Censorship Industrial Complex
Facebook to get rid of fact checkers and promote free speech
It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people a voice.
Mark Zuckerberg surprised the planet today with the release of a 5 minute video detailing a 5 point plan to pave the way for more free expression on Facebook.
Zuckerberg says his goal has always been to “give people a voice”, but governments and legacy media have been pushing Facebook towards censorship. Now Facebook is going to concentrate on censoring illegal issues, and back off on punishing speech.
The five part plan includes:
- Getting rid of fact checkers in favour of ‘X’ style “Community Notes”
- Simplifying content policies to get rid of restrictions around topics like immigration and gender.
- Focus filters on tackling illegal and ‘high severity violations’ instead of low severity violations.
- Bringing back ‘Civic Content’, so more ‘political’ content will be seen.
- Facebook will move Content Moderation Teams from California to Texas to help erase the ‘bias of our teams’ and work with Donald Trump’s government to help promote free speech around the world.
From Mark Zuckerberg Facebook
It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression. We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes. Looking forward to this next chapter.
Zuckerberg’s full comments:
Hey, everyone. 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. 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. But 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. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, Child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.
But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do.
First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to acts starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. 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. So over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system.
Second, 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. 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. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.
Third, we’re changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation. Now we’re going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations and for lower severity violations. We’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action. The problem is that the filters make mistakes and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t. So by dialing them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms. We’re also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is a tradeoff. It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.
Fourth, we’re bringing back civic content. For a while, the community asks to see less politics because there’s 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. So we’re going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.
Fifth, we’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US based content review is going to be based in Texas. As we work to promote free expression, 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. Finally, we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world. They’re going after American companies and pushing to censor more.
The U.S. 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 censor 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. It’ll take time to get this right. And these are complex systems. They’re never going to be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove.
But the bottom line is that after. For years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content. It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people a voice. I’m looking forward to this next chapter. Stay good out there. And more to come soon
Censorship Industrial Complex
How America is interfering in Brazil and why that matters everywhere. An information drop about USAID
USAID Corruption & Brazil’s Elections w/ Nikolas Ferreira & Mike Benz | PBD Podcast
If you’re reading this you’re probably aware that there’s an information war going on. Not the battle between the corporate media vs the new independent journalists. That’s more of a technological and a new media story. The real battle isn’t only between the players, it’s between the information each side is sharing with their audiences.
The corporate world looks down on independent media. They use words like disinformation and misinformation and conspiracy. What they don’t do very often is examine the information being shared and present their own take. In fact, often they don’t share the information at all.
This leaves corporate media faithful in a disadvantaged position. They’re angry because they can’t understand why the world is changing (for the worse in their opinion). They won’t give up their corporate addiction because they’ve become intrenched in the belief the independent start ups are sharing misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. Because their corporate sources of information choose to ignore or criticize information without presenting a more informed and researched version themselves, their followers are completely missing out on many of the biggest stories that are shaping the century we’re struggling through.
This podcast is a perfect example. Chances are those who ignore independent media have no idea who Patrick Bet David is. That means they’re very unlikely to know anything about Mike Benz. Benz has been revealing secrets of the deep state for years. Recently he’s picked up massive audiences as he makes sense of what’s happening in America and around the world. (Especially with USAID) PBD also talks to Brazilian social media sensation Niklas Ferreira who has a perspective of politics in South America’s largest and most important nation unlike anything you’ll see in the corporate media.
This podcast is fascinating and it answers a lot of questions, not just about America and Brazil, but about the US deep state efforts to control political movements everywhere.
From the PBD Podcast
Patrick Bet-David sits down with Nikolas Ferreira and Mike Benz to dissect the deep connections between USAID, Brazilian corruption, and the political battle between Lula and Bolsonaro.
Ferreira, one of Brazil’s most outspoken conservative voices, exposes how foreign influence and NGOs may be shaping Brazil’s political landscape, while Benz, an expert in geopolitical strategy, unpacks the hidden power dynamics between Washington and Latin America.
Quick Hit:
Apple is appealing a UK government order that could force it to create a ‘backdoor’ for authorities to access private user data. The move, pushed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, threatens the company’s end-to-end encryption protections. President Trump condemned the demand, comparing it to tactics used in China.
Key Details:
- Apple has lodged an appeal with the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal, challenging an order that could weaken its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) encryption.
- The company previously disabled ADP in Britain rather than comply, arguing that a backdoor would compromise user security.
- UK security agencies argue that encryption helps criminals evade law enforcement, while Apple insists it will never create a ‘master key.’
Diving Deeper:
Apple is grappling with the British government over a surveillance order that could force the company to weaken its own security measures. The tech giant filed an appeal with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the court responsible for overseeing the UK’s surveillance laws, after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pushed for the company to provide a ‘backdoor’ to encrypted user data.
The controversy centers around Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP), an encryption system that prevents even Apple from accessing a user’s iCloud backups. In February, the company disabled ADP in the UK rather than comply with the order. Without ADP, Apple can access and hand over certain iCloud backups, such as iMessages, if legally required. However, with full end-to-end encryption enabled, even Apple cannot retrieve the data. The UK order could force Apple to rewrite its security features, something the company strongly opposes.
Apple has made it clear that it will not compromise user privacy. “We have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and never will,” the company stated. Apple also warned that creating a backdoor for law enforcement would inevitably make millions of users more vulnerable to cyberattacks.
The UK government, however, argues that such encryption hampers law enforcement investigations, particularly into crimes such as child exploitation and terrorism. A Home Office spokesperson defended the order, stating, “The UK has a longstanding position of protecting our citizens from the very worst crimes while ensuring privacy protections.”
President Donald Trump criticized the UK government’s stance, comparing it to authoritarian surveillance practices. “We told them you can’t do this… That’s something, you know, that you hear about with China,” Trump said.
The case also raises concerns about whether the UK’s actions violate the CLOUD Act, a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the UK that limits government demands for data on foreign citizens. Reports suggest that U.S. officials are now investigating whether Britain breached this agreement by pressuring Apple to create a ‘backdoor.’
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