Jesse Eisenberg no longer wants to be ‘associated’ with Mark Zuckerberg
Jesse Eisenberg, who received widespread recognition for his role as the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, has said he no longer wants to be “associated with someone like that”.
Eisenberg received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the 2010 film, which portrayed the founding of the social networking website and was directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin.
“It’s like this guy is … doing things that are problematic, taking away factchecking,” Eisenberg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday. “[There are] safety concerns. Making people who are already threatened in the world more threatened.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced last month it would no longer use independent factcheckers on its social media sites, and would replace them with “community notes”. Similar to the system used on X, these give users the power to challenge the accuracy of posts.
Zuckerberg, now chief executive of Meta, said third-party moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.
The move came as Zuckerberg and other technology executives sought to improve relations with US president Donald Trump, who had criticised Meta’s factchecking policy as censorship of rightwing voices.
After the changes were announced, Trump praised Zuckerberg’s decision. Zuckerberg, X chairman Elon Musk, and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, were all present at the president’s inauguration last month.
Eisenberg said he was “concerned” by the developments. The actor, who is currently promoting the Oscar-nominated A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed and stars in, added: “These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it?
“Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hate.
“That’s what I think … not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.”
Last week, Trump signed a legal settlement that will see Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m) over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots in 2021.
