META Fesses Up to Leading Censorship Cartel
#4 Did Mark Zuckerberg's team deserve to get yelled at?
Screenshot/X
Thanks to the Twitter Files reports of 2022 and 2023, we know that the social media platform censored Americans’ speech with much of the pressure to do so coming from the federal government.
Twitter, renamed X, has since been bought by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who vows to allow free speech on his platform.
Now Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg is admitting that his platform censored speech, including due to government pressure, and he now seeks to pursue free speech, similar to Musk and X.
Not surprisingly, Rand Paul was happy about this.
Zuckerberg says he is ditching Facebook’s “fact checkers” - a dubious term for ideologically biased individuals of no particular expertise who have decided what speech to censor based on their whim - with Community Notes, similar to X, a far more truthful, fact-based and effective way to correct actual false information.
Mark Zuckerberg Comes Clean on Joe Rogan
Like the Twitter Files revealed, Zuckerberg has also come clean about how the Biden administration bullied his platform into censoring.
He told Joe Rogan in a recent interview, “These people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse. The documents are all out there - there are emails, they're all published. And basically, it got to this point where we were like, 'No, we're not going to take down things that are true, that's ridiculous.”
In early 2023, Reason’s Robby Soave reported on the federal government’s involvement with Facebook censorship.
Zuckerberg told Rogan last week just how granule government agencies were in making demands of his platform.
“They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how ten years from now you're going to see an ad that says 'if you took a COVID vaccine, you're eligible' - like this sort of class action lawsuit type meme,” he said.
“They said 'you have to take that down,' and we said 'no, we're not going to take down humor and satire,” Zuckerberg insisted. “We're not going to take down things that are true.”
The Facebook head continued, “At some point, Biden gave some statement - I don't know if it was at a press conference or to some journalist - where he basically said these guys are killing people. And then all these different agencies and branches of government basically started investigating and coming after our company.”
“It was brutal,” he added.
Zuckerberg is admitting that his company capitulated to the federal government’s request to censor, the clearest definition of the term “censorship” and precisely the kind oppressive behavior by the state that the First Amendment was intended to protect against.
What to Think of Zuckerberg at This Point
Many conservatives are livid at Zuckerberg, for good reason, for knowingly suppressing and tapering with the speech of Americans, not only regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, but particularly as it related to the 2020 election.
If what Zuckerberg says is true, the real election interference that year came from the Biden administration. The scandalous Hunter Biden laptop story, for example, which was later shown to be legitimate, was suppressed on the platform mere weeks before the election. False information - like dozens of former intel officials claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation - was spread far and wide on Facebook and every other major platform.
But there is another way of looking at this. One that may be more productive than just bashing Zuckerberg, to no end.
Like Sen. Paul, we should be happy that Meta is coming clean about the censorship it imposed, but also, when the weight of the federal government is coming down on you…
What did you expect them to do? For him to do? Was Zuckerberg and his team getting any help from Republicans?
What would YOU do if the government of the most powerful country in the world was bullying you?
Reason’s Robby Soave makes a good point.
No, instead we should focus on something far more important than blame.
Results.
Zuckerberg replacing “fact checkers” (I can’t write that term without quotation marks. It’s too deceptive and stupid a term to describe otherwise) with Community Notes is a HUGE and positive change in how information and opinion gets disseminated throughout Meta’s platforms.
But there’s also positive indicators like allowing rational debate about issues like transgenderism, instead of putting anyone who dares broach the subject in Facebook jail.
Zuckerberg admitting that the Biden administration censored discussions about actual vaccine side effects is no small thing.
Presumably such discussion won’t be suppressed anymore.
Most of us who are conservatives and who use X have noticed a considerable change in how we allowed to communicate Musk’s version compared to the old Twitter regime.
We should expect the same change on Facebooks and any Meta platforms. if we don’t, then Mark Zuckerberg is just being disingenuous.
Sen. Mike Lee seems to be taking the Rand Paul approach and congratulating Zuckerberg for coming clean and “moving forward” to freer speech and better liberties.
A colossally bizarre subtext to the censorship by the government of Twitter, Facebook and other major social media platforms is the lack of outrage on the Left to any of it.
The Left Craves Censorship Now and Gets Mad At Anyone Who Rejects It
When reporters Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss came forth with the Twitter Files, they were brought before congressional committees, on which Democrats basically called them liars and were disgusted that anyone would dare question the government forcing private companies to censor speech.
Taibbi was mocked by Democratic Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett as a “so called journalist.”
Because to her, real journalists protect and promote government narratives. They don’t challenge them. And most major establishment news outlets today - CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times - don’t challenge them.
When the Twitter Files came out, Democrats behaved as if the censorship it revealed was for the public good and, by God, who were these people to question it?
The nerve!
That’s where the Left has been for a number of years now, and certainly post-Trump.
The Left doesn’t hate censorship - it craves it.
Right now, many on the Left are deeply worried about about Zuckerberg getting rid of “fact checkers,” meaning…
How will they be able to maintain control narratives if they no longer control our speech? The Left sees this as a massive problem.
When you see the relatively new bull*** words “misinformation” and “disinformation,” the people who use them typically mean that they don’t like things being said that defy Left orthodoxy.
Whether the information is factual or not is secondary, if it’s even considered at all (there are rightwing or Republican examples of wanting censorship too, but in terms of scope and how power is wielded, this is far more a Left phenomenon right now, institutionally and practically).
The Left needs to be able to control our language and reality. They don’t say it that way, but that’s exactly what they mean.
I mean, look at this headline. The New York Times was not trying to be funny or satirical.
This is legit how they think:
Onward and Upward, Hopefully
Mark Zuckerberg deserves praise for calling out the authoritarianism of the Biden administration in tamping down Americans’ speech. He also deserves scorn for playing ball, with the caveat of…
What would many of us have done if we found ourselves in his situation?
The important focus now is on fostering legit free speech and a healthier civil discourse where all Americans from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints get their say.
That was the original promise and hope of the internet age to begin with.
When the heaviest hitters in the online world declare they are on the side of free speech, that’s never a bad thing. Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee are not wrong in their exuberance.
But hold Mark Zuckerberg and those like him accountable.
Zuckerberg sold out because his users were of a Democratic nature. Pure greed. He could care less about his action or it’s ramifications
“If what Zuckerberg says is true, the real election interference that year came from the Biden administration. The scandalous Hunter Biden laptop story, for example, which was later shown to be legitimate, was suppressed on the platform mere weeks before the election. False information - like dozens of former intel officials claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation - was spread far and wide on Facebook and every other major platform.”
The censorship involving the Biden laptop did not take place during the Biden administration; Trump was president when the FBI tilled the soil for censorship with warnings of pending Russian disinformation given to major social media companies. It was during the Trump administration that FBI officials were setting up the infrastructure for suppressing free speech.
Wray was a terrible head of FBI, but he was appointed by Trump. I’m glad that Trump has seen the error in his ways with that appointment and I hope will be more careful in his selections this time around. Kash seems to be a much better pick for FBI.
The federal leviathan is much too big for the president to know everything that it does; thus the need to make great appointments who will implement Trump’s policies while at the same time identify and remove deep state actors who will work twenty-four hours a day to thwart our new president.