On Jan. 7, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement that was met with surprise and more than a little skepticism. Speaking via video posted online, Zuckerberg revealed plans to end the “fact-checking” programs that have operated across Meta platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, since 2016. The Facebook founder explained, “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.” That last clause was at least encouraging – a tacit admission that his social media platforms have indeed been stifling free speech for years and calling it fact-checking.
There has been an ongoing debate for some time over the politicization of censorship. Elected Democrats and others on the political left – including a great many journalists – have argued that what conservatives, libertarians, and the few remaining true liberals call censorship is, in fact, necessary. The narrative goes like this: It’s not about silencing political speech. Certain information and opinions disseminated online, including funny memes and other clearly satirical material, are harmful, dangerous, and even anti-democratic because they are inaccurate, misleading, or flat-out lies.
Some Orwellian new words were coined: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. The problem with the left’s (and the Biden administration’s) claims that the vast new censorship apparatus is not politicized is that it invariably – and persistently – targets the political right or any information of which the current administration disapproves. It has never been a level playing field. Left-leaning news and opinions are rarely, if ever, dissected by the so-called fact-checkers.
Indeed, there have been frequent instances where a news article or a research product has been flagged by these fact-checkers – and then removed or suppressed – even when the information provided by the source is verifiably accurate. More egregious is when someone’s opinion or thoughts on a given issue are labeled as misinformation, with people literally being accused of “wrongthink.”
Many on the right saw all of this for what it was: an assault on freedom of speech and an attempt to completely control not only the political narrative but also the flow of information to restrict which facts and figures the public got to see. After a time, even a few journalists and pundits from the left side of the political divide grew tired of it and began to expose the censorship machinery.
Meta Goes X?
Leftists were furious when Elon Musk acquired Twitter and put an end to the rampant political bias on that platform. Musk did away with Twitter’s fact-checking and the attaching of “corrections” to unfavored posts and replaced them with “community notes,” which allow other Twitter – now X – users to add context, corrections, or contradictory information to posts. Zuckerberg says Meta platforms will implement the same idea. For this, he is already attracting the ire of left-wing journalists.
Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network and an editor for distinctly left-leaning PolitiFact, posted a statement on X, claiming that the Meta CEO’s decision “will hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family.” She went on to point out that “Fact-checking journalism” does not censor but rather adds “information and context to controversial claims” and that it has “debunked hoax content and conspiracy theories.” But again, these fact-checkers pay little or no attention to any “hoax content” posted by left-wing users and news outlets.
As for conspiracy theories, just in the last few years, a considerable number of suspicions and concerns voiced by conservatives that were labeled conspiracy theories by the left turned out to be entirely or mostly accurate. Hunter Biden’s laptop, the involvement of federal informants in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest in Washington, DC, and the efficacy of the COVID vaccines are a few examples.
Most ironically, one of the many conspiracy theories exposed as accurate was the coordination between the Joe Biden administration and social media companies to censor conservative speech.
Will Zuckerberg prove as good as his word? Will Meta open up to a wider range of information and opinions? Conservatives and libertarians are understandably skeptical – but perhaps hopeful. With Meta adding Dana White – CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a staunch Trump supporter – to its board of directors, the signs may be good that Instagram, Facebook, and Meta will join X as platforms that give the political right a more level playing field in the world of social media.
