Happy New Year, and welcome to America’s new oligarchy era, where the country is literally and metaphorically on fire. While the ultra-wealthy have long called the shots in America, the incoming Trump administration has wasted no time selling our country downstream to an increasingly brazen group of billionaire bandits. They now have carte blanche to run and extract from the government to benefit themselves and their friends, and they don’t even have to try to hide it anymore.
In the few days since Trump’s election victory was certified by Vice President Harris presiding over Congress, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is killing all DEI programs at the company and replacing fact-checking on all Meta platforms with “community notes,” a tactic taken directly from Elon Musk’s playbook that rapidly turned Twitter/X into a cesspool of disinformation peddled by a mob of trolls. Zuckerberg also announced a change of heart regarding political content, which Meta had previously censored. Now, after the election, as Trump is about to be president, Meta is good with political (sorry, “civic”) content again! Surprise, surprise. Meta also added Dana White, a long-time high-profile Trump ally, to its board, making its allegiances clear.
To make matters even more explicitly plutocratic, Zuckerberg framed these changes at Meta as wins for free speech. This is a standard page out of the fascist playbook: to control the masses, couch decisions about what information is allowed, or even encouraged, as part of “protecting freedom of expression,” while you — who own the information systems — censor whatever information you want, whenever you want. Zuck’s MAGA makeover is not surprising, coming weeks after his dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and after his donation to Trump’s inauguration fund. He is in good company with recent similar plea deals made with the incoming regime by fellow insecure oligarchs Jeff Bezos and others who have decided to abandon any last threads of morality to advance their own financial interests at the low cost of all of us.
So what can we do? Our fight has to be different from before because the world is different. This time, Trump was democratically elected by a (thin) majority of Americans. I believe that many of them weren’t voting for Trump, but instead voting against a system that hasn’t worked for them — a system that they see Democrats as embracing and protecting. There can be no mistake now, if there ever was, that when you lose the information war, you lose the political war, and thus you lose power. So Democrats have a serious reckoning to do about why they’re not connecting with the majority of Americans when they are the only party actually fighting to protect and advance those Americans’ rights, freedoms and economic prosperity. And the only silver lining I can find in this new reality where Democrats are now locked out from political power at the highest levels, is that the information war is the only fight they can really take on — and they must.
COURIER’s proudly factual, values-driven news outlets across the country are fighting that fight every day, year-round. We, unlike legacy media, are not going to bow down to this administration — nor are we going to carry the muddy waters of old-guard, out-of-touch Democrats either, for that matter. We’re going to do the opposite. We are going to tirelessly, ruthlessly, and aggressively hold accountable the powerful people and corporations actively (or passively) working to roll back the regulations and dismantle the institutions that exist to protect us. And that will require us to get much, much bigger, at a faster pace than ever before. We have big, brave, ambitious plans we can’t wait to share with you over the coming months, and if you’re able, please consider supporting our work in 2025 today. We can’t take on this parade of oligarchs and their dangerous disinformation platforms without you, and we simply can’t afford not to.
With deep sadness for and solidarity with our friends impacted by the horrific fires in CA, I wish for you all a safe, restorative, and peaceful weekend.
Tara
P.S. I shared more of my thoughts on the Zuckerberg news in a video:
Shaping the conversation online
Here are a handful of the most watched + engaged-with posts from across the COURIER network this past week:
From COURIER’s national team:
TikTok: Pelosi: first day back
4.7 million views, 277.3K likes, 1.3K comments
Instagram: Spouse of GOP senator refuses to shake VP’s hand
2.8M views, 60K likes, 31k comments
TikTok: VP jokes with Sanders as she wears him in
1.8 million views, 210.1K likes, 4.1K comments
From the states:
The Keystone (Pennsylvania) Facebook: PA farm show mullet competition
1.2M views, 13K reactions, 717 comments
Copper Courier (Arizona) TikTok: Gallego’s son has kind words for VP Harris
205K views, 28.9K likes, 537 comments
UpNorthNews (Wisconsin) Facebook: Big Boy is back
750K impressions, 5.9K likes, 935 comments