Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, took to his official Instagram page to announce that all platforms under Meta are going back to their roots of freedom of expression and giving people a voice, which was his initial reason for building social media platforms.
In the 5 minutes video, he outlined the six steps Meta will take over the next few months to prioritize free speech starting in the US. The first step which has raised several concerns in the media space entails having fact-checkers replaced "Get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X."
X, formerly Twitter, the Social media platform owned by Elon Musk, depends on user feedback to determine the context of posts and take actions if necessary. Elon, who openly advocates for free speech, acquired Twitter in 2022 and laid off the teams responsible for content moderation, introducing Community Notes as he believes users are the better judge and in the best position to fact-check one another.
Zuckerberg affirms Meta is following the same path of relying on the Community Notes system, as " fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created."
He goes further to highlight the key role the past election played in these reforms. Mark says, "The recent elections seems like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.. focused on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms". He also threw light on the 2016 election that ushered Donald Trump into office and how the legacy media wrote nonstop about misinformation as a threat to democracy.
The Meta Boss said all platforms under Meta are going to "simplify content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse." He claims what started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, which have gone too far. The freedom of expression system ensures everyone is free to share their unique beliefs and experiences on all Meta platforms.
He also emphasized policy enforcement changes to reduce the mistakes responsible for the vast majority of censorship. Highlighting the flaws of the complex systems put in place to moderate content he claims “it makes mistakes and increases the risk of too much censorship.” Meta platform has approximately 9 Billion monthly active users and the CEO highlights that censoring even 1% of content affects millions of people.
According to the video, all filters used to scan for policy violations are also being removed to tackle illegal and high-severity violations. For lower severity violations, the platforms solely rely on another user reporting the content before they can take action. He iterates that filters make mistakes by taking down contents they shouldn't. Zuckerberg acknowledges dialing back on filters is “a trade-off as the platform is only going to be able to catch less bad stuff, but it will also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts getting censored or taken down.”
He also shares the return of civic contents, which was also dialed back as they became stressors to the user. He says we are in a new era and feedback shows people want civic content again. He also mentioned relocating the Meta Trust, safety and content moderation teams, the US-based content reviewers team from California to Texas. The relocation aligns with the strategy for promoting free expression as the team needs to work "where there's less concerns about the biases of our teams."
The CEO ends the video by sharing that Meta will work with the president-elect, who is a major critic of censorship, to push back against other governments worldwide, going after American companies and pushing more censorship. He highlights the emerging global trend of institutionalized censorship in Europe, Latin America, China, and other parts of the world, stating that the only way freedom of speech can be restored is through the support of the US government, which has the strongest constitutional protections for freedom of expression. Accentuating the past four years has been challenging as the US government under the Biden administration has gone after Meta and other American companies, emboldening other governments to follow suit. Zuckerberg argued this in his 2019 speech at Georgetown University titled a conversation on Free Expression where he pointed out “that free expression has been the driving force behind progress in American society.”
This policy change announcement has stirred up different reactions from fact-checkers, social media users, media houses and other concerned individuals as they raise concerns about the dangers that might come alongside the freedom of expression agenda.
Since the announcement several concerns have been raised by individuals and organizations about the policy changes, a donation of $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, a dinner between Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate as many believe Mark Zuckerbag and Meta are adjusting to the incoming administration and also trying to rejuvenate their relationship with the president-elect which went sour since 6th January 2021 when the tech giant banned the president-elect for violating community guidelines and stimulating violence that unfolded at the US Capitol on that day.
Musadiq Bidar
Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, also followed up with a blog post titled More Speech and Fewer Mistakes said the previous fact-checking initiative, launched in 2016, aimed for independent experts to provide more accurate information about viral hoaxes. So they were able to judge for themselves what they saw and read. That’s not the way things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives.”
Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer
Meta's decision to eliminate fact-checkers and mirror X by incorporating a Community Notes system in the US marks a crucial shift in its approach to content moderation and free speech. Although Mark Zuckerberg frames this move as a return to the platform's roots of empowering diverse voices, the announcement has ignited debates about the potential consequences of this shift. Critics argue that the absence of fact-checkers could lead to increased misinformation and harmful content. At the same time, proponents believe it is a necessary step towards reducing censorship and overall government control of the media, serving users better, and restoring trust.
The policy changes highlights a broader conflict between the goals and ideals of free expression vis a vis the challenges of maintaining a safe and informed digital space, especially in countries with a more digitally illiterate populace. As Meta embarks on this transformative journey, its ability to balance these competing priorities will be closely scrutinized by users, policymakers, and global stakeholders. Whether this initiative succeeds in fostering open dialogue or exacerbates existing issues remains to be seen. Still, it undeniably represents a turning point in misinformation management and social media governance.
Charity Ani KOSISOCHUKWU