Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced to the world that Meta platforms would be getting “back to their roots” allowing more free expression and less censorship. Zuckerberg’s announcement was followed by a three hour discussion on the Joe Rogan experience just a few days later. The response has ranged from high praise to skepticism and even confusion. The confusion can be untangled, the praise and skepticism can be properly directed with a quick look at the Meta CEO, past and present.
Zuckerberg started his Tuesday address to Meta users referencing a speech he made at Georgetown University on October 17, 2019, basically citing it as evidence that he has a track record of understanding the importance of freedom of speech. The Georgetown speech did undoubtedly illustrate knowledge of the damage censorship can inflict.
Here’s some of what Zuckerberg said in that fall of 2019 speech:
1. “now, some people think that giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing people together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes that they think matter is more important than every person having a voice and being heard and I think that’s dangerous.”
2. “the ability to speak freely has been central to the fight for democracy worldwide. The most repressive societies have always restricted space the most and when people are finally able to speak they often use their voice to call for change.”
3. “in times of social tension our impulse is to pull back on free expression” citing instances such a Martin Luther King being jailed unconstitutionally for protesting, shutting down campus protests during the Vietnam war, and a 1919 Supreme Court case Debs vs United States where the court ruled that Eugene Debs’ anti WWI speech was not protected under the first amendment and “in the end all of these decisions were wrong, pulling back on free expression wasn’t the answer and in fact, it often ends up hurting the minority views that we seek to protect.”
Just a few months after he defended free expression at Georgetown, enter Covid, and almost exactly a year later the 2020 general election. How could anyone give that speech then proceed to personally usher in the grand level of censorship that Mark Zuckerberg did? He initiated the policy that kept both the Biden laptop story under wraps, potentially influencing an election outcome and had entire accounts demoted or removed if they spoke of Covid, vaccines, or treatments in a way that was out-of-line with what the federal government deemed acceptable.
210 million pieces of content censored
According to Meta’s Community Standards Enforcement Report published August 18, 2021, Meta removed more than 20 million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram that were considered COVID misinformation, removed over 3000 accounts, pages and groups for “repeatedly violating rules against spreading covid-19 and vaccine misinformation” and displayed warnings on more than 190 million pieces of COVID related content, and that was just in the second quarter of 2021.
Not coincidentally, in August 2021 I was walked off of my last shift after a 15 year career as an ICU nurse for not taking the vaccine.
How could Zuckerberg demonstrate that level of reverence for free expression in that Georgetown speech then such a short time later activate such heavy censorship, in coordination with the federal government, no less? Censorship that ultimately did exactly what he purported to know it would do, hurt massively the minority that didn’t toe the COVID narrative line. And, actually, it hurt even people in the majority camp who were blind to reality.
Meta, already censoring prior to Georgetown speech
Meanwhile, Meta was, at the time of the Georgetown speech, already three years into its politically motivated relationship with “fact checkers.” In 2016, immediately after Trump won his first election Facebook partnered with third-party fact checkers and just five short weeks later the program was up and running.
Change is coming
Currently, Meta seeks to change their longstanding policy of continually pressing further into censorship.
Mark Zuckerberg outlined a 5 point plan: 1. replace fact checkers with community notes, 2. simplify content policies by removing “rules” 3. a new approach to policy enforcement: filter only severe issues 4. bring back “civic content,” political content will no longer be demoted 5. move their trust, safety and content moderation teams out of California and into Texas where there is less perception of bias and, while not marked as a point, he lastly stated that Meta would be working with Trump.
Following the announcement, one well known political influencer commented, “This might be the most important video ever posted on a meta platform. Legitimately brave. Thank you Mark.” referring to Zuckerberg’s video outlining changes. BRAVE? Is he serious? We have very different definitions of the word.
These policy changes are absolutely a positive move.
Praise the policy change not the man.
It’s ok to give weight to what men like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk say from the standpoint of how it affects us… and it clearly does by way of what they own, social media platforms where news and information that is independent in nature is almost exclusively disseminated. However, it would be wise to stop giving weight to their words by way of praise when it sounds like they might finally be on our side morally or philosophically- regardless of what they say, they aren’t and their actions have proven that.
Some are praising Zuckerberg for ‘admitting he was wrong.’ But, did he really admit he was wrong? Did he issue an apology? Or, did he simply admit the political climate changed and free speech, now having the largest cheering section, called for a change in direction in order to garner a bit of applause for himself?
Zuckerberg is a political opportunist and if you’ve listened with a critical ear, you’ve heard him openly admit it.
In August 2022, he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and admitted his choice to censor the Hunter laptop story likely impacted an entire United States federal election, yet, that wasn’t enough to actually change course or rollback policy… political climate (read popularity) now, in 2025 is.w
Speaking of Joe Rogan.
The most recent Rogan/Zuckerberg interview, if you missed it, aired January 10th and was another three hours of “bro” talk where Zuckerberg revealed information primed and ready to be clipped down in to sharable soundbites for social media, and it was. Million follower count accounts shared for their followers to feast on without any context or history, the comment sections though revealed the situation was transparent to at least part of the population.
The interview as a whole was a series of softly lobbed questions where it mattered. There was a little pressing except on AI and on Zuckerberg’s wrong and charitable view of the federal government’s intentions when it came to suppressing alternative covid treatments and uplifting the vaccine. But, the actions of Zuckerberg, his personal choices surrounding censorship were given no scrutiny. They simply spent time lamenting together “how hard” it is to “moderate at scale.”
“Massive, Massive institutional pressure”
During the interview Zuckerberg pointed to a “bunch of people” who bought into Russian collusion thinking there was no way Trump could have been legitimately elected in 2016 and in 2020 COVID where Meta faced “massive, massive institutional pressure leading to ideological censorship. He noted that 3.2 billion people use one of META’s services every day and on a monthly basis, half the Earth.
Zuckerberg continually deflected and passed the responsibility for the censorship that happened on his watch to the Biden administration claiming, at Meta, they said “no” to taking down true content until “Biden gave a statement where he was basically like these guys are killing people and then I don’t know, then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically like started started investigating and coming after our company, it was brutal.” He also claimed the Biden administration called “up the guys on our team yelling and cursing threatening repercussions if we don’t take down things that are true.” So they did.
In reference to the tides and media changing, Zuckerberg said, “that whole cultural elite class needs to get repopulated with people who people actually trust.” He also said that “the good thing about doing this after the election is, you get to take this cultural pulse … we try to have policies that reflect mainstream discourse.”
Sprinkled throughout the interview was praise for and desire to work with Trump namely on the competitive AI venture, saying, “it’s a huge geo-political competition … we should want the American companies to win.”
He mentioned also that he felt society had been “neutered and emasculated.”
The things that went unsaid
As Zuckerberg awkwardly tried to re-imagine his image in the minds of Americans and pass the blame to the government, Rogan failed to bring up that Zuckerberg himself enacted a vaccine mandate at Meta or that in 2020 he and his wife Priscilla Chan donated over $400 Million to PACs and organizations helping to organize mail in voting. This contribution was later praised as “saving the election.”
When Zuckerberg claimed that the Biden admin called his staff “yelling and cursing” Rogan quietly asked if he had happened to record it, to which Zuckerberg replied, “no.” The owner of the largest tech company in the world who has been called into question by the same government that allegedly called yelling and cussing didn’t record the phone calls? I’m not buying it. Rogan however left it alone. He didn’t even go so far as to ask Zuckerberg why he had left this detail out in the August 2022 interview where they discussed the FBI’s involvement in censorship of the Biden laptop.
Zuckerberg did refer to emails which had been turned over to Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) as documentation of the Biden-Harris administration’s pressure. This part of the conversation was especially interesting. If you hadn’t been paying attention and you were hearing only Zuckerberg’s side of the conversation for the first time, you’d think he and Rep. Jim Jordan had been friends working together to stop censorship. You wouldn’t have even an inkling of the adversarial past where in July, 2023 Jordan threatened Zuckerberg with contempt of Congress for not turning over documentation regarding the censorship investigation.
Zuckerberg caved and is caving again, in a new way
Zuckerberg did exactly what he said. He took America’s cultural pulse and found it beating strongly for free speech and massive distrust for the outgoing Biden administration. So, he changed course and placed all the blame where a lot of blame rightly lies. It is true the Biden administration pushed for censorship, pushed one solution for COVID… the almighty vaccine, but the Biden administration didn’t actually do the censoring. They pressured, Zuckerberg caved, and relatively easily it seems.
But we live in the age of social media where the majority of people get their information in 90 second or less clips posted to social media by their favorite personalities. So thanks to political influencers who played right into his hand, the story most people will hear is the one Zuckerberg wanted them to. His quotable moments were sold as is, little to no questions asked and as fresh new revelations. Shock and awe all over again, just as it was in August, five short months ago when Zuckerberg wrote the letter to Jim Jordan detailing the Biden administration’s meddling.
Maybe the Meta CEO just had a change of heart
For the most part there was only one real question being asked anywhere, “has Mark Zuckerberg changed or is he saving face?”
There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the latter. The Georgetown speech showed Mark Zuckerberg had clear understanding of the importance of freedom of speech before all of the COVID censorship took place. He mandated Meta staff take the vaccine, bragged about how many profiles and pieces of information they saved the internet from in Meta’s Community Standards Enforcement Report, withheld the information shared in this Rogan interview from the 2022 interview and previously donated politically in ways that most see as only beneficial to the democrat party.
But I think his intent with these changes goes even deeper than saving his reputation. Mark Zuckerberg is working to make breakthroughs in AI and he sees how an “America First” president could be sold on the benefits of America as first specifically in AI. If America wins in AI, Mark Zuckerberg also wins, by default.
Change policy to align with public opinion, blame the easy target, receive public praise, get in good graces with the incoming Executive Branch and see if the government (read the American taxpayer) is willing to share in helping win the AI race. From my view, that’s the long and short of it.
If Mark Zuckerberg changed at all, it was through MMA bringing about the realization that living life as a ‘low T’ guy wasn’t as thrilling as the left made it seem.
There is a small part of me that almost feels bad for Mark Zuckerberg, not because he was victimized by the Biden admin as he would attempt to have us believe. Rather, it comes from a twinge of sadness I feel watching him speak. He seems like he’s playing a part, as if he’s still just trying to fit in with the “in” crowd willing to transform as necessary for the sake of himself, his brand or both. I suppose it isn’t ‘sorry’ I’m actually feeling, it’s compassion. He’s lost.
Give praise and accountability when due
We welcome Zuckerberg’s policy change. But, if we give praise to the man who changed a policy while blaming everyone except himself, took no responsibility and didn’t even issue a verbal apology, we have withheld every form of accountability. Withholding accountability is a disservice mainly to the everyday man (and woman) but to Mark Zuckerberg as well.
People died, lost their jobs (myself included) and suffered injuries related to the vaccine. Relationships were broken and elderly were shut away alone in nursing homes. Censorship played a role in all of it and not a small one.
Our societal track record of letting people off the hook is weak and it keeps weak men like Mark Zuckerberg in high places.
Zuckerberg will likely continue to evolve, and in a small way, he’s already set himself up for that evolution. Telling Rogan, that there might be “blind spots” or a situation he “hasn’t thought of yet.”
Maintaining policies that “reflect mainstream discourse” is incompatible with maintaining free-speech as a standard. Keep an eye on this guy.
