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Business

Facebook’s New Free Speech Policy Shows Business Getting Back to Business

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Reason.com - Free Minds and Free Markets

Big tech seems to be getting out of the censorship business, and it’s about time. After years of increasingly awkward attempts to placate demands from activist groups and the government to suppress allegedly hateful speech and an amorphous category of “disinformation,” Facebook owner Meta is joining X (formerly Twitter) in substituting user-generated community notes on contested posts for top-down muzzling. There’s no doubt that political shifts in the U.S. heavily influenced the rediscovery of respect for free speech. But whatever the reason, we should celebrate the change and work to make it permanent.

Succumbing to Pressure To Censor

“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a January 7 video. “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 U.S.”

“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,” he added.

The implication here is that Zuckerberg and company succumbed to pressure to suppress speech disfavored by the bien pensant class, but rather than satisfying critics, that just fed demand to memory-hole ever more discussion and ideas. The ranks of those demanding that Facebook act as a censor also expanded and became more ominous.

“Even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship,” Zuckerberg noted. “By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.”

This isn’t the first time the Meta CEO has cited government pressure to act as an end-run around the First Amendment’s protections for speech. In an August 26, 2024, letter to the House Judiciary Committee, he revealed that “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.” He also admitted to suppressing reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop at the FBI’s request.

Succumbing to Pressure for Free Speech

By the time of that letter, the backlash against social media censorship was well underway. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (now X) led to the publication of the Twitter files, revealing government pressure on the platform to suppress dissenting ideas. The Facebook files revealed the same of Zuckerberg’s company. U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty wrote that government pressure on tech platforms “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” These revelations vindicated complaints by critics of pandemic policy, conservatives, libertarians, and other dissenters that their efforts to communicate were being deleted, shadow-banned, and otherwise censored.

As early as 2020, Pew Research pollsters found “roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults say it is very (37%) or somewhat (36%) likely that social media sites intentionally censor political viewpoints that they find objectionable.”

Which is to say, tech companies’ efforts to escape pressure over allowing users to publish “misinformation” wildly backfired. They came under more pressure than ever from those who objected—often rightly—that they were just trying to share information that others didn’t like.

If pressure led to censorship, it has also led to its reversal. That’s especially clear as Republicans pushed to allow lawsuits over online muzzling and then-candidate (now President-elect) Donald Trump thuggishly threatened Zuckerberg with “life in prison” for his company’s activities.

Zuckerberg even acknowledges bowing to shifting political winds, saying, “the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”

Whatever Mark Zuckerberg’s actual beliefs about freedom of speech, having once given in to political pressure to censor, he’s now succumbing to political pressure to end censorship. As journalist and date-cruncher Nate Silver puts it, “perhaps it’s the right move for the wrong reasons.” It’s quite likely that the Meta CEO’s motivations are pragmatic rather than principled. But at least he’s making the right move.

Zuckerberg now says he’ll follow in the footsteps of Elon Musk, who was the first tech tycoon to push back against pressures for censorship, first in public statements and then in his acquisition of Twitter.

“First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S.,” he noted in his video statement. He also promised to get rid of restrictions on “topics like immigration and gender” that were previously subject to scrutiny for alleged wrongthink, focus the attention of automated filters on explicitly illegal content rather than general discourse, and stop deemphasizing political content. Facebook will also move its moderation teams out of the ideological hothouse of California to Texas—arguably just a different ideological hothouse, though one better aligned with a country that just voted as it did and generally favors free speech over Big Brother.

Meta Joins Other Companies, Steps Back from Political Alliances

In backing away from a default affiliation with one faction of American politics as well as the government, Zuckerberg joins not just Musk but also executives at other companies who are jettisoning brief flirtations with trendy causes.

“Walmart is ending some of its diversity programs, the latest big company to shift gears under pressure from a conservative activist,” The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Nassauer reported in November. The article attributed the shift to public pressure which “has successfully nudged other companies including retailer Tractor Supply and manufacturers Ford and Deere to back away from diversity efforts and other topics.”

That report came after the election put Republicans back on top, but the cultural winds had already shifted direction. Bloomberg reported in March that “Wall Street’s DEI retreat has officially begun.” A few months later, the financial news service noted a decline in interest in environmental, social, and governance investment guidelines associated, like DEI, with the political left.

As in Zuckerberg’s case, it’s not obvious that the business executives in question had a sincere commitment to the causes they now reject, or that their principles, should they have any, have changed. Instead, they seem to belatedly recognize that allying with one faction in a divided society inevitably alienates others. That’s dangerous when the fortunes of factions inevitably rise and fall, and when potential customers can be found across the political spectrum.

By taking their companies out of the political fray and acknowledging their customers’ right to disagree with one another and with the government, Mark Zuckerberg and other business leaders can leave us room to work out our differences in a free society without worrying so much whether the people to whom we give our money are friends or foes.

 

Automotive

Auto giant shuts down foreign plants as Trump moves to protect U.S. industry

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MXM logo  MxM News

Quick Hit:

Stellantis is pausing vehicle production at two North American facilities—one in Canada and another in Mexico—following President Donald Trump’s announcement of 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars. The move marks one of the first corporate responses to the administration’s push to bring back American manufacturing.

Key Details:

  • In an email to workers Thursday, Stellantis North America chief Antonio Filosa directly tied the production pause to the new tariffs, writing that the company is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects” but is “temporarily pausing production” at select assembly plants outside the U.S.

  • Production at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario will be paused for two weeks, while the Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico will be offline for the entire month of April.

  • These plants produce the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, the new Dodge Charger Daytona EV, the Jeep Compass SUV, and the Jeep Wagoneer S EV.

Diving Deeper:

On Wednesday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump announced sweeping new tariffs aimed at revitalizing America’s auto manufacturing industry. The 25% tariffs on all imported cars are part of a broader “reciprocal tariffs” strategy, which Trump described as ending decades of globalist trade policies that hollowed out U.S. industry.

Just a day later, Stellantis became the first major automaker to act on the new policy, halting production at two of its international plants. According to an internal email obtained by CNBC, Stellantis North American COO Antonio Filosa said the company is “taking immediate actions” to respond to the tariff policy while continuing to evaluate the broader impact.

“These actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations,” Filosa wrote.

The Windsor, Ontario plant, which builds the Chrysler Pacifica and the newly introduced Dodge Charger Daytona EV, will shut down for two weeks. The Toluca facility in Mexico, responsible for the Jeep Compass and Jeep Wagoneer S EV, will suspend operations for the entire month of April.

The move comes as Stellantis continues to face scrutiny for its reliance on low-wage labor in foreign markets. As reported by Breitbart News, the company has spent years shifting production and engineering jobs to countries like Brazil, India, Morocco, and Mexico—often at the expense of American workers. Last year alone, Stellantis cut around 400 U.S.-based engineering positions while ramping up operations overseas.

Meanwhile, General Motors appears to be responding differently. According to Reuters, GM told employees in a webcast Thursday that it will increase production of light-duty trucks at its Fort Wayne, Indiana plant—where it builds the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. These models are also assembled in Mexico and Canada, but GM’s decision suggests a shift in production to the U.S. could be underway in light of the tariffs.

As Trump’s trade reset takes effect, more automakers are expected to recalibrate their production strategies—potentially signaling a long-awaited shift away from offshoring and toward rebuilding American industry.

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Business

‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

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JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.

“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”

“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.

Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.

“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.

WATCH:

With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.

“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.

“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.

The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.

“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”

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