Meta Drops Fact Checkers, Promises to Embrace Free Speech
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would drop its third-party fact-checkers, use community notes like X, and restore free speech.
“I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook. “I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today.”
Zuckerberg confessed the government and media pushed too hard to censor people on Meta platforms, especially after Trump won in 2016.
However, the “complex systems to moderate content” got out of control, targeting and suppressing speech that did not harm anyone.
“We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” continued Zuckerberg.
Yes, free speech includes conspiracy theories, misinformation, stretching the truth, etc.
Zuckerberg promised to target “legitimately bad stuff” such as “drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation.”
Censorship sucks. The law makes it hard for someone to prove libel and slander, even more so for public figures, on purpose due to the First Amendment.
“Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people,” explained Zuckerberg. “And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Meta will use community notes like the ones on X.
The company will also eliminate a “bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive had increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg added. “So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
The quote popped into my head when Zuckerberg admitted Meta would likely miss some “bad stuff,” but the tradeoff is worth it because the new system will “reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts” that the company removes.
Another huge Meta move is shifting the “safety and content moderation teams out of California” to Texas.
A parting shot to California: “I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”
Ouch.
Zuckerberg even promised Meta would work with President-elect Donald Trump to push back against foreign countries that target U.S. companies.
The CEO noted that America has the best protections for freedom of speech, while authoritarian countries like China:
The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country.The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government and that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years when even the US 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.
I can see why people will think Zuckerberg’s change of heart is political and wants to fall into Trump’s good graces. I bet he changes his mind when a Democrat takes back the White House.
Meta appointed Republican Joel Kaplan to head the policy team. UFC’s Dana White also joined the company’s board.
Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
However, in August, Zuckerberg told the world how the White House and FBI “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to censor COVID content and the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” wrote Zuckerberg.
Remember when Biden told the press that Facebook was “killing people” by allowing the spread of COVID misinformation? I do!
The CEO revealed the company ultimately decided when and what to censor, and all of them “own our decisions.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” continued Zuckerberg. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make it today.”
I do not trust any of them, even Elon Musk. I won’t trust any of them until I see some consistency.
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