From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

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.” 

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:

1. Getting rid of fact checkers in favour of ‘X’ style “Community Notes”
2. Simplifying content policies to get rid of restrictions around topics like immigration and gender.
3. Focus filters on tackling illegal and ‘high severity violations’ instead of low severity violations.
4. Bringing back ‘Civic Content’, so more ‘political’ content will be seen.
5. 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