The Facebooks

 Mark Zuckerberg, who began his career as a fascist by creating a computer application that college boys could use to rate how hot girls they would never date were, has decided that fact-checking isn't something he needs to be done by him or anyone in his employ. He now believes that this function can be taken over by "the community." Ladies and gentlemen, there is no lifeguard on duty.

I understand that it is lazy of me to take my knowledge of Mark Zuckerberg directly from Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of him from the film Social Network, but since there is no need to check for facts anymore, why not? Fast on the heels of the Elno the Ersatz President, Mark has decided to pull the plug on Facebook's independent fact-checking program. Because who really needs to hire someone to keep an eye out for trolls when the trolls can do that for you? 

For "Free."

Which winds us back to that illusion of Free Speech. As a matter of full transparency, I only use the Facebooks for maintaining a district-required presence for our school. I don't get too much push back from announcing the semi-annual Scholastic Book Fair or the pictures of our Students of the Week, but I have had the vicarious experience of having my blog posts pitched from the Facebooks for no apparent reason. Now the answer seems quite evident: The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Perhaps "lunatic" is too strong. How about incipient fascist incels with access to a keyboard. Perhaps a subset of the group that was involved in getting the Second Trumpreich off the carnival circuit and into the White House. 

In the months since that elevation of the once banned chief MAGAt, the absurdly but appropriately named Meta has donated one million dollars to his inauguration fund, switched its global affairs chief to a more Republican-friendly executive, and selected MAGA ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White for its board. 

How could this possibly be seen as anything but "promoting free speech?" And, if I remember by Zuckerberg lore correctly, it's also a sure-fire way to impress the chicks. And Sean Parker.