Curious that the words “freedom of expression” are just in the second line of his speech. As if to say that, no, Mark Zuckerberg’s decision is not aimed at currying favor with President-elect Trump (and page boy Elon), but rather at eliminating prejudices and guaranteeing freedom of speech.
First of all, we will eliminate the fact-checkers and replace them with notes produced from below, similar to those of X, announced Zuckerberg, head of Meta and therefore owner of Facebook and Instagram.
What does it mean? Zuck himself says it clearly: Meta will say goodbye to third-party fact-checking programs on Facebook, Instagram and Threadsreplacing its “moderators” with a similar model at X Community Notesformerly Twitter.
A decision that initially will only affect the States and that would have been taken for allow more topics to be discussed openly on the company’s platforms.
We will enable greater freedom of expression by eliminating restrictions on certain topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement action on illegal and high-severity violations, says Meta’s new head of global affairs Joel Kaplan.
What is the Community Notes template and what you should expect on Facebook, IG and Threads
Arrived on Twitter, today X, a few years ago and formerly known as Birdwatch, it’s about moderation program collaborative, born to stop the spread of false news: if a sufficient number of collaborators evaluates a certain note as usefulthis will appear publicly in a tweet.
Following X’s example, Meta will have gods volunteers who will write notes on the posts. To become visible to all users, corrections must be approved by other volunteers.
Just as on X, Community Notes will require consensus among people with different points of view to help prevent biased judgments, Kaplan writes.
Why did Zuck make this decision (welcomed with pleasure by Elon Musk)
Meta had already drastically reduced fact-checking and decided to eliminate content moderation policies. The “fault” would have been above all of the fact-checking experts and their “prejudices”, which would have led to a excessive moderation.
The intention of the program was to have these independent experts give people more information about the things they see online, especially viral hoaxes, so they could judge for themselves what they saw and read. That’s not how things happened, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives.
We’ve seen this approach work on Zuck.
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.
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Furthermore, the US entrepreneur continues, content policies will be simplified and restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender will be removed,”that are not in line with the dominant public discourse“. Plus, there will also be changes to the way Policies are applied to reduce most censorship errors.
Greater effort will be directed at illegal content and serious violations that require a higher level of security for the filters to intervene. We will report the civic content. We’re getting feedback that people want to see this type of content again, so we’ll gradually reintroduce it across Facebook, Instagram and Threads, working to keep communities friendly and positive.” By civic content we mean topics such as immigration and gender identity. It’s not fair that things can be said on TV or in Congress, but not on our platforms.
It is also interesting to note that Zuckerberg also made explicit reference to the fact that he will work with Donald Trump to convince countries where the defense of freedom of expression is not as strongly felt as in the United States, not to “institutionalize censorship” as, he says, “it is happening more and more in Europe“.
And here Zuckerberg’s critics intervene:
Meta’s announcement is a retreat from any safe and sound approach to content moderation, said the Real Facebook Oversight Board, an activist group formed in response to the establishment of Meta’s oversight board. Censorship is an invented crisis, a political operation to signal that Meta’s platforms are open to far-right propaganda. Twitter’s abandonment of fact checking has turned the platform into a sewer; Zuckerberg is joining them in a race to the bottom.
And in Europe?
The fact-checkers will remain for now.
Freedom of expression is at the heart of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which establishes the rules for online intermediaries to combat illegal content, safeguarding freedom of expression and information online: no provision of the DSA obliges online intermediaries to remove lawful contents. Content moderation does not mean censorshipthe response of the European Commission.
