Depending on the source, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta platforms will jettison fact-checking protocols in favor of community notes is either a threat to democracy or a return to the spirit of free speech from when he co-founded Facebook in 2004.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said in the opening seconds of a video announcing the changes.
Those changes, he continued, are in response to the damage ultimately brought by steps from the government “and legacy media” to oppose potentially harmful online content. After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook established fact-checking protocols amid cries for greater accountability and accusations that Russian misinformation influenced the election in favor of Donald Trump.
The process of attempting to filter out misinformation actually led to greater censorship and an overall erosion of trust, Zuckerberg said. The step toward community notes will be similar to that initiated on X and will be phased in over the next few months.
Jason Thacker, senior fellow and director for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s Research Institute, called the decision “a welcome shift in policy” and “significant victory for both free speech and religious freedom.”
“Freedom of speech is an essential element of ordered liberty as it helps promote a free and democratic society, yet it is still not an absolute right,” said Thacker, also assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College. “Nothing is truly neutral, including fact checkers, media giants, government officials, social media platforms, online influencers and even our own speech.”
The decision immediately filled op-ed pages in newspapers across the country.
The New York Times presented the decision as one more in line with Zuckerberg’s libertarian leanings while painting a picture that the Meta chairman had grown tired of trying to appease critics. The Los Angeles Times said it was a move to be more friendly with incoming President Trump. The Wall Street Journal called it a welcome decision while citing articles of its own relating to COVID herd immunity and climate change that had been suppressed by Facebook in recent years during the Biden administration.
— Scott Barkley is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press.