The Cost of Facebook’s Now-Repudiated Censorship

Brownstone Institute ^ | JANUARY 7, 2025 | BY Josh Stylman, Jeffrey A Tucker

[FlyingEagle]

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory. After eight years of increasingly aggressive content moderation, including nearly 100 fact-checking organizations operating in over 60 languages, Meta is now pivoting to a community-driven system similar to X’s model.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg first suggests that the censorship was purely a technical mistake, and then changes his tune near the end and admits what has long been litigated: “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 4 years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.”

[FlyingEagle]

A very important commentary about what happened to Freedom of Speech with Facebook-Meta and the Biden Administration plus other governments censorship merge of state + corporate power - which is the definition of fascism for Mussolini.

Zuck may have switched sides, but he was all-in for a long time including the Biden election funding.

[FlyingEagle]

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-cost-of-facebooks-now-repudiated-censorship/

link

[DesertRhino]

Only a fool thinks Zuckerberg has seen the light. He just as bad as ever.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Not only abandoning censorship, but now removing tampon dispensers from the mens’ rooms! Tampon Tim is reportedly deeply disturbed by this.

[cpdiii]

ZUKERSUCK was perfectly happy being a partner with government censorship. He poured hundreds of millions of dollars into left wing advocacy and voting policy changes and cash to the DNC and Biden. If they reported honestly leading up to the 2020 election Biden would have lost badly. The laptop was real, the government knew it was real and I suspect ZUKERSUCK knew it was real.

[DesertRhino]

Zuck switched sides. Yeah sure…. he’s just like a German woman out there waving at Pattons tanks rolling into town. Nazi yesterday, read the tea leaves today.

When the prick is rocked back on his heels, it’s time to hit him harder. He’s pond scum as bad as Google.

[armourenthusiast]

I trust him even less now that he has a young boys hairstyle.

[DesertRhino]

I’m with you.

[Uncle Miltie]

Zuck funded The Steal of 2020.

[AAABEST]

Zuck is trying to save hia own ass after helping steal an election.

[EBH]

The question is ...when can we sue. It’s been done once already with success. Basically it infringed of free speech, could be construed as defamation etc.

[dkGba]

Screw that little weasel!! People DIED because of his greed- no different than rest of them.

[rottweiller_inc]

I have kind of a private bet that Zuck got tired of servicing the woke workers never ending complaints and issues and he took the first opportunity to do the thing that will make them self-fire.

[A_Former_Democrat]

He’s just CYA

Isn’t he rumored to be on the Epstein List?

F Zuck

[DiogenesLamp]

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

This stuff has been going on since Abraham Lincoln started it. He arrested anyone who criticized him. He even arrested a song writer (Septimus Winner) for writing a song calling for Lincoln to "Give us back our old commander" about General McClellan.

The prisons were filled with people who didn't go along with Lincoln's propaganda, and this is how locking people up for free speech got started.

People just don't know about this.

Of course Woodrow Wilson did the same thing during WW1, but Lincoln started the practice before Wilson ever came along.

[MNDude]

> " WIRED StaffBusinessFeb 4, 2004 12:00 PM Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project The Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person's entire existence. Run by Darpa, the Defense Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, The Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person's entire existence. Run by Darpa, the Defense Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences." Gee, what does Lifelog sound like? They realized nobody was going to sign up to a pentagon endeavor designed to track relationships and experiences so they rebranded it as a sexy product that a college geek invented.

[DiogenesLamp]

Only a fool thinks Zuckerberg has seen the light. He just as bad as ever.

He's just decided to brown nose Trump instead of Brown nosing Biden.

[MinorityRepublican]

If they reported honestly leading up to the 2020 election Biden would have lost badly.

It appears to me that the Biden Administration used Zuckerberg. And he didn't appreciate that.

If you notice, no Zuckerbucks were used to finance Harris' campaign in 2024.

Zuckerberg refused to endorse anyone in 2024.

He was all in for Biden back in 2020.

[South Dakota]

Censoring is still apart of Facebook.
If you post something they don’t like they will restrict your ability to answer those who try to contradict you

[rottweiller_inc]

Yeah. When I first started studying History it was like a punch in gut to discover there really is no period of you can call “the good old days”. Corruption, ambition and chicancry has always been with us every step of the way through history, like a dog turd on the bottom of the shoe.