Meta, Please Get Your Facts Straight

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive at Meta, announced sweeping reforms to the social media platform’s approach for curbing misinformation and hate speech. Henceforth, Meta is ditching its fact-checking program and instead will introduce Community Notes, a program relying on users to contextualize and fact-check posts. In addition, Meta will remove content restrictions on topics like gender identity and immigration. Do not be fooled by Meta’s “free speech crusade”. 

Not only is Mark Zuckerberg allowing Meta’s platforms to transform into a misleading and toxic environment, but he’s also joining a troubling trend of political obsequiousness, foreshadowing an unchecked second Trump term. 

 Zuckerberg claims Meta’s fact-checking program and content restrictions once aimed to foster a more accurate, respectful, and inclusive online environment, especially following Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential elections. However, with only a handful of individuals reviewing Meta’s endless posts, the fact-checking program caused too many mistakes and too little positive change. To Zuckerberg, the restrictions on particular topics “have been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas.” Partially in response to the grievances of many conservative politicians, Meta’s dropping of these restrictions promises greater freedom of speech, allowing Meta’s platforms to embrace each voice, perspective, and belief.

 Zuckerberg’s policy decision follows several other acts that benefit and please Trump and his supporters. In 2023, Meta restored Trump’s account after suspending it. Last month, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, a far departure from Meta’s previous pledge towards nonpartisanship. This month, Meta appointed Joel Kaplan, a Republican in Washington, as its chief global affairs officer and Dana White, a close Trump ally, to the board of directors. And Zuckerberg is just one of many other influential figures trying to curry favor with Donald Trump—most recently, at the expense of a healthy, constructive, and accurate social media platform.

 Freedom of speech is an essential pillar of American democracy. Social media must not be an echo chamber that amplifies certain voices and muffles others; in fact, it’s critical to have a variety of conflicting perspectives represented online. In a way, Meta’s recent decision helps create a more inclusive, free platform for users to express themselves.

However, in practice this decision degrades Meta’s bulwarks against hate, misinformation, and disinformation on the platform. While the old fact-checking program undermined the content of many innocent users by mistake, its absence represents Meta’s acquiescing to Donald Trump’s demands, allowing misinformation and disinformation in the process. By enabling users to post misinformation and hate speech against certain communities on its platforms, Meta condones the radicalization of its users, which can sometimes escalate to violence. For example, social media played a key role in circulating claims of election fraud—comments that encouraged Trump supporters to “fight” ultimately lead to the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Afterwards, social media again disseminated messages reframing the attack as patriotic and righteous. This is dangerous. Social media should not be allowed to endorse crime; it must not play a role in rewriting the truth. 

 This raises the question: what should social media be? What type of approach should it take in regulating its content? Should social media platforms actively nurture a safe, inclusive, factually accurate environment, or should they just passively be a place where users can share their ideas?

 Trump’s charge that Meta’s fact checking program threatens free speech just can’t stand. The First Amendment protects individuals’ speech and opinions from government interference. Meta is a private company – it can regulate and restrict its content however it wants without violating the First Amendment or endangering free speech.

Moreover, most people nowadays get their information from social media. They don’t read the news each morning or bother to question the comments they see on Instagram. With rusty critical thinking skills, most users just passively accept what appears on their feed. This unfortunate reality makes social media platforms more responsible for presenting accurate and respectful content to its users. Additionally, social media exists (and thrives because it) bridges people across oceans and continents. Not only do many of the regulated comments undermine this vision – they target, isolate, and tear down; this unique ability to connect people bestows significant power on social media platforms. Allowing hate and misleading information to remain would be an irresponsible, reckless abuse of this power. Meta needs to improve, not ditch, its fact-checking system. 

Perhaps more concerning than this, however, is the reason driving Zuckerberg’s decision. By terminating Meta’s fact-checking program, facilitating the spread of hate and misinformation, and enabling the alteration of the truth, Mark Zuckerberg tried to curry favor with Donald Trump, abandoning America and the public’s interest in the process. Even before his inauguration, Trump is already reshaping the political and social landscape in significant ways, transforming established systems and practices, bending powerful figures and institutions to his will, and challenging the public’s perception of fundamental ideas like democracy and free speech. Will Meta choose the safe decision?