Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, a lot of things seem to be changing in this country for the better.
One of them was a surprising announcement from Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who informed Facebook users and everyone else that they were moving away from using third-party fact-checkers on their platforms.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video released last Tuesday.
“More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.,” he also noted.
Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan explained in an interview with Fox News, “It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check,” which was in part a reason for the company’s abrupt about-face.
Not surprisingly, this was welcome news in conservative circles, considering it was conservative writers and websites that most often got punished for WrongThink during the coronavirus pandemic and even after that as a result of the left-wing biases of many of the fact-checkers Facebook used, including Politifact.
On the other hand, the fact-checkers themselves are, of course, not happy, with Politifact executive director Aaron Sharockman opining, “The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision could not be less subtle.”
He argued it was Facebook, not the fact-checkers, who would make the decisions on removing or penalizing a post, not the fact-checkers.
Those in the mainstream media who welcomed the fact-checkers and their heavy-handedness as it related to conservative content in particular also huffed and puffed over Zuckerberg’s announcement.
“Big picture: Mark Zuckerberg just announced sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters,” CNN media hall monitor Brian Stelter tweeted.
“Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting conservative opinions,” he also wrote, snarling over the idea that conservative opinions should see the light of day without massive oversight from biased fact-checkers.
While it’s true Zuckerberg has met twice with Trump since last November’s election, it’s safe to say the decision was likely in the works well before then when one considers what Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) back in August.
In it, Zuckerberg informed Jordan that Facebook was under constant pressure from the Biden administration to censor and remove COVID-19-related content, including some memes, and that the Biden officials would get very frustrated whenever Facebook pushed back.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said in the letter.
More recently, Zuckerberg revealed to popular podcaster Joe Rogan, “These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse” if Facebook didn’t do what they wanted them to do.
Whatever the reasons for Zuckerberg’s change of heart, this is good news for conservative writers, sites and elected officials going forward, as it will once again allow the free flow of ideas and differing viewpoints on some of the world’s most popular social media platforms, which will be a refreshing change of pace from how things were done there in previous years.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
