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Facebook’s founder is a little late to the free speech party, but let’s pray his decision will encourage other media executives to re-embrace Americans’ innate right to freely speak their minds — and that this ugly era of Orwellian-style censorship will finally end.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a video this week that his company will seek to protect free speech on its social media platforms by doing away with third-party fact checkers and encouraging more open discussion of hotly debated issues.
In August, Zuckerberg confessed in a letter to Congress that Facebook and its parent company Meta did, in fact, censor content at the behest of the Biden White House and the FBI. Zuckerberg said that the company censored content related to COVID-19, including jokes and satire, as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story.
With the new Trump administration set to take office with a very different view on Americans’ First Amendment rights, Zuckerberg now says that his company is eager to work with the administration in advancing free speech.
Meta will “get back to our roots” regarding free expression on Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said. He explained that the company built “complex systems” to deal with illegal content such as terrorism and drug trafficking, as well as to follow the regulatory requirements of governments, but admitted that these complex systems make too many mistakes in content moderation.
He listed five steps that the company will take to restore free speech on Facebook and Instagram.
First, it will eliminate fact checkers in favor of X-style community notes. Zuckerberg stated that following President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, “legacy media wrote nonstop” about the threat of misinformation and disinformation, and Meta worked to address those concerns “in good faith” but found that so-called independent fact checkers were too politically biased and “destroyed more trust than they created.”
Second, the company will be simplifying its content policies to remove restrictions on “topics like immigration and gender” to make sure people can “share their beliefs and experiences” on Facebook and Instagram.
Third, Meta will focus its filters on removing content that is either illegal or is a “high severity” violation of its policies. Zuckerberg said the filters make a lot of mistakes and take down a lot of content they shouldn’t, “so by dialing them back we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.”
Fourth, the company will bring back more civic content after the community had previously requested to see less political content.
Finally, Meta is moving its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California to Texas. “I think it that will help build trust to do this work in places where there’s less of a concern about the bias of our teams,” said Zuckerberg.
Meta officials will also work with President Trump “to push back on governments around the world going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
Zuckerberg claimed,
“The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the U.S. government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the last four years, when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies it has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that under the Biden administration the government put so much pressure on tech companies to censor content that the companies’ actions could only be seen as actions of the state.
The Supreme Court dismissed the case against the administration based on standing rather than deciding the merits of the case, but the facts found a vast censorship effort by the government.
Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer at Meta, stated, “We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression. It gets us back to the values that Mark founded the company on.”
There are many who, understandably, remain angry that Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey (the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter), and other big tech leaders caved to the censorship regime and failed to stand up for the free speech rights of their customers. You can’t really claim to have free speech principles if you are willing to ban the speech you don’t like.
At the Standing for Freedom Center, we agree that there needs to be accountability. In what would be a good first step, and as a show of good faith that he’s truly sorry for the harm he brought to his user base, Zuckerberg should voluntarily open up his company’s email files and shine a light on the tactics and mindset that led our government to blatantly undermine the foundational freedoms of American citizens.
That said, this sordid story should also remind us that tyranny is contagious. According to both Kaplan and Zuckerberg, the Biden administration’s willingness to manipulate and intimidate social media companies into quelling the opinions and speech of conservatives and other dissenters made censorship an acceptable trend — not just among American CEOs but also global leaders.
Kaplan stated, “The thing is, as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our First Amendment, when they see the United States government pressuring U.S. companies to take down content, it is just open season then for those governments to put more pressure [on their companies].”
That is certainly true in Europe, where governments are continuing to force social media companies to kowtow to their censorship laws. The U.K. government, for example, is now characterizing X and its owner Elon Musk as “dangerous” for allowing X users to speak freely, even going so far as to threaten to charge and extradite American citizens for posting their opinions about UK scandals. France, meanwhile, arrested and detained the CEO of Telegram for failing to adequately follow its censorship demands.
While authoritarians are emboldened by other authoritarians, courage is also contagious.
Only a few short years ago, social media was almost entirely controlled by the tyrannical left and any thoughts, facts, or news stories that dissented from the approved narrative were severely censored, causing both everyday users and companies to lose access to their followers and revenues.
In the midst of this repressive climate there were some who refused to cooperate with the censorship regime — and they inspired others to also stand up.
One such courageous organization was the Christian satire site the Babylon Bee.
The Bee rocketed into the free speech debate after USA Today named Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine one of its “Women of the Year” in March 2022. Levine is a male who identifies as female.
In response to this absurdity, the Babylon Bee posted a tweet naming Levine as “Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year.” Not unexpectantly, Twitter immediately suspended the Bee’s account — and said it could only be restored if Bee editors agreed to effectively apologize and take down the post. They refused.
Alarmed, Elon Musk contacted Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon to confirm that the Bee had indeed been suspended over a satirical post. That led him to make the then-mocked decision to purchase Twitter for $44 billion and turn it into X, a principled platform for free speech and the unfettered exchange of opinions, ideas, and humor.
In the wake of Musk’s purchase, the Twitter files were released, and Americans finally got their first look at the vast censorship complex enacted by social media companies and the Biden administration.
Now, Zuckerberg and Meta officials say that they too would like to embrace free speech principles. Why? Maybe they were inspired by Musk’s courage or they want to get along with the new presidential administration. Perhaps they realize that Meta’s ability to compete will be hampered if it continues to censor and fact-check its users. Maybe they recognize just how weak and wrong they were to capitulate to censorship and now have a new appreciation for the First Amendment.
Whatever the motivation, it’s good news that Zuckerberg is not just promising to allow free speech on all of Meta’s platforms but is taking actual steps to protect it, including moving his operations out of California.
For now, let’s pray that Zuckerberg’s decision and actions are permanent and that it will embolden others, including everyday Americans, to stand up for the right of everyone to speak their minds in the public square.
If that happens, America will enjoy a new revival of free speech and expression — and this dark, ugly, Orwellian era will finally be behind us.
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