Mark Zuckerberg Axes ‘Politically Biased’ Fact Check System, Announces Massive Free Speech Moves for Facebook

Trust is an incredibly fickle thing.

When you have it, it’s as good as an unlimited credit card with zero interest. You can rack up all sorts of societal debt on that sucker, should you truly have ironclad trust.

But once you lose it? It’s almost impossible to get it back, no matter how much you give.

Tech mogul and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is learning this harsh lesson in real time — though that pressure does appear to be yielding some actual improvements in his regime.

Zuckerberg — whose human bona fides have often been questioned — is obviously incredibly powerful and influential.

(The Western Journal can personally attest to just how powerful Meta/is.)

But he made swathes of enemies shortly after Trump’s momentous 2016 election victory, when Zuckerberg and Meta began cracking down on “disinformation,” or, as non-leftists call it, “anything that doesn’t toe the leftist line.”

Facebook, once a digital public square, became a highly-policed square post-2016, and it was typically conservatives who were being punished on the platform.

Fast-forward about nine years (and one disastrous Joe Biden presidency later), and Zuckerberg’s Meta is suddenly fascinated with political fairness after never once showing an interest in it.

Surely, this isn’t suspicious at all, right?

But, again, healthy skepticism aside, it does appear Zuckerberg is at least doing the right things following the last decade or so of shenanigans.

Tuesday’s announcement that Meta was ditching “politically biased” fact checking is a good development, even if Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the rest of their Silicon Valley bros are all snakes in the grass.

Zuckerberg took to on Tuesday, posting a five-minute video explaining how his tech company would be de-emphasizing partisan hackery in favor of more egalitarian “community notes” — yes, just like X.

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg wrote alongside his video. “We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes.

“Looking forward to this next chapter.”

Zuckerberg would further elaborate in the video itself: “Hey everyone, I want to talk about something important today, because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on and Instagram.”

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes [from fact checkers] and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg explained.

Interestingly enough, after making those remarks, Zuckerberg invoked the 2024 election and noted that he felt that the results were a referendum on freedom of speech — and an indictment against the self-professed gatekeepers of that speech.

“But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg explained, correctly.

But it’s not just the fact checkers getting overhauled. Zuckerberg discussed how he would also be lifting restrictions on hot topics (like immigration or LGBT nonsense) and how he would also be moving their content moderation teams out of California and into Texas.

Look, in a vacuum, these are all inarguably good things.

That being said, please forgive this writer for not quite fully trusting the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses of the world, especially given that this change of heart appears to have come after Trump secured a second term.

(Whatever one may think of Elon Musk and his growing political influence, he at least cozied up to MAGA before Nov. 5, 2024.)

This video from Zuckerberg and these forthcoming changes are a step in the right direction, without question.

As Daily Wire firebrand Ben Shapiro put it: “This is a sea change in the direction at Facebook.”

But conservatives would be wise to look this gift horse in the mouth.

Until further notice, Zuckerberg has more than earned that distrust.

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