‘Sad, Shameless Weather Vane!’ Kara Swisher Drops Scorched Earth Takedown of ‘Mendacious F*ck’ Mark Zuckerberg

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher pulled no punches in a recent episode of her Pivot podcast while tearing into Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after he announced Facebook would end its fact-checking program. Swisher lit into Zuckerberg for what she argued is his inconsistency over the years and at one point said that one of her co-host Scott Galloway’s favorite barbs, “mendacious fuck,” is the best way to describe Zuckerberg and his recent actions.

“Let me just say, let me do my little rant now because it’s more than just bending the knee. Of course, he’s doing it in his self-interest and his business interests, which was always Mark,” Swisher began, adding:

I think it was on Piers Morgan. He’s like, are you surprised? I’m like, no. No, this is what he’s like. This is what I’ve told you he’s like. I wrote a piece in the New York Times where I was like, this guy is the most dangerous person on the planet. He has amplified and weaponized everything, and then he doesn’t want to take responsibility.

Let me tell you, I’ve talked to a lot of people inside Facebook and Meta. They are sick to their stomach, Mark, just so you know. I know Joel Kaplan is kissing your ass to get the job that he got, but let me just be clear. So many people called me this past week. The first person who was this first PR person was like, we got to get off threads now. I’ve had so many calls. ‘Sick to their stomach’ seems to do it, and they should be sick to their stomach because you are a sad and shameless weather vane. In four more years, if the Democrats take over, you’re going to shift again because that’s what you do. You have no values whatsoever.

I thought Will Oremus did a great piece in the Washington Post, of all places. He goes, ‘Mark Zuckerberg cited a cultural tipping point to justify dumping fact checks and relaxing hate speech rules. Meta ending fact checks in the US made headlines, but the real ballgame here is a broader repudiation of the idea that a company is responsible for bad stuff on its platform.’

As Zuckerberg puts it, ‘bad stuff.’ Mark, you don’t– ‘bad stuff.’ What, he thinks he’s going to like stub a toe.

These people, you put people in danger. ‘The company never really wanted that responsibility and Trump’s election allows them to shrug it off.’ They never wanted to.

Swisher went on to discuss some of the details of Zuckerberg’s announcement last Tuesday, in which he said the company would do away with its fact-checking and phase in a “more comprehensive community note system” – as Elon Musk’s X has done. Zuckerberg also said Meta would move its “trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas” – a move Galloway later argued will allow Meta to fire “30 to 60 percent” of his staff and pocket billions in costs.

Swisher continued by conceding that “these fact-checking systems do make mistakes. So does community notes.”

“So does AI. But you have to employ, if you want to build your fucking social media network, you need to have all of them at work. And to impugn these fact-checkers, by the way, they have conservative fact-checkers. They’re not all libtards, Mark. Sorry, they’re from conservative publications. If you want to do that, you need fact-checkers that make mistakes and then you correct them. You need AI, you need community notes,” she said, adding:

To wholly embrace what they’re doing at Twitter on top of it with X is repulsive. Mark, he hates you. Just so you know, they laugh at you behind your back, in front of your back, they laugh at you.

And the fact that he cannot, he switches his tune. I’ve had conversations where he says, Kara, AI was going to do this someday. Kara, community is going to do this. Kara, moderation is going to do this. I don’t believe a word coming out of your mouth anymore. Honestly, you say, ‘mendacious fuck’ all the time, Scott, and I got to tell you, it’s exactly what’s happening here.

Now, secondly, when he put UFC CEO and Trump crony Dana White on the board, that also upset people inside the company. And they tamped down the criticism on internal Facebook boards among employees because this guy was caught on a video tape hitting his wife. His wife hit him, but I spent years, years talking to my sons about never hitting a woman. No matter what, if she hits you, I don’t care, right?

These are the people he’s bringing onto the board of Meta right now, because he happens to like doing MMA. And by the way, Mark, the reason all those MMA fighters hang with you is because you’re rich. They don’t think you’re that good.

It’s great to hang out with a rich person, and I’m glad you’re doing it. I’m hoping you’re having fun. But this, the whole thing couldn’t get worse except for what Amazon did about giving Melania $40 million.

No, that wasn’t even as bad. And when these guardrails are removed, it is going to be disastrous for people. Scott, take over on your indignancy, please.

Listen to the full episode here.