Mark Zuckerberg promises end to fact-checkers, says Facebook censorship has ‘gone too far’

In a surprise early morning post, Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram to announce that Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – will be taking steps to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms,” while seemingly placing a large share of the blame for past extreme censorship measures on pressure from the Biden administration and legacy media.

“The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” noted Zuckerberg, who met with president-elect Donald Trump shortly after his decisive election victory.

Zuckerberg said that while he started building social media “to give people a voice,” “governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.”

“A lot of this is clearly political,” he noted.

He explained that Meta’s complex systems for guarding against harmful content such as drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation have been prone to make mistakes: “It’s just too many mistakes, and too much censorship.”

Following X/Twitter’s lead, Meta platforms will replace “fact-checkers” with “community notes.”

“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” said Zuckerberg, but Meta’s fact checkers have been “too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”

Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and its U.S.-based content review will soon be based in Texas.

“We’re going to simplify our 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,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s gone too far.”

‘It feels like a new era now’

“We’re bringing back civic content,” said Zuckerberg. “For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed. So we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we’re in a new era now, and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.”

“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,” said the social media titan.

“The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world,” but other countries continue to exert substantial force to limit free speech on the internet.

Zuckerberg explained:

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 U.S. government,” he insisted. “And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past 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,” he continued. “But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.”

‘Humility’ to now play a role in Meta’s management of its platforms

In his 2019 speech at Georgetown University that portended social media’s crackdown on free speech, especially those expressing thoughts at odds with woke ideology, Zuckerberg claimed, “Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous.”

The changes that were announced by Zuckerberg this morning are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression he set out in his Georgetown speech, according to Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer.

“That means being vigilant about the impact our policies and systems are having on people’s ability to make their voices heard, and having the humility to change our approach when we know we’re getting things wrong.”

However, Facebook has long faced criticism for its harsh censorship regime, including for deplatforming conservative users and censoring speech critical of COVID mandates and the LGBT agenda, in addition to facilitating child sex trafficking.

In 2020, Zuckerberg spent more than $400 million to influence the presidential race that year, which election integrity advocates have credited with likely handing the White House to Joe Biden.

X/Twitter and Facebook headed in opposite directions?

Just as Mark Zuckerberg announced a new era of free speech on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Elon Musk and his social media giant, X (formerly Twitter) seemed to be headed in the opposite direction, toward increased censorship and suppression.

Musk and X were slammed on X over the weekend after new restrictions and punitive measures were revealed for posts critical of X, those that are deemed to be too negative, and even those that “critique or challenge other users or public figures in a way that’s perceived as harsh or personal rather than constructive.”

Related Topics:#DougMainwaring #LifeSiteNews #SocialMediaCensorship FacebookFreedomOfSpeech

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Next federal government should reverse Ottawa’s plastics ban

Published on March 6, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

Recently at the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing the Biden administration’s plan to phase out plastic straws. The Trudeau government, however, continues with its plan to ban single-use plastics, even though this prohibition will have minimal impact worldwide, will actually increase waste in Canada, and force a transition to alternatives that impose greater environmental harm. Rather than doubling down on a flawed policy, the next federal government should reverse Trudeau’s plastic ban.

In 2021, the Trudeau government classified plastic items as “toxic,” paving the way for the ban on the manufacturing, importing and selling of checkout bags, cutlery, stir sticks and straws—all single-use plastics. In 2023, the Federal Court deemed the designation “unreasonable and unconstitutional”—but the Trudeau government defended the measure and is appealing, with a ruling expected this year.

According to the latest available data, Canada’s contributes 0.04 per cent to global plastic waste. The United States contributes 0.43 per cent—more than 10 times Canada’s share. But neither country is a major contributor to global plastic waste.

According to a 2024 article published in Nature, a leading scientific journal, no western country ranks among the top 90 global plastic polluters, thanks to their near-total waste collection and controlled disposal systems. Conversely, eight countries—India, Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil—generate more than half of global plastic waste. And nearly 75 per cent of the world’s ocean plastic comes from Asia with only six countries (Philippines, India, Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Myanmar) accounting for most of the world’s ocean plastic pollution.

The Trudeau government’s own science assessment, cited in the court appeal, states that 99 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste is already disposed of safely through recycling, incinerating and environmentally-friendly landfills. Despite these facts, plastic has become a target for blanket restrictions without fully considering its benefits or the downsides of switching to alternatives.

Consider this. Plastics are lightweight, durable and indispensable to modern life. From medical devices, food packaging, construction materials, textiles, electronics and agricultural equipment, plastics play a critical role in sectors that improve living standards.

Alternatives to plastic come with their own environmental cost. Again, according to the government’s own analysis, banning single-use plastics will actually increase waste generation rather than reduce it. While the government expects to remove 1.5 million tonnes of plastics by 2032 with the prohibition, it will generate nearly twice as much that weight in waste from alternatives such as paper, wood and aluminum over the same period. Put simply, the ban will result in more, not less, waste in Canada.

And there’s more. Studies suggest that plastic substitutes such as paper are heavier, require more water and energy to be produced, demand more energy to transport, contribute to greater smog formation, present more ozone depletion potential and result in higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

While plastic pollution is a pressing global environmental issue, Canada is not a major contributor to this problem. The rationale behind the Trudeau government’s plastic ban lacks foundation, and as major economies including the U.S. go back to plastic, Canada’s plastic prohibition becomes increasingly futile. The next federal government, whoever that may be, should reverse this plastic ban, which will do more harm than good.

Julio Mejía

Policy Analyst

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute

Business

Trump walks back tariffs on Mexico, Canada for another month

Published on March 6, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Stocks sunk Thursday afternoon despite President Donald Trump’s decision to grant major exceptions to the 25% tariffs he put on Mexico and Canada earlier this week.

All three major U.S. market indexes were in the red by the time of Trump’s afternoon bill signing. Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office that steel and aluminum tariffs were on track for next week without modifications.

Trump shrugged off the stock losses, blaming the decline on “globalists.”

“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country is going to be and don’t like it,” he said.

Trump has promised that his tariffs would shift the tax burden away from Americans and onto foreign countries, but tariffs are generally paid by the people who import the products. Those importers then have a choice: They can either absorb the loss or pass it on to consumers through higher prices. He also promised tariffs would make America “rich as hell.” And he’s used tariffs as a negotiating tactic to tighten border security.

Trump granted temporary tariff relief to both Canada and Mexico on Thursday by exempting goods under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement from tariffs until April 2.

On April 2, Trump plans to announce broader reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose tariffs on U.S. goods or keep U.S. goods out of their markets through other methods.

Since imposing his latest round of tariffs on top of trading partners this week, Trump has been paring them back. On Wednesday, Trump said the Big Three automakers – Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV – would be exempt from his tariffs for a month.

In February, Trump took a step forward on his plan to put reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners by signing a memo directing staff to come up with solutions in 180 days. Trump previously said he would put those tariffs in place on April 2 to avoid any confusion on April 1.

In his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said all countries would have to either make their products in the U.S. or be subject to tariffs.

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them,” Trump said. “If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, governs trade between the U.S. and its northern and southern neighbors. It went into force on July 1, 2020. Trump signed the deal. That agreement continued to allow for duty-free trading between the three countries for products largely made in North America.

U.S. goods and services trade with USMCA totaled an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2022. Exports were $789.7 billion and imports were $974.3 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with USMCA was $184.6 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.