Posted on 01/09/2025 7:06:38 AM PST by MtnClimber
The Meta chief's surprising public address on free speech hints at a coming battle between the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a video promising a shift toward free speech:
The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government, and that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years, when even the US government has pushed for censorship by going after us and other American companies.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the most popular person. Some consider him a self-directed oddball rightfully savaged by the likes of South Park, while others see an opportunist who engaged in censorship when it suited him, changing colors only out of fear of retaliation. Others can sort that out. For now, his comments feel significant both as confirmation of reporting on the topic, and as an assessment of coming challenges.
If Zuckerberg’s words sound familiar, it may be because speech advocates have been singing that tune for a while. I said something similar in last September’s “Rescue the Republic” speech. The Twitter Files, the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case, Jim Jordan’s Facebook Files, and other probes offered a peek into the “pushing” Zuckerberg describes. These investigations focused on U.S. agencies like the FBI, DHS and GEC, but a broader problem involving foreign pressures is hinted at in Zuckerberg’s announcement.
Beyond new laws like Europe’s Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act lay a series of less-well-known agreements and working groups, like Europe’s Code of Practice on Disinformation or the Global Risks Initiative. In recent years the United States has been participating in discussions about such agreements, sometimes with the idea of creating analogs to European or global rule systems that could be enforced via Executive Branch authority (say, through the FTC). My own personal “time to panic” moment came when I learned the U.S. was considering moves to join such international speech codes that wouldn’t have required consulting Congress.
Zuckerberg may be referring to such worries when he says that “we have an opportunity to restore free expression” but “it’ll take time to get this right, and these are complex systems.” More on the topic soon, but Zuckerberg’s video is more subtle and meaningful than naysaying reports in places like the New York Times (“Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False”) would have you believe. The Meta CEO is claiming the U.S. and its closest allies are about to have a showdown on speech. If he’s right, bring it on. It’s overdue.
The censors are always the bad guys.
So, Zuck won’t be sending me to Facebook Jail on a regular basis anymore?
Sure am gonna miss my Homies. ;)
Some of our mods have been crossing that line as well. The mods deleted many of my comments arguing that Elon Musk stepped in it with the H1B issue with the following tweets, ostensibly because I was posting profanity with the F word that was in the tweet itself for the world to see by the billions. Read it quick because it may just disappear.
Censorship = good
Monopoly + censorship = bad
Censorship is free speech. We need many Facebooks run by many people with differing views. Why the big information platforms have been hijacked by left wing America haters, over the last 50 to 100 years, is something historians will argue about for a long time.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member, said the billionaire Facebook founder’s donations to a pair of nonprofits that doled out the cash to nearly 2,500 counties in 49 states “violated fundamental principles of equal treatment of voters since it may have led to unequal opportunities to vote in different areas of a state.”So Zuck now pretending to be a champion for free speech sounds opportunist and self-serving.“My reaction is that this was a carefully orchestrated attempt to convert official government election offices into get-out-the-vote operations for one political party and to insert political operatives into election offices in order to influence and manipulate the outcome of the election,” said von Spakovsky, a Republican who now runs the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
“...is something historians will argue about for a long time.”
Right. As if they will be ALLOWED to do that.
point of reference:
January 8, 2025 4 year anniversary of trump getting banned on FB
The FB communist “fact checkers” deleted my account a year ago after so many, many trips to FB jail.
I highly doubt if ZuckerBucks really believes in free speech...
Hans von Spakovsky is on our local Conservative Talk Radio quite often. AM1310 He knows his stuff and did a LOT to get the current legislation passed in Wisconsin that banned ‘Zuckerbucks’ and a few other things the Socialist Democrats did to screw President Trump and ‘We The People of Wisconsin’ in the 2020 steal.
God Bless him! As an added bonus, his name is a lot of fun to pronounce! ;)
Or better yet you never would do it in the first place.
You don't put on your best golf shirt and make some cuck whiney cringe video about how you are sorry and will really do the right thing now.
He is such a girlyman phony.
Just so Joe Biden can become President?
Seems like Zuck learned the hard way.
Notice no "Zuckerbucks" were used to finance the Democrats in 2024.
Yep. His wife may not even know she is a lesbian.
“no “Zuckerbucks” in 2024”
And look at the difference in the popular vote! Things that make you go “hmmmm.”
It’s a lie. I was just put in Facebook jail yesterday for my political opinion
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