Mark Zuckerberg thinks workplaces need to ‘man up’ − here’s why that’s bad for all employees, no matter their gender

  When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on a Jan. 10, 2025 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he lamented that corporate culture had become too “feminine,” suppressing its “masculine energy” and abandoning supposedly valuable traits such as aggression.

  The workplace, he concluded, has been “neutered.”

  Perhaps not surprisingly, Zuckerberg has also embraced stereotypically masculine pursuits in his personal life. He’s become a mixed martial arts aficionado and has shared his affinity for smoking meats. On his expansive Hawaii compound, he’s even taken up bow-and-arrow pig hunting.

Prepare your social media for the election − 3 tips to stay sane and connected without being overwhelmed

  As the presidential election approaches, the race is ramping up – including on social media. Although Meta reported in 2022 that only about 3% of the content on Facebook is political, Americans have already begun bracing themselves for a deluge of political news stories, ads, AI deepfakes, and arguments on their feeds over the next few weeks.

  Elections are stressful, and they tend to exacerbate Americans’ adverse mental health symptoms. For some people, social media can amplify political stressors.

Are social media apps ‘dangerous products’? 2 scholars explain how the companies rely on young users but fail to protect them

    “You have blood on your hands.”

    “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through.”

  These quotes, the first from Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C), speaking to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and the second from Zuckerberg to families of victims of online child abuse in the audience, are highlights from an extraordinary day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about protecting children online.

What happens to your life stories if you delete your Facebook account?

  If the latest deluge of Facebook controversies has you ready to kick the app to the digital curb, you are not alone. There are plenty of good guides out there on how to do it right. Even Facebook makes it pretty easy to understand the nuances of saying “see ya later” (deactivating) or “never speak to me again” (deleting).

  But before you go, you might want to consider this: What happens to your life stories?

Facebook’s scandals and outage test users’ frenemy relationship

  When Facebook was down for most of the day on Oct. 4, 2021, did you miss it, were you relieved, or some of both? Social scientists have compiled an expansive body of research that shows how people have come to develop a love-hate relationship with the social media giant with nearly 3 billion users.

  Many users have felt their relationship with the platform devolve into a messy codependence, mired by ambiguity and mistrust. For others, reliance on the platform is taken for granted, if occasionally appreciated in moments of pandemic isolation.

Suit seeks to limit anti-Muslim speech on Facebook but roots of Islamophobia run far deeper

  A civil rights group is suing Facebook and its top executives in federal court over the company’s failure to crack down on hate speech against Muslims.

  Muslim Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization focused on discrimination against American Muslims, alleges in the suit that Facebook has violated a series of local and federal consumer protection laws. The suit points out that the company itself, in a July 2020 internal audit, found that “Facebook has created an atmosphere where ‘Muslims feel under siege’” on the platform.

The Matrix is already here: Social media promised to connect us, but left us isolated, scared and tribal

  About a year ago, I began to follow my interest in health and fitness on Instagram. Soon I began to see more and more fitness-related accounts, groups, posts, and ads. I kept clicking and following, and eventually, my Instagram became all about fit people, fitness and motivational material, and advertisements. Does this sound familiar?

  While the algorithms and my brain kept me scrolling on the endless feeds, I was reminded of what digital marketers like to say: “Money is in the list.” That is, the more customized your group, people, and page follows, the less time and money is needed to sell you related ideas. Instead, brand ambassadors will do the work, spreading products, ideas, and ideologies with passion and free of charge.

Personal data isn’t the ‘new oil,’ it’s a way to manipulate capitalism

  My recent research increasingly focuses on how individuals can and do manipulate, or “game,” contemporary capitalism. It involves what social scientists call reflexivity and physicists call the observer effect.

  Reflexivity can be summed up as the way our knowledge claims end up changing the world and the behaviors we seek to describe and explain.

  Sometimes this is self-fulfilling. A knowledge claim — like “everyone is selfish,” for example — can change social institutions and social behaviors so that we actually end up acting more selfish, thereby enacting the original claim.

How disinformation could sway the 2020 election

  In 2016, Russian operatives used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to sow division among American voters and boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

  What the Russians used to accomplish this is called “disinformation,” which is false or misleading content intended to deceive or promote discord. Now, with the first presidential primary vote only five months away, the public should be aware of the sources and types of online disinformation likely to surface during the 2020 election.

  First, the Russians will be back. Don’t be reassured by the notorious Russian Internet Research Agency’s relatively negligible presence during last year’s midterm elections. The agency might have been keeping its powder dry in anticipation of the 2020 presidential race. And it helped that U.S. Cyber Command, an arm of the military, reportedly blocked the agency’s internet access for a few days right before the election in November 2018.

Are social media companies going “too far” to regulate content on their platforms?

  In the past few years, social media companies have faced intense criticism for not taking a more active role in stopping the spread of hate speech and misinformation on their platforms. Meanwhile, the White House thinks those same companies are going too far in their efforts to regulate content and is currently drafting an executive order called, “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” which would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight over these decisions. The order seems to be an outgrowth of the social media summit that President Trump held last month, where his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said, “At a time when social media platforms are banning conservative voices and supporters of the president, it’s important for President Trump to emphasize that he appreciates their support and wants to protect their First Amendment rights.”

Congress should revive the Office of Technology Assessment

  In recent decades, the U.S. economy and society have been propelled forward by a boom in science and technology innovation—but the legislative branch has failed to keep pace with the resultant shifts in policy concerns. American life is rife with newly entrenched science and technologies that have been met with concern and confusion—from the genetic modification of food to personal data privacy on social media. Additionally, the emergence of highly technical concerns such as climate change, cybersecurity, and new energy technologies have had considerable domestic and geopolitical implications and require unprecedented levels of interdisciplinary analysis.

How to prepare for Russia’s October surprise

  Russia is in the business of mind control.

  They’re not doing it through sinister headgear, satellite interference, or dream invasion like in Inception, though.

  Instead, Russia seeks to control the minds of Americans through something we all have and spend arguably too much time on - social media.

  This isn’t news to many of us. For years we’ve heard how Russia infiltrated Facebook and Twitter in an effort to divide our nation during the 2016 election. It seems, however, that Russia’s interference in our last presidential election wasn’t a “one-and-done” deal.

Can social media be “fixed”?

  Last week, executives from Twitter, Facebook and Google testified before Congress. Again. This was the third congressional hearing this year where the internet giants were grilled on their content policies, their privacy and security practices, and their role in democracy.

  It’s been a rough couple of years for social media platforms. They’ve come under fire for so many different things that it can be hard to remember all of them. To recap: For enabling Russian propagandists to influence our presidential election and terrorist organizations to find new recruits. For allowing fake news stories to go viral. For exacerbating political polarization by trapping their users in “filter bubbles.” For giving hate mongers and conspiracy theorists a platform to reach a wider audience. For filtering or down-ranking conservative viewpoints. For collecting private user data and selling it to the highest bidder. For siphoning profits away from struggling local news organizations.

Parker Snider: A guide to fake news

  More than once every day.... That’s how often President Trump publicly calls something “fake”—be it a story, poll, or news organization.

  Just weeks ago, Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress about, among other things, the proliferation of falsities on his social media platform, including in Alabama’s special election for U.S. Senate last year.

  We see the term everywhere, hear it lobbied daily on cable news, and use it ourselves (although perhaps often in jest).  But what really is fake news, and how do we spot it?

Lata Nott: Why social media keeps failing us

  Was there a time when people regarded social media in a wholly positive light? It’s hard to remember. The honeymoon’s been over for a while. We still recognize the benefits of social media — after all, the majority of Americans use platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on a daily basis — but when we talk about these companies, it’s usually not to laud them for bringing the world closer together.

  Our conversations about social media often revolve around the problems that have come with it. There are the usual laments about how these applications have ruined our ability to focus and made us all unhappier. And then there are the more serious concerns: That social media can serve as a fertile recruiting ground for terrorist organizations. That it enables, and perhaps encourages, people to broadcast themselves committing heinous acts. That it allowed for the unbridled dissemination of fake news, which may or may not have impacted the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

David L. Hudson Jr.: First Amendment doesn’t protect public employees from all Facebook posts

  Public employees should enjoy a strong dose of personal freedom to express themselves on political and social issues online.  However, a recent example from Nashville, Tennessee, shows quite well that there are limits to free-speech protection for public employees who cross certain boundaries and denigrate those with whom they work with on a daily basis.

NewsChannel 5 reported this month that a teacher from East Magnet High School resigned after her students confronted her about some of her Twitter posts.

Gene Policinski: Hello Facebook! Welcome to the wide, wild world of news media

  Forgive me for a little old-fashioned smirking when following the digital-era dilemma of Facebook having to own up to some human involvement in its tidy, algorithmic universe.

  Millennials and others were outraged — outraged! — at the recent disclosure that the internet social media giant’s “trending topics” report may have had more than a smidge of real people decision-making involved in the daily determination of what’s hot in posted news.

  On May 9, web tech blog Gizmodo carried a report citing an anonymous former contractor who claimed that while he worked on the “topics” report, he and colleagues were directed to regularly insert liberal topics into the report while suppressing conservative subjects.

Michael Josephson: The treasure of old friends

  In my lifetime, I’ve had the good fortune of having a handful of good friends.

  Each of my four teenage daughters have many hundreds. At least that’s what they call every Facebook connection they collect like trophies. The list of those kinds of friends includes people they barely know, some they don’t know at all, and even some people they don’t like.

  They also have lots of real friends – people they actually know and spend time with. They profess to “love” and “miss” quite a few and, though it defies the meaning of the word “best” they each have a rotating group of best friends often referred to a BFFs (best friends forever) or BFFLs (best friends for life).

Gene Policinski: Examining the new importance of ‘where’ we speak

  When we say something that might be threatening, how much does where we say it matter?

  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in June to examine that question from a new angle – the increasingly popular method of online comments and posts on social media, as distinct from directed or face-to-face exchanges.

  The First Amendment generally shields us from being punished for what we say, but there are exceptions, among them what is called a “true threat.”

Ken Paulson: Is ‘liking’ on Facebook a First Amendment right?

  I “like” the First Amendment.

  And Bruce Springsteen. And the Chicago White Sox.

  In fact, you’ll find my “likes” on Facebook pages devoted to news, sports and music. All along, I’ve believed I was sharing my positive opinion of the people and organizations behind these pages. But now comes a federal court saying that clicking on the “like” button is not free speech after all.

  The decision came in a wrongful-termination case last month in Hampton, Va., in which former employees of a sheriff contended that they were fired for supporting his political opponent, in one case by “liking” his page on Facebook. A threshold question in the case was whether clicking the “like” button constitutes free expression protected by the Constitution. The court concluded that it doesn’t.