--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Welcome to Up First. I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Facebook and Instagram are abandoning a fact-checking feature that was designed to keep falsehoods off the sites. Mark Zuckerberg announced the change.
--:-- Michelle Martin: How does it fit with his other moves as the Trump administration returns to power?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I'm Michelle Martin, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- [Music transitions to a brief news update]
--:-- Michelle Martin: It's the season when people are hit by one winter virus after another.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: As one starts to go down, the other is going to start peaking, and we're just not going to get a break. They're like a series of snowstorms.
--:-- Michelle Martin: How can you protect yourself?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Also, clouds of smoke hang over neighborhoods in Southern California.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Tens of thousands have had to evacuate.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The wind's been kind of swirling a little bit. If it turns to the south, then there's a lot of homes in danger.
--:-- Michelle Martin: How widespread are the wildfires?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- [Music transitions back to the hosts]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is positioning itself for a new administration.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who once banned President-elect Donald Trump from Facebook for his role in the January 6th attack, now says he favors more free speech.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And he's ending a fact-checking feature that was designed to slow down the spread of false information.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Meta's move comes as Republicans on their way into power talk of a crackdown on tech companies.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR's Bobby Allen is covering this.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Hey there, Steve. Okay, so what was Meta doing and what are they going to be doing now?
--:-- Bobby Allen: Well, it used to be that posts that were flagged by enough users underwent a fact-checking process by third-party professional fact-checkers.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And when they were done, the post got a label.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Now that is over.
--:-- Bobby Allen: In its place is what's known as a community note system.
--:-- Bobby Allen: This was inspired by how it works on Elon Musk's X.
--:-- Bobby Allen: The fact-checking process is crowdsourced to regular users.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And when the users reach some kind of consensus, a note is added to the post.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: That's big change one.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Second big change, Steve, restrictions will be lifted on topics like immigration and gender identity.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Currently, these protections are in place to curb hate speech.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Now they are dismantled.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: In an Instagram video announcement, Zuckerberg says Meta's speech policing has become too aggressive.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
--:-- Bobby Allen: The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And to say this is a big reversal is an understatement.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: After the 2016 presidential election Zuckerberg himself came up with this fact system.
--:-- Bobby Allen: It followed revelations of course that Russia exploited Facebook to divide the country and boost the Trump campaign.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Now Zuckerberg is abandoning the very fact system that he helped create.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Bobby, when he says he's responding to the recent elections, that's very close to saying that he's adjusting policies for Trump.
--:-- Bobby Allen: He didn't say so explicitly, but yes, Zuckerberg's framing is quite notable.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: In his video, he said speech is being censored on Meta's platforms.
--:-- Bobby Allen: It's an allegation Republicans have made for years, and until now, an allegation he has fought against.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Now, he is leaving some limits in place, ones on speech that encourage crimes like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, and scams.
--:-- Bobby Allen: But more lax rules also follow several other developments, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Metta donating a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Metta tapping Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan to be Metta's global affairs officer.
--:-- Bobby Allen: And putting Trump supporter Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, on Meta's board of directors.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So taken all together, I called up Meta observer Brendan Nyhan.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: Meta clearly perceives a great deal of political risk of being targeted.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: And the way Zuckerberg presented the announcements and its timing was obviously intended to play to a Republican audience.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: If we assume that Zuckerberg is acting out of business reasons here, what is the business case for currying favor with the president-elect?
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: A couple reasons.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: Trump has been attacking Zuckerberg for years.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: Trump believes Zuckerberg's measures in 2020 to combat disinformation and bolster reliable election information was a type of election interference.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: Trump even threatened to throw Zuckerberg in prison if Metta did the same in 2024.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: On top of that, federal agencies have been investigating Meta over whether it has used its dominance to hurt competitors.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: And one big case Meta is facing was brought by the Federal Trade Commission back in 2020, so during Trump's first term.
--:-- Brendan Nyhan: And that case is set to go to trial in April.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR's Bobby Allen, thanks for your reporting.
--:-- Bobby Allen: Thanks, Steve.
--:-- [Music transitions to a brief news update]
--:-- Michelle Martin: The winter holidays are behind us.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Winter definitely is not.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It's cold and snowy in many places, and it's time for another annual tradition, the winter respiratory virus season.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR health correspondent Rob Stein is with us now to tell us more.
--:-- Rob Stein: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Good morning, Rob. All right, give it to me straight.
--:-- Rob Stein: It's pretty bad out there right now.
--:-- Rob Stein: You know, Michelle, people love to travel and get together with family and friends over the holidays.
--:-- Rob Stein: The bad news is that often means they come home with some nasty bug.
--:-- Rob Stein: I talked about this with Dr. Brendan Jackson from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
--:-- Rob Stein: Respiratory season is here.
--:-- Rob Stein: It is getting to be in full swing now.
--:-- Rob Stein: A lot of people getting sick, a lot of people missing work, missing school, just feeling lousy in general.
--:-- Rob Stein: And you know, Michelle, the flu in particular is spiking right now.
--:-- Rob Stein: Here's Dr. William Shafter, an infectious disease researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
--:-- Dr. William Shafter: We're buried with influenza.
--:-- Dr. William Shafter: Things are very, very busy and intense.
--:-- Dr. William Shafter: The emergency room is full of people who are coughing and sneezing.
--:-- Dr. William Shafter: We've had people waiting on gurneys, those stretchers, waiting for admission.
--:-- Dr. William Shafter: We are really full.
--:-- Rob Stein: And it's not just the flu.
--:-- Rob Stein: RSV is still spreading at very high levels.
--:-- Rob Stein: So is whooping cough, a bacterium called mycoplasma that can cause walking pneumonia.
--:-- Rob Stein: And let's not forget COVID, which is starting to shoot up yet again.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So how bad is it going to get this winter?
--:-- Rob Stein: Well, you know, no one ever really knows with these viruses.
--:-- Rob Stein: The CDC says that unless some new COVID variant emerges it still looks like this winter will probably be kind of like last year but that not great.
--:-- Rob Stein: It still means lots of kids missing school parents missing work grandparents and other vulnerable people ending up in a hospital and even dying.
--:-- Dr. Andrew Pavia: We've got three viruses that are going to hit with peaks that are going to be relatively closely spaced so that as one starts to go down, the other is going to start peaking and we're just not going to get a break.
--:-- Dr. Andrew Pavia: They're like a series of snowstorms.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What it means, I think, is that we're in for a pretty miserable January before things start to let up.
--:-- Rob Stein: But even then, a long tail, according to Caitlin Rivers.
--:-- Caitlin Rivers: She's an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins.
--:-- Caitlin Rivers: The winter respiratory virus season often peaks in December or January, but it lingers through the spring months.
--:-- Caitlin Rivers: And so I do think we have several more weeks, if not months, left of this sixth season.
--:-- Rob Stein: So Rivers and others are recommending people should do all the usual stuff, wash their hands a lot, mask up in crowded places, open windows if they can, and of course, get vaccinated.
--:-- Rob Stein: It's not too late.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Ron, before we let you go, what is this other virus that I've been hearing about?
--:-- Rob Stein: Yeah, it's called the human metanomovirus, or HMPV.
--:-- Rob Stein: It's getting a lot of attention because of a surge of respiratory illnesses in the north of China.
--:-- Rob Stein: But the World Health Organization and the CDC say they aren't too worried about it.
--:-- Rob Stein: The WHO says the increase in respiratory illness cases seen in China is within the range expected for this time of year.
--:-- Rob Stein: HMPV can cause serious complications, but usually only causes a cold.
--:-- Rob Stein: It's nothing compared to the flu, RSV, and COVID, which, according to a new CDC estimate, is still killing hundreds of people every week.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR health correspondent Rob Stein.
--:-- Rob Stein: Rob, thank you.
--:-- [Music transitions to a brief news update]
--:-- Michelle Martin: You know, just before I went to bed last night, Renee Montaigne, the longtime former host of Morning Edition, sent over some photos from her neighborhood.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: At least three wildfires are burning out of control in Metro Los Angeles.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The flames are driven by a regular feature of life in the region.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The Santa Ana winds.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But tens of thousands of people have now evacuated.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: NPR's Liz Baker has the latest from Southern California.
--:-- Liz Baker: Good morning, Steve.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: What have you been seeing?
--:-- Liz Baker: Well, right now I can see a really eerie orange glow on the horizon up to the north, and that's the Palisades Fire, which is the biggest one right now.
--:-- Liz Baker: Yesterday evening, I was out along the edge of that evacuation zone in Santa Monica, where a crowd of people had gathered to watch the fire.
--:-- Liz Baker: Because these winds are so strong and blowing straight out to the ocean, you can actually see the fire pretty well if you're looking at it from LA.
--:-- Liz Baker: And what you could see was just this orange zigzag running straight up the mountain like a lightning bolt.
--:-- Liz Baker: And every time the wind had a big gust, which was like all the time, you could see the fire flare super high into the sky.
--:-- Liz Baker: And airplanes were dumping fire retardant to try and stop it.
--:-- Liz Baker: But that fire ended up moving a little bit further south towards the populated city of Santa Monica.
--:-- Liz Baker: Parts of Santa Monica are now under evacuation orders.
--:-- Liz Baker: Also, Malibu is under evacuation.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: You might remember that city just burned in a different fire almost exactly one month ago.
--:-- Liz Baker: Well, now they're getting hit again.
--:-- Liz Baker: And the speed with which this happened is remarkable.
--:-- Liz Baker: One minute, nothing was happening.
--:-- Liz Baker: Another minute, I'm seeing these images on social media and in my text messages.
--:-- Liz Baker: Yeah, I mean, that's what it feels like on the ground, too.
--:-- Liz Baker: We went into the evening last night with only one major fire.
--:-- Liz Baker: The Palisades Fire I mentioned started Tuesday morning in the mountains.
--:-- Liz Baker: And very quickly made a run all the way to the ocean.
--:-- Liz Baker: You know, unfortunately the community of Pacific Palisades with over 10 households was in the way.
--:-- Liz Baker: And then just all day yesterday there were these little fires popping up and getting put down by firefighters.
--:-- Liz Baker: But then into the evening, the winds really picked up and a fire in Eaton Canyon flared.
--:-- Liz Baker: That very, very quickly became a problem for the communities of Altadena and Pasadena, just below it.
--:-- Liz Baker: And I've heard from colleagues in their area who say that situation went from absolutely nothing to apocalyptic in under an hour.
--:-- Liz Baker: So that's all the time it took for that fire to double in size.
--:-- Liz Baker: And then another fire took off further to the northwest.
--:-- Liz Baker: That one jumped the freeway within minutes, you know.
--:-- Liz Baker: It's a lot, and it just seems like every hour or so a new fire is popping up.
--:-- Liz Baker: You know, there was even one across the street from the NPR Bureau here just for a little while.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Okay.
--:-- Liz Baker: It's just this constant game of whack-a-mole for firefighters.
--:-- Liz Baker: I'm glad that one is out anyway.
--:-- Liz Baker: What is the damage so far as you can tell?
--:-- Liz Baker: Well, it's really hard to tell.
--:-- Liz Baker: These fires are still raging.
--:-- Liz Baker: Certainly structures have burned.
--:-- Liz Baker: That includes even some beach lifeguard stations.
--:-- Liz Baker: Just to give you an idea of how forcefully these winds are sweeping towards the ocean, they're even hitting the beach.
--:-- Liz Baker: There have been reports of people getting so gridlocked trying to evacuate that they abandoned their cars, and we've seen footage of cars just being bulldozed off the street to make room for emergency vehicles.
--:-- Liz Baker: I spoke with one person, Dave Dawson, earlier today who hiked out of an evacuation zone from Palisades Village with his dog.
--:-- Liz Baker: Everyone's taking like two hours to get out of there, you can see the traffic.
--:-- Liz Baker: The wind's been kind of swirling a little bit.
--:-- Liz Baker: If it turns to the south, then there's a lot of homes in danger.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: So this is really a worst case scenario, Steve, and one that is just going to keep going at least through today.
--:-- Liz Baker: NPR's Liz Baker, thanks for the update.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Be safe, please.
--:-- Liz Baker: Thanks, Steve.
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--:-- [Music transitions to a brief closing]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: That's Up First for this Wednesday, January 8th.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Remember, you can listen to this podcast sponsor-free while financially supporting public media with Up First Plus.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Learn more at plus.npr.org.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: That's P-L-U-S dot N-P-R dot org.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Today's Up First was edited by Cara Platoni, Scott Hensley, Denise Rios, Jenea Williams, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: It was produced by Ziad Bacch, Nia Dumas, and Lily Quiroz.
--:-- Michelle Martin: We get engineering support from David Greenberg, and our technical director is Carly Strange.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Join us tomorrow.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Carly will.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: She might make a different choice.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You never know.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: She might have a different opinion about it.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I know this correction.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Carly called in sick.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Carly called out.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Carly quit.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Or she was just over it.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yeah, I'm done.
--:-- Michelle Martin: She's like, I just had it with you people.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I'm coming in at 9 a.m.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Thank you.
