One potential silver lining of Mark Zuckerburg’s elimination of independent fact-checking on Facebook could be that the spread of misinformation and hate-speech on the platform becomes so abundant and grotesque that millennials will finally stop pretending it is a legitimate news source and recognize it as the toilet for mental waste it has always been.

In an unambiguous and craven capitulation to Trump and his propagandists, Zuckerburg is jettisoning the political biases that prevented users from referring to women as “household objects,” and homosexuality as a mental illness and going “back to our roots around free expression.” Might he be thinking nostalgically about 2016, when the free expression of baseless conspiracy theories on Facebook motivated a North Carolina man to open fire with his AR-15 in a D.C. pizzeria? A thicker and farther-flying spray of BS hardly seems like the solution to the issue of information siloing afflicting social media today.

Unfortunately, so-called “legacy media” outlets are proving equally impotent in resisting the incoming administration’s open hostility to the free press. ABC News rolled over rather than defend itself in a winnable defamation lawsuit; the Washington Post is losing both journalists and subscribers as the editorial board narrows the parameters of what reporting will reach publication.

We should not take for granted the unique and valuable asset we share in the Maine Trust for Local News. Rigorous, in-depth journalism is expensive to produce and, as a result, most news outlets are beholden to editorial wishes of their financial backers. As an independent non-profit, METLN provides us with honest, local reporting that is the very definition of “free press.” At least, for now.

Jonathan Strieff

South China