Zuckerberg Admitted To The Censorship SCOTUS Ignored
In a recent video message, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that his company has engaged in censorship of users’ free speech due to pressure from government entities, an action that the U.S. Supreme Court has not intervened to stop. Zuckerberg pointed out the ongoing debate surrounding online content and recognized that governments and traditional media have increasingly sought to censor material they find unfavorable, much of wich he categorized as political. He discussed the elaborate content moderation systems at Meta, highlighting the ”mistakes” that arise from these systems, which he claims have lead to excessive censorship.However, it was noted that these so-called mistakes tend to disproportionately affect conservative voices and outlets. As the 2024 elections approach, Zuckerberg mentioned a shift towards prioritizing free speech again, stating that Meta intends to simplify its policies and minimize errors in moderation to better promote free expression on its platforms.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his Big Tech companies censored users’ free speech amid pressure from government actors — an authoritarian effort the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop earlier this year.
The admission of guilt came in a roughly five-minute video message released Tuesday, in which Zuckerberg noted how there has been “widespread debate about potential harms from online content” in recent years. He specifically described how “governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more,” content they deem unfavorable much of which, Zuckerberg maintained, is “clearly political.”
The Facebook and Instagram owner went on to briefly discuss the “complex systems” Meta has put into place to “moderate content” (aka: to censor users’ free speech) amid this pressure. He subsequently claimed the issue with such complex systems is “they make mistakes,” and that “we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
What Zuckerberg declined to mention, however, is that these “mistakes” almost always go in one direction. For years, Big Tech companies like Facebook have weaponized so-called “fact-checking” and other censorship tools to suppress conservative figures and outlets, including The Federalist.
Zuckerberg noted how the outcome of the 2024 elections “feel[s] like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” before going on to admit that his companies have been using platform features to widely restrict Americans’ speech.
“We’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he said. He then described Meta’s plans to replace “fact-checking” with a Community Notes feature similar to X’s and “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender.”
Zuckerberg’s tacit acknowledgment of Meta’s embrace of censorship at the behest of federal authorities is damning, but it’s not new. He all but admitted in an August letter addressed to Congress that Facebook suppressed the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election due to pressure from the FBI and coordinated with the Biden administration to censor posts challenging the government’s Covid narrative.
But those aren’t even the most horrifying details of this entire scandal.
When given the chance to put the kibosh on Big Tech’s collusion with the federal government to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights, a majority on the Supreme Court chose to look the other way.
In Murthy v. Missouri, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the high court’s Democrat appointees in effectively dismissing a lawsuit brought by two states and several medical specialists against the feds for their social media censorship scheme. Despite overwhelming evidence showcasing such coordination, the six justices arbitrarily claimed the plaintiffs failed to “demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek.”
While blasting the federal government’s “blatantly unconstitutional” actions in his dissent, Justice Samuel Alito forewarned that the court’s failure to declare the government’s actions as unlawful will have devastating consequences for free speech moving forward. “If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send,” he wrote.
[READ: Why The Court’s Murthy Ruling Is Probably The Worst Free Speech Decision In History]
Unfortunately, for the millions of Americans who care about free speech, Zuckerberg’s apparent shift on content “moderation” policies is too late. The damage has already been done.
Due to a majority on the Supreme Court, there’s no guarantee that the Big Tech-government censorship Americans endured throughout the past several years won’t happen again. Instead of providing a robust defense of citizens’ First Amendment rights, these justices have forced the people to place the sanctity of their online speech in the hands of elites like Zuckerberg — who is as trustworthy as the phony fact-checks his companies have used to suppress them for years.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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