Dear Mark Zuckerberg

I hope you noticed what happened this past weekend.

As a potential coup raged in Russia, it was hard to find reliable information about it. Under Elon Musk, Twitter has wiped out the reliability of verified accounts. As the Russians eliminated all their independent media accounts in the past few years, Twitter became a reliable source of information.

For all the problems I and others have had with Twitter’s heavy-handed leftwing management and biases, the site did a pretty good job of using the blue checkmark only for legitimate voices.

In the past ninety-six hours, a bunch of troll accounts that paid for blue checkmarks circulated all sorts of mostly false and unreliable information. The world went to Twitter to find out what was happening in Russia, and both Wagner and Putin trolls combated each other and pushed fake news.

It was very hard to determine what was actually happening in Russia.

Concurrently, it has been hard to avoid noticing David Sacks and Elon Musk taking a very pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine line on Twitter. Ukraine is a country that Russia invaded on its own. It is remarkable to see how these men and others have served as apologists for Putin’s regime against an innocent people — including near echos of anti-American propaganda to justify Putin’s invasion and surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty.

I’d note that, under your leadership, Meta has refused to do business with the Communist Chinese and has refused to operate servers in China. When Hong Kong’s sovereignty was finally extinguished, it was great to see Meta refuse to collaborate with or aid the People’s Liberation Army in their efforts to track down and arrest dissidents who had used Meta’s platform in China.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk strives to do business in China and has repeatedly placated the Chinese authorities. One might conclude that his anti-vaccine, anti-Biden antics on Twitter are to distract conservatives from how pro-authoritarian Musk has become, particularly regarding China and Russia.

I have concerns that Meta, like Twitter pre-Musk, will treat truthful conservatives harshly. One should be able to point out that Ellen Page, not Elliott Page, acted in the movie Juno. One should be able to say the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services is a biological male.

Pre-Musk, Twitter was a bastion of progressive groupthink in its application of rules and its biases. Even now, I think Meta had good intentions to outsource fact-checking to independent groups, but progressives have gamed the system and fostered a bias not towards actual truth but progressive groupthink in Facebook’s system.

I hope that as Threads comes online, Meta will allow it to be a source of information without censorship catering towards leftwing shibboleths on sex and gender, etc. But I also hope Meta will recognize that for the truth to flourish, the blue checkmarks can't go to the highest bidder but should go to the advocates of real news and truth.

There is a way to find a balance. Elon Musk and pre-Musk Twitter never found the balance. I hope, as Threads goes live, you will. The world needs a social media platform that can handle differences of opinion fairly — but a platform that can also promote actual truth over lies. Elon Musk has so far failed. Surely, Mark, you can do better.

I hope you will. This past weekend shows just how needed a site like Twitter is, without Musk’s and pre-Musk Twitter’s nonsense and biases for various authoritarians.