We probably should have suspected something was up when Nick Clegg resigned from Meta as head of global affairs and was replaced with conservative-leaning Joel Kaplan. What it portended was revealed late yesterday afternoon when Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would no longer use third-party fact-checkers, instead relying on a system pioneered by Elon Musk’s X platform wherein users can append content with supposedly clarifying comments.
In the attached post to his video blog, Meta says that
“In his 2019 speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg argued that free expression has been the driving force behind progress in American society and around the world and that inhibiting speech, however well-intentioned the reasons for doing so, often reinforces existing institutions and power structures instead of empowering people. He said: “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.”
In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in “Facebook jail,” and we are often too slow to respond when they do.”
The general gist of the move is that moderating content inhibits free-speech, and that it is illogical for a social platform to inhibit discussion of issues that are talked about literally everywhere else.
The elephant in the room of course is the imminent re-ascension of Donald Trump to the Oval Office. Trump is not a fan of being moderated or fact-checked, alleging bias and discrimination when he has been stymied online (to the point he was banned from Twitter and set up his own alternative social media platform) or even on the debating stage and he has a poor opinion of anyone who has attempted it. In 2024 Trump labeled Facebook as ‘an enemy of the people’ and some are arguing that Zuckerberg’s moves are less about defending free speech and more about getting on the good side of the incoming administration. He would not be alone in doing that of course if that is the motive. The Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post declined to endorse a Presidential candidate in November (and recently lost a cartoonist by refusing to publish a cartoon depicting Bezos alongside other moguls paying homage to Trump), as did the Los Angeles Times owned by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Many have been quick to sound the alarm over Facebook’s decisions, with the BBC quoting representatives of the Molly Rose foundation who said it is a “major concern for safety online.”
“We are urgently clarifying the scope of these measures, including whether this will apply to suicide, self-harm and depressive content”, its chairman Ian Russell said. “These moves could have dire consequences for many children and young adults.”
Meta told the BBC it would consider content breaking its suicide and self-harm rules to be a “high severity” violation, and therefore subject to automated moderation systems.”
Robert Evans once wrote that “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” Just as with recollections, this applies to opinions and it is what undergirds free speech, that everyone has the right to express their opinions without fear or favour. But perhaps Free Speech is not just a right, but it is an obligation on each of us, that we predicate those opinions on facts and that facts are supposed to be an immutable baseline, with differing opinions lying in differing interpretations of those facts. That perhaps you have every right to disagree with someone’s interpretations of those facts, but that the line has to be drawn at reinterpreting the facts themselves.
The question posed therefore is, is free Speech such an absolute that an individual should be allowed to base their speech on misinformation, lies and falsehood and to then amplify that through the channels social media provides or is it the responsibility of the platform host to moderate that content? That debate has raged now for a while now and has become a major front in the ongoing culture wars. Kate Klonick, an associate professor of law at St.John’s University Law school, is quoted by the BBC as saying that…
“the changes reflected a trend “that has seemed inevitable over the last few years, especially since Musk’s takeover of X”.
“The private governance of speech on these platforms has increasingly become a point of politics,” she told BBC News.
Where companies have previously faced pressure to build trust and safety mechanisms to deal with issues like harassment, hate speech, and disinformation, a “radical swing back in the opposite direction” is now underway, she added.”
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