a Forrest Gump type figure. He went to Harvard, he was a good, progressive college student. But then the Gulf war starts and he finds himself feeling more conservative. He graduates, enlists, goes to law school and comes out a proper Republican. Clerks for Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court, becomes best buds with Brett Kavanaugh, and then he joins up with George W. Bush, serves all eight years in the Bush administration. And then he gets out and he's like, what's next? And that's just when his old pal from Harvard, Sheryl Sandberg, calls him up and offers him a job.

[Ben Wofford]

Kaplan's role for the first three years, he's one of a number of elder statesman types surrounding a younger Zuckerberg who has increasingly realized that the reach of his company is going to be entangled in policy matters in Washington.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Senator, we run ads.

[Ben Wofford]

I see it's during this period you concert from 2011 to 2016, that Kaplan, if not a mentor, is sort of described by colleagues as sort of an older brother figure to a younger Zuckerberg. He's accompanying Zuckerberg to tech summits in the Obama Oval Office.

[John Herman]

My name is Barack Obama and I'm the guy who got marked to wear a jacket and tie.

[Ben Wofford]

By the time Washington, when Kaplan comes out of those eight years in the Bush White House, he's got a reputation as a real bipartisan impresario. So Kaplan is a certain breed of Bush conservative that is open handed and warm and interested in bipartisan compromise. And it's part of why he's so prolific and such a valuable asset to any lobbying operation or company, but especially to Facebook. There are lots of these moments where Facebook is growing. It stumbles on some kind of tripwire of conservative politics it didn't know was there. And the company sort of frantically looks around and says, who do we have who's like a singular Republican operative who can help us with this problem? And over and over and over again, the answer is just Joel Kaplan. Joel Kaplan. Joel Kaplan. But the real hinge moment comes in 2016. I mean, this is the first real crisis that Kaplan solves, and it's sort of a foreshad of events. But it's a famous episode in May 2016, still known inside Facebook as sort of the Gizmodo affair. Gizmodo publishes an article alleging that Facebook's trending topics widget is biased against conservative media publishers. The CPAC conference, for instance, you know, as that was going on, that was not allowed to trend in Facebook's trending news feed and in other instances. And conservatives are outraged. Forget leaning in. Does Facebook lean left? Republican Senator John Thune. In comes Joel Kaplan for the rescue. Kaplan calls an old friend who's working on the Trump campaign and he designs this summit at Menlo park where he's going to bring in these conservative media heavyweights. You know, more than a dozen of these big name guests. They include Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck and Dana Perino. And they get sort of this VIP treatment. Zuckerberg gives a seminar where he explains to them the problem, what they're doing, how they're going to solve this, and sort of finesse and massage and charms them. And Kaplan of course, is preparing the summit briefing, Zuckerberg walking him through the talking points, and it works. When the conservatives kind of come back from the summit, the consensus is that, you know, Kaplan sort of put out this four alarm fire. The trending topics widget controversy showed three things. One, that there were these political landmines that Zuckerberg and Facebook might not realize exist. Two, that Kaplan was the person that could navigate Zuckerberg and the company around them. And three, just as often as not, those types of landmines were about content and speech and the speech product. And so if you thought of this as a unified problem, you would want one person to be in charge of a unified solution. And that point Merson and more or less becomes Kaplan.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

How unusual is it for a tech company to have a individual go from essentially top lobbyist to top policy advisor, top policy programmer for the platform.

[Ben Wofford]

Smart people and scholars who think about the architecture of the Internet and social media really encourage people to step back and look at Facebook and think about how unusual it is and how not obvious or self explanatory it is that the person who would be in charge of your political lobbying and policy operation is also largely in charge of crafting and designing the policies around content and speech. I think the one inside story that really summarizes Kaplan's role and influence happens in 2017, and that's with a really radical proposal called Common ground. So after 2016, there's this shock about the election and how ugly it was. And Common Ground has these big, ambitious goals all about reducing polarization. With a cocktail of what they call, quote, aggressive interventions. They're going to downrank ugly incivility and optimize for, quote, good conversations and upregulate that kind of discussion. And it's all about the algorithm. So the new algorithm was going to recommend users join more politically diverse groups. For example, it was going to reduce the viral reach of hyperactive, hyper partisan users. And the Common Ground team is really juiced. They're excited. They've hung posters around the office in Menlo park that have their motto on it and say things like reduce polarization or reduce hate. And then Common Ground runs into Joel Kaplan. And Kaplan's policy team grills these programmers and project managers with questions. Questions not just about how it's going to be perceived by users, but how the changes will be experienced and perceived by political stakeholders. And with Trump in office, Facebook is much more sensitive to how any changes, even neutral, non partisan changes like Common Ground, might be perceived by politicians or media Persona who have a big megaphone and can generate a political crisis and headache for Facebook. So in the end, a few of the tweaks of Common Ground got through. But in the end, almost all of Common Ground was scrapped and put on the shelf and never saw the light of day.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Okay, Ben, you've helped us get to know this shadowy figure at Facebook at Meta. He's been lurking around our government and our platforms for decades. But what does all of this mean for the next four years of Meta, Mark and Donald?

[Ben Wofford]

So, to me, Kaplan's professional life and his corporate values at Facebook suggest to me that there's almost no limit to the necessities and prerogatives of survival that Kaplan can't find a way to accommodate. You know, I guess a different way of putting this would be, you know, Zuckerberg's donating a million dollars to the inaugural committee or going to Mar a lago or bringing, you know, an MMA executive onto the corporate board. Those are really obvious, jarring ways that we can see Zuckerberg more than almost any other not only tech company, but really any other major corporation in the United States. Facebook has managed to stand out in subjecting itself to the coming Trump wave. And Kaplan's appointment to lead Global Policy is, to me actually the ur example of all of those things. Kaplan's singular achievement, I think, of the last eight years is finding a way to accommodate the brash ugliness of MAGA Washington and MAGA conservatism with the elite Burnish and professionalized corporate values of Facebook and the corporate world. You know, the next four years of Trump is going to be what Kaplan does best, which is just an era of serious and profound accommodation of Facebook or by Facebook, of Trump. You know, if you can think of all the unsavory ways that an empowered Trump might want to use Facebook for illegitimate ends, Kaplan is going to be the person in charge of figuring out a way to accommodate Trump and Maga conservatism as far as it can go and pushing the breaking point further and further before it, you know, it becomes untenable for Facebook.

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Ben Wofford he writes for whomever he pleases. Most recently it was Business Business Insider. The piece was titled Maga's man inside meta businessinsider.com Amanda Lou Ellen produces for today explained. Amina Al Saadi edits. Laura Bullard is our senior researcher. Andrea Christensdotter and Rob Byers mix it up. Goodbye for now.

[Joel Kaplan]

I think I read it wrong. All right, hang on. We allow targeted cursing, defined as terms or phrases calling for engagement in sexual activity or contact with genitalia, anus, feces or urine. We allow targeted cursing, defined as terms or phrases calling for engagement in sexual activity or contact with genitalia, anus, feces or urine, including but not limited to suck my dick, kiss my ass, eat shit, I think I got it. We allow targeted cursing, defined as terms or phrases calling for engagement in sexual activity. I can't do it. We allow targeted. We allow targeted cursing, defined as terms or phrases calling for engagement in sexual activity or contact with genitalia. I don't think I can do it.