A file image of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives outside court to take the stand at trial in a key test case accusing Meta and Google’s YouTube of harming kids’ mental health through addictive platforms, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on February 18, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

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Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently shared a harrowing experience during an interview with Joe Rogan, revealing that he was once at risk of being sentenced to death in Pakistan due to content posted on Facebook. This startling admission came amid ongoing legal battles between Meta and the Pakistani government, which has accused the platform of allowing content that violates the country’s strict blasphemy laws.

Power of Pakistan

pic.twitter.com/V4qokhbq76

— Kreately.in (@KreatelyMedia) February 11, 2025

Zuckerberg’s comments shed light on the complex and often fraught relationship between global tech platforms and local governments. In this case, a specific incident involving a user-posted image, which had a drawing of Prophet Mohammed, sparked a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, with the Pakistani government seeking to hold him personally responsible for the alleged blasphemy. Although Zuckerberg expressed little concern for his own safety, acknowledging that he had no intention of visiting Pakistan, the experience highlighted the broader challenges faced by Meta and other global platforms as they navigate the intersection of free speech and local regulations.

As Zuckerberg explained, “There are places around the world that just have different values that go against our free expression values and want us to crack down and ban way more stuff than I think a lot of people would believe would be the right thing to do.” This sentiment reflects the tension between Meta’s commitment to free expression and the varying cultural norms and laws that govern online content around the world.

The issue is particularly pronounced in Pakistan, where blasphemy laws can result in severe penalties, including imprisonment or even death. The legal system in Pakistan has historically been used to target individuals and organisations accused of violating these laws. In this context, Zuckerberg’s comments underscore the need for a nuanced approach to content regulation, one that balances respect for local cultural norms with the principles of free expression.

Moreover, Zuckerberg’s remarks highlight the role of government influence in shaping the online landscape. He argued that foreign governments exerting pressure on American tech companies requires stronger support from the US government. As he noted, the “power of saying they’re going to throw you in prison” is a level of pressure that necessitates protection for tech companies.

Meta’s experience in Pakistan is not an isolated incident. Meta has had its own share of legal challenges regarding its content that some governments deem harmful, offensive, or illegal.
 

New Delhi:

In a respite for Mark Zuckerberg-run Meta, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Thursday stayed the five-year ban imposed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) on WhatsApp for its data-sharing practices.

The NCLAT bench, led by Justice Ashok Bhushan, said such a ban could disrupt WhatsApp’s business model in the country. WhatsApp has more than 500 million monthly active users in India.

The appellate tribunal also directed Meta to deposit 50 per cent of the Rs 213 core penalty imposed by the CCI, within two weeks.

The social media giant has already paid 25 per cent of the fine.

Last week, the NCLAT had reserved its order on a plea by Meta and WhatsApp seeking a stay on the CCI order that imposed a penalty of Rs 213 crore for “abuse of dominant position”.

According to the tribunal, the upcoming data protection law in India could address concerns related to data privacy.

WhatsApp’s 2021 Privacy Policy allows for user data to be shared with group cos like Meta, and Insta without an “opt out” option.

Earlier this month, social media platform Meta moved the NCLAT against the CCI order. In November last year, the competition watchdog directed WhatsApp to not share user data collected on its platform with other Meta products or companies for advertising purposes for a period of five years, along with imposing a penalty of Rs 213.14 crore on Meta for allegedly abusing its dominant position.

Meta informed the NCLAT that the CCI order has wide ramifications for the industry as a whole and therefore, an urgent hearing in the matter will be required.

Last year, after the CCI directed WhatsApp not to share user data collected on its platform with other Meta products or companies for advertising purposes for a period of five years, the social media platform said it disagreed with the CCI’s decision and planned to appeal.

The CCI began a probe in March 2021 into WhatsApp’s revised privacy policy, which enabled mandatory data sharing with Facebook (now Meta) and its companies, along with an expanded scope of data collection.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Little less than 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg went viral for looking at Jeff Bezos’ fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, during Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, eagle-eyed social media users have revealed interesting details about Meta CEO’s digital footprint. The tech billionaire has reportedly been caught liking a sultry snap of Ms Sanchez on the Meta-owned social media platform Instagram, prompting droves of internet users to troll him online.

Soon after the inauguration ceremony, Ms Sanchez attended the Starlight Ball — one of the three post-inauguration events, dressed in a peach-coloured Dolce & Gabbana gown. Afterwards, she posted a couple of photographs from the event, highlighting her outfit to over 840,000 followers.

While the post received thousands of likes and comments in no time, it was Mr Zuckerberg’s name in the likes column that caught everyone’s eye.

“Zuck making likes private next,” said one user, while another wrote: “That’s why he never enabled community notes on Facebook and Insta.”

A third commented: “Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads.”

ZUUUUCKKK NOOOOO LIKES ARE PUBLIC ON INSTAGRAMMMM pic.twitter.com/X5h4bNKtay

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 21, 2025

Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads. https://t.co/hdomEb83kh

— DeeClark (@GuessTheMaga) January 21, 2025

Also Read | Jesus Christ’s Real Name Revealed And It’s Not What You Think

Zuckerberg and Sanchez controversy

Ms Sanchez was the talk of the town after he made an appearance at the 47th president’s inauguration, clad in a revealing, lingerie-inspired bustier under a form-fitting white blazer. While some questioned her dressing choice for a formal and historic event, it was Mr Zuckerberg who grabbed the headlines after an ill-timed photograph and later a video of him looking at Ms Sanchez went viral.

The Meta boss was seated next to Ms Sanchez when he is alleged to peeked a view of her cleavage, which led to a series of memes and humorous posts on social media.

Despite the online trolling, both Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Sanchez have been doing fine in their personal lives. While the former is married to Priscilla Chan, his college sweetheart, the latter got engaged to Mr Bezos in 2023 after starting dating in 2018.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes in how the company addresses misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, Meta will now emulate Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in using “community notes”. These crowdsourced contributions allow users to flag content they believe is questionable.

Zuckerberg claimed these changes promote “free expression”. But some experts worry he’s bowing to right-wing political pressure, and will effectively allow a deluge of hate speech and lies to spread on Meta platforms.

Research on the group dynamics of social media suggests those experts have a point.

At first glance, community notes might seem democratic, reflecting values of free speech and collective decisions. Crowdsourced systems such as Wikipedia, Metaculus and PredictIt, though imperfect, often succeed at harnessing the wisdom of crowds — where the collective judgement of many can sometimes outperform even experts.

Research shows that diverse groups that pool independent judgements and estimates can be surprisingly effective at discerning the truth. However, wise crowds seldom have to contend with social media algorithms.

Many people rely on platforms such as Facebook for their news, risking exposure to misinformation and biased sources. Relying on social media users to police information accuracy could further polarise platforms and amplify extreme voices.

Two group-based tendencies — our psychological need to sort ourselves and others into groups — are of particular concern: in-group/out-group bias and acrophily (love of extremes).

INGROUP / OUTGROUP BIAS

Humans are biased in how they evaluate information. People are more likely to trust and remember information from their in-group — those who share their identities — while distrusting information from perceived out-groups. This bias leads to echo chambers, where like-minded people reinforce shared beliefs, regardless of accuracy.

It may feel rational to trust family, friends or colleagues over strangers. But in-group sources often hold similar perspectives and experiences, offering little new information. Out-group members, on the other hand, are more likely to provide diverse viewpoints. This diversity is critical to the wisdom of crowds.

But too much disagreement between groups can prevent community fact-checking from even occurring. Many community notes on X (formerly Twitter), such as those related to COVID vaccines, were likely never shown publicly because users disagreed with one another. The benefit of third-party factchecking was to provide an objective outside source, rather than needing widespread agreement from users across a network.

Worse, such systems are vulnerable to manipulation by well organised groups with political agendas. For instance, Chinese nationalists reportedly mounted a campaign to edit Wikipedia entries related to China-Taiwan relations to be more favourable to China.

POLITICAL POLARISATION AND ACROPHILY

Indeed, politics intensifies these dynamics. In the US, political identity increasingly dominates how people define their social groups.

Political groups are motivated to define “the truth” in ways that advantage them and disadvantage their political opponents. It’s easy to see how organised efforts to spread politically motivated lies and discredit inconvenient truths could corrupt the wisdom of crowds in Meta’s community notes.

Social media accelerates this problem through a phenomenon called acrophily, or a preference for the extreme. Research shows that people tend to engage with posts slightly more extreme than their own views.

These increasingly extreme posts are more likely to be negative than positive. Psychologists have known for decades that bad is more engaging than good. We are hardwired to pay more attention to negative experiences and information than positive ones.

On social media, this means negative posts – about violence, disasters and crises – get more attention, often at the expense of more neutral or positive content.

Those who express these extreme, negative views gain status within their groups, attracting more followers and amplifying their influence. Over time, people come to think of these slightly more extreme negative views as normal, slowly moving their own views toward the poles.

A recent study of 2.7 million posts on Facebook and Twitter found that messages containing words such as “hate”, “attack” and “destroy” were shared and liked at higher rates than almost any other content. This suggests that social media isn’t just amplifying extreme views — it’s fostering a culture of out-group hate that undermines the collaboration and trust needed for a system like community notes to work.

THE PATH FORWARD

The combination of negativity bias, in-group/out-group bias and acrophily supercharges one of the greatest challenges of our time: polarisation. Through polarisation, extreme views become normalised, eroding the potential for shared understanding across group divides.

The best solutions, which I examine in my forthcoming book, The Collective Edge, start with diversifying our information sources. First, people need to engage with — and collaborate across — different groups to break down barriers of mistrust. Second, they must seek information from multiple, reliable news and information outlets, not just social media.

However, social media algorithms often work against these solutions, creating echo chambers and trapping people’s attention. For community notes to work, these algorithms would need to prioritise diverse, reliable sources of information.

While community notes could theoretically harness the wisdom of crowds, their success depends on overcoming these psychological vulnerabilities. Perhaps increased awareness of these biases can help us design better systems — or empower users to use community notes to promote dialogue across divides. Only then can platforms move closer to solving the misinformation problem.

(Author: Colin M. Fisher, Associate Professor of Organisations and Innovation and Author of “The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups”, UCL)

(Disclosure Statement: Colin M. Fisher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, NBC news reported Tuesday, further highlighting the tech moguls’ efforts to develop closer ties with the incoming president.

The network, citing an unnamed official involved in planning the January 20 ceremony, said the three men will be seated together on the platform with prominent guests, including Trump cabinet nominees. 

Musk — the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the majority owner of X — has become one of Trump’s closest allies and his planned presence at the ceremony is not a surprise. 

Musk shares Trump’s hard-right politics and put millions of dollars into supporting his presidential campaign.

Trump has tapped Musk to co-lead an advisory commission aiming to slash federal spending and bureaucracy, which while dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will not be an official US agency.   

Bezos and Zuckerberg have less close ties with Trump, but both have made moves since the election viewed as seeking to curry favor with the president-elect, including meeting with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg signalled a rightward political swerve last week when he announced Facebook and Instagram would scrap fact-checking in the United States, a response to what he characterized as censorship by governments and so-called legacy media.

The pivot to Trumpian talking points shocked some Meta watchers but was also in line past decisions by Zuckerberg aimed at preserving his dominance of social media.

In the summer, Trump threatened to put Zuckerberg in prison over Facebook’s decision to ban him from the platform in 2021.

Highlighting Zuckerberg’s continued step into politics, he will be co-hosting a post-inauguration reception for Trump with several well-known Republican donors, according to an invitation obtained by the Puck news site Tuesday.

Bezos’s relationship with Trump has also seen moments of significant friction. 

The founder of Amazon also owns The Washington Post, one of the many newspapers Trump has railed against for years.

In a decision that shocked many in US media, The Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate ahead of the November election.

According to a report by the paper, Bezos intervened to block the board from publishing its editorial in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The paper’s leadership denied that report. 

Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin also competes for lucrative government contracts.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

Meta plans to dismiss approximately 3,600 employees identified as low performers and replace them with new hires, according to an internal memo reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, confirmed to AFP that CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision will affect five percent of its workforce.

Meta had approximately 72,400 employees as of September.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said.

The CEO said the performance-based cuts are intended to ensure that the company has the “strongest talent” and is able to “bring new people in.”

Performance-based dismissals are a common practice among major US corporations. Microsoft announced similar cuts last week affecting less than one percent of its workforce, Business Insider reported.

The layoffs come amid broader changes at Meta, in advance of Donald Trump returning to the White House on January 20.

Zuckerberg has recently aligned more closely with conservative ideas and political figures, including having dinner meetings with Trump and nominating a Republican as Meta’s head of public affairs.

Last week, Zuckerberg announced the end of the company’s US fact-checking program that aimed to combat misinformation on its platforms. The program had faced criticism from conservative voices who viewed it as censorship.

Under the new system, users will be able to add context to posts, similar to features on X, formerly Twitter, and championed by Elon Musk, the platform’s owner.

The company has also scaled back its diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, particularly regarding certain forms of hostile speech.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Union Minister Ashwini Vaisnaw today fact-checked Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg’s claim on the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections. In an interview on Friday with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, Mr Zuckerberg wrongly claimed that most incumbent governments, including India, lost elections in 2024.

Mr Zuckerberg’s claim “is factually incorrect,” said the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government had won the 2024 general elections.

Correcting Mr Zuckerberg, Mr Vaishnaw posted on X, “As the world’s largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. The people of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by PM”.

Mr Zuckerberg, trying to highlight how COVID-19 pandemic led to the global erosion of trust in governments and influenced elections, said, “2024 was a very big election year around the world and all these countries, India, had elections. The incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon – whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid. It seems to have had this effect that’s global.”

The Union Minister, contradicting Mr Zuckerberg, said, “PM Modi’s decisive 3rd-term victory is a testament to good governance and public trust”.

As the world’s largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. People of India reaffirmed their trust in NDA led by PM @narendramodi Ji’s leadership.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s claim that most incumbent governments, including India in 2024 elections,…

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) January 13, 2025

The announcement triggered alarm with the move being widely seen as an attempt to curry favour with President-elect Donald Trump whose conservative support base has been complaining that fact-checking on tech platforms was a way to curb free speech.

US President Joe Biden called the move “really shameful” and a global network warned of “devastating consequences” if the tech giant broadened its policy to other countries.

“Some of these countries are highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide,” International Fact-Checking Network said in an open letter to Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg, however, defended the decision in the interview, comparing the fact-checking program with “something out of 1984,” citing George Orwell’s dystopian novel.