Two Republican U.S. senators called for a congressional investigation into Meta Platforms on Thursday after Reuters exclusively reported on an internal policy document that permitted the company’s chatbots to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, but said that after receiving questions earlier this month from Reuters, the company removed portions that stated it is permissible for chatbots to flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children. The standards described in the Meta document don’t necessarily reflect “ideal or even preferable” generative AI outputs, the document states. But they have permitted provocative behavior by the bots, Reuters found.
In one example, the document notes that it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”
&#8220;So, only after Meta got CAUGHT did it retract portions of its company doc,&#8221; Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, said in a post on social media site X. &#8220;This is grounds for an immediate congressional investigation,&#8221; Hawley said.
A spokesperson for Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, said she supports an investigation into the social media company.
A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Blackburn also added that the report illustrates the need to pass reforms to better protect children online, such as the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill she co-sponsored that the Senate passed last year but which failed in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“When it comes to protecting precious children online, Meta has failed miserably by every possible measure. Even worse, the company has turned a blind eye to the devastating consequences of how its platforms are designed,&#8221; Blackburn said.
The Kids Online Safety Act would make explicit a &#8220;duty of care&#8221; that social media companies have when it comes to minors using their products, focusing on the design of the platforms and the regulation of the companies.
Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, called the policies &#8220;deeply disturbing and wrong,&#8221; adding that Section 230, a law that shields internet companies from liability for the content posted to their platforms, should not protect companies&#8217; generative AI chatbots.
&#8220;Meta and Zuckerberg should be held fully responsible for any harm these bots cause,” he said.
Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat of Vermont, said the report &#8220;shows how critical safeguards are for AI — especially when the health and safety of kids is at risk.&#8221;
The Senate voted 99-1 in July to remove a provision in President Donald Trump&#8217;s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill that would have effectively barred states from passing AI regulation.
In the absence of federal laws regulating AI, states have passed legislation, including bans on using the technology to create child sexual abuse material.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Additional Reporting by Alexandra Alper in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

FILE PHOTO: Illustration shows Meta logo

GOP Senators Push For Probe Into Meta’s AI Chatbot Engaging In ‘Sensual’ Discussions With Children

Artificial Intelligence

Children

Josh Hawley

Mark Zuckerberg

Marsha Blackburn

US-POLITICS-IT-FACEBOOK-TRUMP

Meta Oversight Board Fumes As Facebook Ends Censorship Initiatives

Censorship

Facebook

Social Media Censorship

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly offered the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nearly $1 billion to keep a case out of court that could break up his social media empire.
Zuckerberg sat for a third day of testimony on Wednesday in an antitrust case brought against his company by the FTC, which is attempting to force Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp over what the government has said are Meta’s anticompetitive business practices.
Zuckerberg called the head of the FTC, Chairman Andrew Ferguson, in March to try to settle the case out of court. Zuckerberg initially offered the agency $450 million, but later increased that offer to nearly $1 billion to avoid bringing the case to court. Ferguson rejected the offers, which were far below the $18 billion payment and consent decree that he offered Meta, according to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/mark-zuckerberg-meta-antitrust-ftc-negotiations-a53b3382" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Wall Street Journal</a>.
The Meta founder has also courted President Donald Trump in recent months to try to avoid the trial in which Zuckerberg has begun to testify. The social media mogul donated $1 million to Trump&#8217;s inauguration and settled a lawsuit for $25 million over a Facebook ban on Trump after January 6, 2021 – the lion’s share of that settlement went toward Trump’s presidential library.
Meta’s head found himself in court on Monday despite those efforts. Government attorneys say that Meta has used illegal anticompetitive practices to buy up its competition, namely Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 in a nearly $22 billion deal. The FTC says that Meta has bought out competitors and now illegally dominates the “personal social-networking” market.
Meta has said that the FTC’s definition of the market is arbitrary and too narrow, and it ignores other major competitors of the tech giant. According to the FTC, Meta’s major competitors are Snapchat and an app called MeWe. Meta has said that it also competes with YouTube, TikTok, and X, among other companies not included in the FTC’s definition.
During the trial, Meta has argued that the growth of TikTok has been a major barrier to Meta’s own development. Meta has also said that an outage at TikTok earlier this year resulted in a bump in Instagram traffic, suggesting that Americans use the two platforms for similar purposes.
In public statements, Meta has complained about the Trump administration’s pursuit of it while appearing to treat TikTok, a Chinese-owned platform, more loosely by extending a pause on a congressionally approved ban on the app.

Zuck Offered FTC $1B To Avoid Trial Threatening His Social Media Empire: Report

Business

Technology

Trump Administration

Another legal battle is brewing over the deportation of half a million migrants allowed into the United States by Joe Biden. President Donald Trump pulls the federal funding rug out from under NPR, PBS – and Harvard. Will it hold up in Congress and the courts? And, Mark Zuckerberg is back in the hot seat as Facebook is accused of antitrust practices and cozying up to China.
It’s Wednesday, April 16, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>Trump Blocks Migrant Benefits, Border Crossings At All-Time Low</h2>
<div id="attachment_908237" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908237" class="size-large wp-image-908237" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-865x576.jpg" alt="" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Border-Wall-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />(Photo by Jorge Salgado/Anadolu via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Border crossings continue to fall at a historic pace as President Trump takes new steps to prevent illegal immigrants from accessing taxpayer benefits.
In recent years, the Biden administration enacted a controversial humanitarian parole program that offered legal status and two-year work permits to migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. More than 530,000 people from those countries took advantage and flew directly to the United States. In March, President Trump moved to revoke legal status for those migrants, giving them until April 24 to leave the country or face deportation.
The White House argued these migrants were undermining American workers and faced little vetting before entering the country. But this week, a federal judge appointed by President Barack Obama blocked that effort, saying the Trump administration must instead offer each migrant a case-by-case review before revoking legal status.
However, in general, the Trump administration’s immigration efforts have borne fruit. The latest report from Customs and Border Protection confirmed that border crossings fell 95% in <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/04/icymi-illegal-border-crossings-hit-new-record-low-in-march/">March</a> compared to the same month last year, with just 7,100 migrants apprehended across the entire month – that’s roughly the number of migrants that came in every single day during Biden’s term in office. The Trump administration has also continued to go after the roughly 435,000 people living here illegally who’ve been convicted of additional crimes. ICE arrests have tripled in the last three months, and the number of illegal aliens in detention facilities is at an all-time high.
“We did in three weeks what Biden didn’t do in three or four years,” Border czar Tom Homan <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1911893560116592730">said</a>. “Right now as you and I are talking, we have the most secure border in the history of this nation and the data proves it.”
According to The New York Times, the White House is now seeking $45 billion in additional funding to construct new detention facilities so it can expedite its mass deportation effort. The public still broadly approves of Trump’s immigration policy.
<h2>Trump Moves To Cut Funding To NPR, PBS &amp; Harvard</h2>
<div id="attachment_908239" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908239" class="size-large wp-image-908239" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/NPR-PBS-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: President Trump is renewing his push to strip NPR and PBS of their funding while also freezing more than $2 billion in federal grants earmarked for Harvard. The moves have sparked heated debate, with supporters calling it a step toward fiscal responsibility and critics warning it threatens independent journalism and academic freedom.
Conservatives have talked about defunding NPR and PBS for years, but now they appear to have the political winds at their backs. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, and a lot of Americans are sympathetic to the idea that we do not need to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer money on these entities that many view as biased.
President Trump specifically accused NPR of being “a mouthpiece for the radical left.” And he’s calling on Republicans in Congress to introduce legislation that rescinds the funds that had been previously approved. Rescission would require the approval of the House and the Senate, where Republicans control narrow majorities and are already negotiating a major spending package.
Meanwhile: The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard after the university refused demands to overhaul its policies, and as much as $9 billion in funding could be on the table. The White House, through its Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, claims Harvard hasn’t done enough to address antisemitism tied to radical anti-Israel and pro-Hamas campus protests. They demanded changes like banning face masks, which a lot of the protestors wear, and enforcing merit-based rather than race-based admissions.
Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, rejected these demands, calling them a violation of First Amendment rights and academic freedom, saying in a statement “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
<h2>Facebook Faces Antitrust Lawsuit</h2>
<div id="attachment_908241" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-908241" class="size-large wp-image-908241" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-768x576.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Facebook-dislike-300x225.jpg 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />(Photo by Alfieri via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: FTC vs Meta Platforms, Inc. began in court this week. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat for his second day of testimony in the trial that risks breaking up his social media empire.
This case was initially brought during President Trump’s first term and has taken more than four years to work through the courts. The FTC says that Meta is a monopoly that has bought its way out of competing. The government argues that when Facebook paid $1 billion for Instagram in 2012 and bought WhatsApp in a nearly $22 billion deal in 2014, Facebook illegally cornered what the FTC calls the “personal social-networking” market. According to the government, the only other major competitors to Facebook are Snapchat and an app called MeWe.
Meta disputes this. It says the market is actually much larger, and includes TikTok, YouTube, and X. For instance, when TikTok had an outage earlier this year, Instagram saw its usage spike, which suggests that people use the sites interchangeably. Meta has also argued that by going after it, the Trump administration is helping the Chinese-owned TikTok even more. TikTok was banned in the United States <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tiktok-rages-after-u-s-passes-law-requiring-its-sale-from-chinese-parent-company">last year</a>, but earlier this month, Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-extends-tiktok-sale-deadline-by-75-days-as-acquisition-talks-continue">extended</a> the pause on a Congressionally-approved ban on that app that was put into place in January.
This trial is expected to go on for eight weeks, so there will be plenty more ahead. But if Meta loses, it could be forced to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.

The-White-House-Press-Secretary-Karoline-Leavitt-Had-Press-Brief

Morning Brief: Border Crossings Plummet, NPR Funding Trouble & Meta Antitrust

Anti-Semitism

Anti-trust

Donald Trump

Harvard University

Illegal Immigration

Media

Morning Wire

National Public Radio (NPR)

Politics

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced Friday that its fact-checking program in the United States would be &#8220;officially over&#8221; on Monday, when it will roll out the community notes feature across all platforms.
The news comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that the company would end fact-checking and move to restore free speech on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Starting Monday, fact-checkers will no longer be able to rate new content, and old fact-checks placed on content will no longer appear.
Instead of fact-checks, Meta will adopt an X-style community notes system where users can add context to posts, which are then rated by other users. Anyone will be able to sign up to be a contributor to community notes if they are over 18 and have had a verified account for over six months.
Joel Kaplan, Meta&#8217;s chief global affairs officer, announced the changes on Friday.
&#8220;By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program &amp; we haven’t applied penalties to fact-checked posts in the US since then. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads &amp; Instagram, with no penalties attached,&#8221; Kaplan posted on social media.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program &amp; removing penalties. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start…
&mdash; Joel Kaplan (@joel_kaplan) <a href="https://twitter.com/joel_kaplan/status/1908204701457236472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The changes come after Meta was placed under congressional scrutiny for targeting conservative views on topics like the 2020 election, the COVID vaccine, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Zuckerberg has pinned much of the blame for the censorship on former President Joe Biden, saying Meta was pressured to target conservative content.
Meta started testing out its community notes feature last month, allowing some 200,000 potential contributors to sign up.
&#8220;Meta won’t decide what gets rated or written – contributors from our community will. And to safeguard against bias, notes won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them,&#8221; the company said. &#8220;This isn’t majority rules. No matter how many contributors agree on a note, it won’t be published unless people who normally disagree decide that it provides helpful context.&#8221;
In January, Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/zuckerberg-says-meta-restoring-free-speech-will-get-rid-of-fact-checkers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that the move was part of Meta&#8217;s goal of restoring free speech on its platforms.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the United States.”
Zuckerberg said restrictions on discussions on topics like immigration and gender were “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he said.
In that same announcement, Zuckerberg said that Meta would work with the incoming Trump administration to fight censorship abroad.
“We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” he said. “The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world.”

US-TECHNOLOGY-INTERNET-CHILD-EXPLOITATION

Facebook To Shut Down Fact-Checking Program On Monday: ‘Officially Over’

Fact Check

Earlier on Wednesday, President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> signed an agreement requiring Meta Platforms to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought after his social media accounts were suspended in 2021.
The settlement resolves a 4-year-long court battle over free speech and social media censorship, with Meta suspending Trump following his remarks on the January 6 Capitol riot.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, settlement negotiations <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/trump-signs-agreement-calling-for-meta-to-pay-25-million-to-settle-suit-6f734c8c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> became more serious after Mark Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November following Trump’s election victory.
Of the settlement, $22 million will go toward the president’s library, with the remainder designated for legal fees and other plaintiffs.
This settlement follows efforts by tech companies previously hostile to Trump to get into his good graces, with Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook, in addition to Zuckerberg, each <a href="https://www.commoncause.org/articles/big-tech-is-donating-millions-to-trumps-inauguration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">donating</a> $1 million respectively, to the inauguration.
Alongside Meta, Trump sued other major platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, over his suspensions, arguing that the companies had wrongfully violated his right to share political speech.
A federal judge ultimately dismissed the Twitter action in 2022, concluding that the First Amendment applies to government entities rather than private corporations, although Trump’s legal team lodged an appeal that has yet to be resolved. The YouTube suit was put on an administrative pause in 2023, with the possibility of being reopened at a later date.
One of Trump’s lawyers acknowledged that they saw an opening for possible settlements, noting that corporate defendants appeared willing to mend fences with the new administration.
Although Trump’s Facebook and Instagram access was eventually restored, his attorneys argued that an atmosphere of uncertainty continued for him online.
Zuckerberg, for his part, had previously explained that Meta saw security concerns in allowing continued engagement by high-profile figures who contested election results.
Reflecting on the 2021 suspensions, he said the potential risks posed amid that tumultuous period were “simply too great.”
While the lawsuit with Meta has now been settled, the broader debate over what boundaries, if any, private businesses can set for political speech shows few signs of fading.

The Inauguration Of Donald J. Trump As The 47th President

Trump, Meta Settle Lawsuit Over Social Media Ban for $25 Million

Courts

Lawsuit

U.S.

Last week the news broke that Meta — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and half the internet — claims it will be pulling back drastically from its censorship policies. Free speech will reign again on Facebook, supposedly. The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, appeared on Joe Rogan a couple of days ago to elaborate on this decision. Much of what he says in the conversation — along with the entire conversation itself — would have been unthinkable four or five years ago. But times are rapidly changing.
Specifically, in the interview, Zuckerberg affirmed that there&#8217;s nothing wrong with a masculine culture in a workplace — and that, in fact, a lot of companies would benefit from it. Imagine that. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Zuck" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aL_ODZpmMCM?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Eight years ago, these are the kinds of ideas that would&#8217;ve — and if you recall the case of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fired-google-engineer-james-damore-dropped-his-lawsuit-against-company" target="_blank" rel="noopener">James Damore</a> — did get rank-and-file employees fired at Google. And now the head of a major Big Tech company is saying it.
Of course, the obvious response to this interview is that Zuckerberg doesn&#8217;t actually believe any of this. He&#8217;s just saying it because Trump won the election, and he wants to cozy up with power. And that&#8217;s almost certainly true. But it doesn&#8217;t fully capture what&#8217;s going on — which is that there&#8217;s also been a major shift in American culture this time around. After all, Trump won the election back in 2016, too. And Zuckerberg didn&#8217;t say anything like this. Instead his companies reacted by entrenching themselves even deeper on the Left. Now the exact opposite is happening.
In the interview, Zuckerberg suggested that some of Facebook&#8217;s censorship was the result of pressure by the Biden administration, although he claims to have resisted some of it. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Biden censorship" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0kEGe4pRgTY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
Of course, it wasn&#8217;t just &#8220;vaccine side effects&#8221; that the Biden administration wanted Facebook to censor. They also wanted Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, for obvious reasons. It was a damning account of the Biden family&#8217;s corruption, and no one could really dispute its accuracy because it came directly from Hunter Biden&#8217;s laptop. And Facebook went along with that, too, on the ridiculous theory that the laptop was really some secret scheme by Russian intelligence.
It goes without saying that Facebook could have gone public with these concerns at any time in the last several years. They didn&#8217;t need to wait until Trump won a second term. So, no, we shouldn&#8217;t &#8220;trust&#8221; Mark Zuckerberg, now that he&#8217;s made a calculation that telling the truth is in his best interests. He had a chance to do the right thing when it would have required some measure of courage to do so. Although not that much, considering he was and is a multi-billionaire. That provides you a lot of cover that most of us don’t have. But Zuckerberg waited until now. 
There’s a lot of this going around right now. People who are seeing the light and coming out against wokeness, now that wokeness is a punch line and has no political power and little Cultural power. I welcome these people to Team Sanity. But I don’t trust them, and I certainly won’t congratulate them.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1513-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
At the same time, again, Zuckerberg&#8217;s shift is a reflection of a broader change in the culture. And it&#8217;s a shift that&#8217;s quite dramatic in some respects. Here&#8217;s how the New York Times is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/technology/meta-mark-zuckerberg-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reporting</a> on some of the changes at Meta, for example: 
<blockquote>The company removed the transgender and nonbinary &#8216;themes&#8217; on its Messenger chat app. &#8230; That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.</blockquote>
Yes, tampons have been removed from the men&#8217;s bathrooms at Meta. Presumably the tampons have also been removed from the virtual bathrooms in the Metaverse too, although I don&#8217;t have a &#8220;Meta Quest&#8221; VR headset, so I can&#8217;t verify that at the moment. This is a sudden change that happened virtually overnight, after years of having tampons in the men&#8217;s bathroom. The CEO decides one day to end it. And it ends.
Why did the men’s bathrooms ever have tampons to begin with? Why did he ever think that was a good idea? Did Zuckerberg believe that men could have periods and then see the light after reading a biology textbook? I don’t think so. He knew it was absurd the whole time.
And guess what? There have been no riots at Meta over this change. There have been no massive protests or mass resignations. The Metaverse hasn&#8217;t collapsed. That&#8217;s because everyone at Meta — including the supposedly &#8220;trans&#8221; employees — know that reality is not subjective. They know that men do not need tampons. And now that an adult has told them the truth, they&#8217;re accepting it because they have no other choice.
That&#8217;s all it really takes for a return to sanity. And it&#8217;s happening more and more often.
To give another example — recently a federal court in Kentucky handed the Biden administration a major defeat in a Title IX case. In case you&#8217;re not familiar with Title IX, it&#8217;s a law that prevents sex discrimination in educational programs, including sports, that receive any kind of federal assistance. The Biden administration unilaterally tried to re-interpret Title IX so that it prevents discrimination on the basis of so-called &#8220;gender identity.&#8221; Their rule would have required teachers to use students&#8217; preferred pronouns, among other demands.
From a legal perspective, the Biden administration and trans activists thought they had a winning case. And that&#8217;s because an earlier Supreme Court ruling had held, by a 6-3 vote, that a different provision of civil rights law — Title VII — prohibited discrimination on the basis of so-called &#8220;gender identity&#8221; in the workplace. Gorsuch and Roberts sided with the Leftist judges to come up with that ruling.
But last week, a federal judge in Kentucky held that the same logic doesn&#8217;t apply to Title IX, because Title IX is explicitly focused on sex discrimination — and no other form of discrimination. <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25483131-order-in-title-ix-case/?q=eviscerates&amp;mode=document#document/p7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This</a> is from the judge&#8217;s ruling: &#8220;The entire point of Title 9 is to prevent discrimination based on sex. Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.&#8221;
This ruling will obviously be appealed, and work its way up the courts. But as it stands, it could lay the groundwork for a new Supreme Court ruling — one that rejects any attempt to conflate &#8220;sex&#8221; and &#8220;gender&#8221; within the meaning of the law.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a></h3>
A ruling like that would&#8217;ve been hard to imagine a few years ago. But it&#8217;s not hard to imagine anymore. That&#8217;s because, even in places like California — some of the most Left-wing places in the country — there are clear signs that people are tired of this insanity. Consider the eruption of anger over California&#8217;s DEI policies and general incompetence in the wake of these historic fires, which still aren&#8217;t under control.
The corporate press is trying to run the same familiar narrative, where they blame racism and climate change. For example, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-wildfire-pacific-palisades-pasadena-altadena-inequality-63ea76d186740359f7f5dd188896354f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here&#8217;s the AP</a>: 
<blockquote>The California wildfires could be leaving deeper inequality in their wake. .. The fires also burned through a remarkable haven for generations of Black families avoiding discriminatory housing practices elsewhere. They have been communities of racial and economic diversity, where many people own their own homes.</blockquote>
The reaction to this article online has been, as you might expect, universal mockery and derision. People aren&#8217;t persuaded by this anymore. Well, people never were persuaded by it. The difference is that now nobody pretends to be. No one talks like this, unless they&#8217;re a journalist for an outlet like the AP. The rest of us are sharing clips like this one, featuring the chief of the Los Angeles Department of Water &amp; Power. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 LA" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4TznyI2d60Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
She says: &#8220;The #1 thing that attracted me to this role&#8230; It’s important for me that everything we do is with an equity lens and social justice.&#8221;
It&#8217;s reminiscent of the aftermath of the Maui fires, when a top official <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/08/19/hawaii-official-worried-about-equity-over-water/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked</a> about how access to water should involve &#8220;conversations about equity.&#8221; These are the kinds of clips that have quickly surfaced in the wake of the California fires. And they&#8217;re surfacing because people are tired of DEI hires running their cities into the ground. People are realizing that lives are at stake now.
That&#8217;s especially obvious after the discovery that a key reservoir was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">empty</a> in the Pacific Palisades when the fires began. From the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>: 
<blockquote>Officials said that the [Reservoir] had been closed since about February for repairs to its cover, leaving a 117-million-gallon water storage complex empty in the heart of the Palisades for nearly a year.</blockquote>
Keep in mind, that&#8217;s the L.A. Times with that exclusive reporting. That&#8217;s the same paper that called Larry Elder &#8220;the black face of white supremacy&#8221; not too long ago. Then (like Jeff Bezos), the Times&#8217; owner withheld the paper&#8217;s endorsement of Kamala Harris, so they&#8217;d focus more on the news. Now they&#8217;re exposing genuine misconduct and incompetence, no matter how embarrassing and damaging it may be for California&#8217;s Democrats.
You won&#8217;t find a clearer sign that wokeness — meaning the suspension of reality to appease the preferred demographic groups of the Democratic Party — is coming to an end. It may be coming to an end in part because of self-interested political actors like Mark Zuckerberg. But it&#8217;s ending, one way or another, because people are tired of it. When Donald Trump won in 2016, that wasn&#8217;t the case. But if there&#8217;s one overriding reason for optimism for Trump&#8217;s second term, it&#8217;s that this time around, no one — not even Silicon Valley mega-corporations like Meta — is pretending to take this nonsense seriously anymore.
* * *
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Interview On The Circuit

Wokeness Is Dying

Big Tech

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Joe Rogan

Los Angeles

Opinion

Silicon Valley

Social Media

Woke Culture

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/prince-harry">Prince Harry</a> issued a statement making it clear he is not happy that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/meta">Meta</a> has decided to no longer fact-check people when they say things that the member of the royal family finds upsetting.
In a <a href="https://sussex.com/fact-checking-meta/">lengthy statement</a> on Monday — from the Office of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex — the royal said the company’s policy to roll back &#8220;hate speech&#8221; restrictions on the social media platform “should deeply concern us all,” calling on Meta to reverse course.
Last week, Meta CEO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mark-zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a> announced the company would no longer work with independent fact-checkers, end restrictions on topics like gender and immigration, and scale back filters that censored people for often innocuous posts. 
“It doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right or somewhere in between—the latest news from Meta about changes to their policies directly undermines free speech,” Prince Harry wrote. “Contrary to the company’s talking points, allowing more abuse and normalizing hate speech serves to silence speech and expression, not foster it.”
“Online spaces must be designed with public safety and well-being at their core, resilient against political pressures and lapses in corporate leadership,” he added. “This latest move from Meta is an example of a social media company—fully aware of their power to shape public discourse—disregarding any responsibility to ensure that power is not abused and instead allowing either ego or profit, likely both, to guide decisions that affect billions.&#8221;
“Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy,” the royal continued. “We urge Meta to reconsider and reinstate policies to protect all users. We also call on leaders across industries to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying.”
At one point, the Duke also focused his ire on the decision by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meta-axes-dei-programs-in-the-lead-up-to-trumps-inauguration">Meta to axe</a> its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, claiming that it was undermining “protections for marginalized communities&#8221; and putting “everyone in harm’s way and contributing to a global mental health crisis.”
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Shortly after the statement was released, social media users cracked jokes about Prince Harry being upset.
“Mark Zuckerberg has upset the Markles,” <a href="https://x.com/HollyBriden/status/1878835786700955820">one person joked</a>. “People on Meta are now free to call Meghan a ‘gold-digging fame-whore’ or Harry a ‘half-blood prince’ and there’s nothing they can do about it. This is tragic. #SaveTheMarkles.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Mark Zuckerberg has upset the Markles. 
People on Meta are now free to call Meghan a “gold-digging fame-whore” or Harry a “half-blood prince” and there’s nothing they can do about it. 
This is tragic. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaveTheMarkles?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SaveTheMarkles</a> <a href="https://t.co/3vKiDJ2OT3">https://t.co/3vKiDJ2OT3</a>
&mdash; 🥜🫃🏼💉🇺🇦🥥Hollaria Briden, Esq. (@HollyBriden) <a href="https://twitter.com/HollyBriden/status/1878835786700955820?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
While <a href="https://x.com/InsightfulWatch/status/1878757722860245416">another added</a>, “They have blamed racism, the Royal Family, the UK media, the people of the UK and now they are saying it’s haters. It’s time Harry noticed that people across the world do not like his and his wife’s behavior and treatment of others. They are to blame.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meghan-markle-lifestyle-series-coming-to-netflix-and-people-have-thoughts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Meghan Markle Lifestyle Series Coming To Netflix — And People Have Thoughts</a>

Prince Harry

Prince Harry’s Mad Meta Is No Longer Fact-Checking People When They Say Upsetting Things

Prince Harry's Mad Meta Is No Longer Fact-Checking People When They Say Upsetting Things

Celebrities

Entertainment

First Amendenet

Meghan Markle

Royal Family

Meta CEO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mark-zuckerberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a> revealed during a Friday interview with Joe Rogan that his company is scrapping diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and embracing &#8220;masculine energy&#8221; in corporate culture.
&#8220;A lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered,&#8221; Zuckerberg told Rogan. &#8220;The kind of masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it.&#8221;
He acknowledged that while it&#8217;s important for companies to support women, the notion that &#8220;masculinity is bad&#8221; has become prevalent, which he believes is not the right approach. &#8220;These things can always go a little far,&#8221; he added.
“I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive,&#8221; said Zuckerberg, suggesting that companies should strive to strike a balance between both perspectives. 
 
“It’s one thing to say we want to be welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another to basically say that ‘masculinity is bad,'&#8221; he said. “And I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the spectrum. … It’s like, no. Both of these things are good.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7k1ehaE0bdU?si=neXBsgQuTT2PRdfV" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Zuckerberg’s perspective is reflected in recently announced changes to Meta&#8217;s content moderation policies. According to The New York Times, Meta has also <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/meta-orders-removal-tampons-mens-rooms-amid-zuckerberg-post-election-shakeup-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ordered</a> the removal of tampons in the men&#8217;s restrooms in multiple facilities, &#8220;which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room&#8230;&#8221;
Additionally, Meta dropped major diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on Friday, with an internal memo indicating that the term &#8220;DEI&#8221; had become &#8220;charged&#8221; because it was &#8220;understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.&#8221; The memo&#8217;s release followed Meta&#8217;s announcement that it was abandoning its fact-checking program, citing concerns that fact-checkers were &#8220;too politically biased.&#8221;
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Zuckerberg&#8217;s interview with Rogan comes shortly after he met with President-elect Donald Trump at his Florida estate. Despite past tensions, including Trump&#8217;s previous criticisms of Zuckerberg and threats of legal action, the Meta CEO expressed optimism about the incoming administration. &#8220;I think he just wants America to win,&#8221; Zuckerberg said of Trump.
Zuckerberg expressed that he now feels a &#8220;much greater command&#8221; over Meta&#8217;s policies and dismissed the idea that the recent changes are &#8220;purely political&#8221; due to their timing near the recent elections. He emphasized that the adjustments are part of a long-term strategy to address concerns over bias and content moderation.

Key Speakers At The Acquired Live Podcast Event

Facebook Culture Shift: Zuckerberg Backs ‘Masculine Energy,’ Drops DEI Efforts

META CEO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mark-zuckerberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a> revealed during an interview on Joe Rogan this week that officials from the Biden administration would call his company in a state of rage demanding that they censor content.
Zuckerberg&#8217;s remarks on Friday come after Zuckerberg said in a letter back in August that the Biden administration &#8220;repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor&#8221; content, including scientifically accurate content and memes.
He said that they were trying to &#8220;censor anyone who was basically arguing against&#8221; taking vaccines.
&#8220;And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly, were true,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I mean, they basically pushed us and said, &#8216;Anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.&#8217; And I was just like, &#8216;Well, we&#8217;re not going to do that. Like we&#8217;re clearly not going to do that.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
META CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Biden administration officials &#8220;pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true.&#8221;
They demanded that Facebook and Instagram remove all content that mentioned that vaccines have side effects. <a href="https://t.co/Eo3F0lcljE">pic.twitter.com/Eo3F0lcljE</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1877794615765446912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
Later in the interview, Zuckerberg said that Biden officials would call his team and &#8220;scream at them and curse&#8221; demanding that they censor content.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
META CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Biden Administration officials would call his company and &#8220;scream and curse&#8221; at Facebook and Instagram officials and demand that they censor and remove content, including truthful content and memes <a href="https://t.co/U9vvnLTuhy">pic.twitter.com/U9vvnLTuhy</a>
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1877793077118554259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/massive-maga-win-facebook-reverses-its-censorship">Massive MAGA Win: Facebook Reverses Its Censorship</a>

Key Speakers At The Meta Connect Event

Zuckerberg: Biden Admin Would ‘Scream And Curse’ On Phone Demanding Censorship

Biden Administration

Far-Left fact-checking outfits are in full-blown panic mode after Meta CEO <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mark-zuckerberg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a> announced on Tuesday that Facebook will drop its current fact-checking system, thereby cutting off funding for the partisan organizations.
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which includes signatories like PolitiFact and MediaWise, called an emergency meeting &#8220;specifically&#8221; over Zuckerberg&#8217;s announcement, a Business Insider report <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/metas-fact-checking-exit-prompts-urgent-ifcn-meeting-2025-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a>.
&#8220;This program has been a major part of the global fact-checking community&#8217;s work for years,&#8221; IFCN&#8217;s director Angie Holan said. &#8220;People are upset because they saw themselves as partners in good standing with Meta, doing important work to make the platform more accurate and reliable.&#8221;
One PolitiFact employee said they &#8220;found out this morning at the same time as everyone else&#8221; about Zuckerberg dropping the partnership.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/zuckerberg-says-meta-restoring-free-speech-will-get-rid-of-fact-checkers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zuckerberg said in a video</a> posted Tuesday that Meta will no longer work with third-party fact-checkers, will end restrictions on topics like gender and immigration, and scale back filters that censored people for innocuous posts. The CEO added that Meta would focus on ensuring free expression, saying that the recent election seemed like a “cultural tipping point.”
Zuckerberg started the controversial partnership with left-wing fact-checking sites back in 2016, following the election of President Donald Trump. Conservative news sites, including The Daily Wire, quickly saw the suppression of their content for supposedly posting &#8220;misinformation.&#8221; However, information that was merely contrary to the mainstream narrative was often rated false or misleading.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The same with Daily Wire. We were literally the number one informational source on Facebook before the censorship regime decreased our reach by fully 90%. <a href="https://t.co/NMavyWtScT">https://t.co/NMavyWtScT</a>
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1876731953820336326?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
Even satire from Right-leaning sites, such as The Babylon Bee, was rated &#8220;false&#8221; by these supposedly independent fact-checking outfits.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Fact checking almost killed The Babylon Bee. So many of our jokes were rated &#8220;false&#8221; that the media began to characterize us as &#8220;traffickers in misinformation under the guise of satire.&#8221; Ironically, that was misinformation.
Fact checking safeguards narratives, not truth.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethDillon/status/1876755011079741615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
Holan, though, shifted blame to Facebook for the actual censorship of posts. &#8220;It was never about censorship but about adding context to prevent false claims from going viral,&#8221; she said. Notably, Facebook made the decision to censor posts based on the fact-checking ratings.
Now that Meta &#8212; a leading funding source for IFCN members &#8212; is no longer using these fact-checkers, these operations will have to size-down, Holan indicated.
&#8220;The IFCN was here before Meta&#8217;s program, and we&#8217;ll be here after it,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We may look different in size and scope, but we&#8217;ll continue promoting the highest standards in fact-checking and connecting organizations that want to collaborate worldwide.&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re here to help them figure out the best way forward,&#8221; Holan added.

US-TECHNOLOGY-META-DISINFORMATION

Facebook Fact-Checkers Freak Out, Call Emergency Meeting After Zuckerberg Pulls Funding

PolitiFact

Massive MAGA Win: Facebook Reverses Its Censorship

Ben Shapiro

Daily Wire

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