Is Meta’s free speech overhaul a power play or real change?

Two weeks before the inauguration of Donald Trump – a man who has vowed to dismantle and destroy the Censorship-Industrial Complex that silenced him and millions of other Americans – one of the figures most responsible for the censorship regime delivered a message.

In a video released on his platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his company had engaged in “too much censorship,” and declared that with the “cultural tipping point” of recent elections, his platforms would now be focused on “restoring free expression.”

Among other efforts, Zuckerberg said Meta would jettison invariably left-wing “fact-checkers” and adopt a community notes-like feature instead, remove prohibitions on topics like gender and immigration and tweak “filters” to reduce levels of incorrectly suppressed speech, and work with the Trump administration to push back on foreign governments pressuring American companies to censor.

So, has the tech titan really seen the light on free speech, and will Meta truly overhaul itself accordingly? Or is this a cynical and self-interested attempt to beg for forgiveness/pay for protection with shifting political winds, leading to cosmetic and temporary reforms?

Prudence demands that we distrust and verify.

Remember, Meta used internal tools to suppress traffic to conservative content after the 2016 election.

It censored the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.

It participated in the fed-led Election Integrity Partnership cutout responsible for purging wrongthink about election integrity and outcomes during the 2020 election.

It booted Trump from the platform for two years after January 6 – reinstating his accounts only with “heightened penalties for repeat offenses.”

It purged dissent from COVID-ian orthodoxy en masse.

The consequences have been incalculable for the individuals, activists, and journalists silenced and the body politic itself.

Zuckerberg recently changed his tune as the Censorship-Industrial Complex and Meta’s role in it was exposed under growing legal, political, and media scrutiny – and with President Trump’s political prospects rising and Silicon Valley figures rallying around him.

Days after the July 13 assassination attempt on then-candidate Trump, Zuckerberg dubbed the president-elect’s defiant fist-in-the-air response “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

A month later, Zuckerberg wrote a mea culpa to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, which had been probing Meta’s activities in its investigation of the Censorship-Industrial Complex. In it, Zuckerberg apologized for having censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after having been groomed to do so by the FBI, and for having purged verboten COVID-19 views under pressure from the Biden White House.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said. 

In the letter, he also expressed regret for the “Zuckbucks” effort during the 2020 campaign, wherein his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into election offices that typically flowed to left-leaning nonprofits to manage critical aspects of election administration in key jurisdictions often going blue.

Following the election, Zuckerberg dined with president-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Now, he has not only announced new free speech initiatives but hired longtime Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan as the company’s new global policy chief, and added dogged Trump supporter and UFC CEO Dana White to his board.

Meta is largely following in the footsteps of others in a Censorship-Industrial Complex increasingly in retreat.

De facto brand cartels like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media that colluded in effect to starve conservative and independent media of ad dollars shuttered.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the “never center” of fed-led speech policing, supposedly curtailed its “switchboarding” – that is its collecting and flagging of content to social media platforms for takedowns.

The State Department’s Global Engagement Center, another key government cog in the censorship regime, closed – though that its people and funds have been “realigned” suggests it may have been a death in name only/rebrand. 

Key NGO cutouts like the Stanford Internet Observatory have ceased some activities and seen critical personnel leave. 

Meta’s moves also follow Elon Musk’s liberation of competitor X.

Even if expedient, Zuckerberg’s decisions reflect a substantial shift in political and cultural power to the side of free speech. Meta’s actions will tell us just how powerful that tide is.

Nevertheless, the “counter-disinformation” ecosystem persists. It encompasses the administrative state, some state authorities, much of Big Tech, leading universities, prominent NGOs, risk-raters, fact-checkers, and censorious governments worldwide.

Regimes that powerful do not go away without a major fight.

It will be up to the Trump administration and those in Congress who have vowed to win this war for free speech to starve the Censorship-Industrial Complex of government funding, purge it of its personnel, and use every lever of power to protect our First Amendment.