By Shane Harris | AMAC Outside Contributor
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appears to be undergoing a political awakening, which may pose an existential threat to the left-wing censorship regime.
In a five-minute video posted online this week, Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to so-called “content moderation” policies across the suite of apps owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, including photo-sharing giant Instagram. In the clip, Zuckerberg, who has faced criticism for enabling censorship of right-of-center views on his platforms, effectively acknowledges that conservatives have been right all along about biased “fact-checkers” and the suppression of free speech – and outlines steps he is taking to address those concerns, including working closely with President-elect Donald Trump.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg says in the video. “A lot has happened over the last several years. There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content, governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.”
Zuckerberg goes on to acknowledge that the “complex systems” Meta built to filter out “harmful content” have now reached a point where there are “too many mistakes and too much censorship.” Moreover, he says “the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing free speech.”
In perhaps one of the most shocking admissions ever made by a Big Tech executive, Zuckerberg acknowledges that “fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created” – specifically as it relates to the narrative that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy.” As a result, Meta is “going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X.”
In another astonishing display of self-awareness, Zuckerberg also announced his intent to “simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” because “what started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.” To guard against the left-wing monoculture that pervades Silicon Valley, Meta will also be moving its content moderation team from California to Texas.
“Finally,” Zuckerberg concludes, “we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world” that are “going after American companies and pushing to censor more.” In a not-so-subtle shot at the Biden administration, he notes that this has been “so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.”
If Zuckerberg and Meta faithfully execute these changes – an outcome that is by no means guaranteed – it is difficult to overstate how significant of a victory it would be for conservatives and upholding the right to free speech generally, particularly within the context of Elon Musk’s overhaul of Twitter/X.
Social media is now the place where most Americans communicate with one another and obtain their information. Since their rise in popularity in the early 2000s, but especially since 2016, these platforms have become increasingly captive to left-wing ideology, and by extension Democrats’ partisan political agenda.
The 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic represented the culmination of this trend. Zuckerberg himself played a key role in a conspiracy that spanned Big Tech, the corporate media, the intelligence community, and the Democrat Party establishment to falsely label the Hunter Biden laptop scandal “Russian disinformation.” After the election, the Biden administration then worked in coordination with Facebook and other Big Tech companies to censor opposition to their pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
Zuckerberg, once a strident backer of liberal causes, later acknowledged that Facebook was wrong to censor the laptop story and go along with the government’s COVID censorship – a moment that perhaps marked the beginning of his disillusionment with the left. Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania last year, Zuckerberg also called the president-elect’s response to the shooting “badass,” another indication of a potential political realignment.
Conservatives should not now suddenly view Zuckerberg as a great “MAGA” champion – after all, he still declined to endorse Trump last year and has a long history of boosting Democrats. But what has become clear is that Zuckerberg wants to be an ally to the conservative cause of protecting free speech against left-wing censorship.
The changes Zuckerberg announced for Meta make Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter back in 2022 all the more significant. At the time, tech industry “experts” predicted Musk would drive Twitter into the ground. Democrats and the Biden administration weaponized the government against him, while liberal governments around the world buried X in a pile of lawsuits and fines for daring to allow free speech on the platform.
Despite all of that, Meta is now changing its fact-check operations to model X’s “community notes” system – vindicating Musk’s heroic stand for free speech. With more than three billion monthly active users, Meta’s Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, and it has now committed to better preserving the right of those users to speak their minds without fear of reprisal. Elon Musk’s courage is contagious, and the left-wing censorship regime is now clearly in decline.
The fact that these changes come just days before Trump is set to take office for the second time also highlights once again just how significant his victory was last November – not just for the economy or the border, but for the survival of the very principles this country was founded on. As Zuckerberg himself says, the U.S. government under Biden actively hampered Meta’s efforts to protect free speech. Should Kamala Harris have won last year, there is no doubt that it would have been more of the same for the next four years.
Democrats and the corporate media will undoubtedly portray Zuckerberg’s announcement as a political move from a CEO kowtowing to an incoming administration. But the more liberals lose their minds over social media companies protecting free speech, the more they acknowledge what conservatives have been saying all along – that in a free and open marketplace of ideas, the left will always lose.
Given the long history of Big Tech censorship, conservatives have plenty of reason for a “trust but verify” approach when it comes to promises of reform. But there is nonetheless now have real reason for optimism that free speech might yet prevail in the online public square.
