Screenshot taken from X account of Saagar Enjeti.
Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of the social media giant Meta, recently announced his intention to end censorship on Facebook.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerburg opened his address on Tuesday. “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.”
Here is the full video from Mark Zuckerberg announcing the end of censorship and misinformation policies.
I highly recommend you watch all of it as tonally it is one of the biggest indications of “elections have consequences” I have ever seen pic.twitter.com/aYpkxrTqWe
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) January 7, 2025
“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.”
[RELATED: Tech rights, free speech rights groups say Facebook facilitates government censorship]
Zuckerburg acknowledged that Facebook has systems in place to crack down on such content, but claimed that these systems can, many times, cause undue censorship of free expression through “mistakes.”
“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 going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he said.
He spoke of Facebook’s intention to “get rid of fact checkers and replace them with Community Notes, similar to X.” He noted that, following Trump’s first election victory in 2016, Facebook tried “in good faith” to listen to the media’s warnings about “disinformation” being a “threat to democracy.” These “fact-checkers,” however, have been “too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they have created,” Zuckerburg said.
He also added that the social media company will now “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.”
“Finally, 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,” he added.
He concluded: “It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice.”
[RELATED: Facebook oversight board includes leftist law prof from Trump impeachment hearing]
Pro-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) activists have frequently fought for restricting free speech in the name of their political ideology, including on social media.
Zuckerburg’s speech comes right on the heels of McDonald’s decision to curb its DEI policies, ending its “aspirational representation goals” and no longer trying to force DEI on suppliers, among other changes, wrote Fox Business.
Campus Reform has reached out to Facebook for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
