Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook and Instagram would end their work third party fact checkers and loosening certain content restrictions was praised by some conservative activists, who hailed it as a “vindication” for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who in late 2023 dissented from the rest of the court in a content regulation case in which a post of former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The case revolved around the question of Meta acted outside his scope when his platform, Facebook, temporarily removed a 30-minute video posted by Kennedy that contained vaccine misinformation and other false claims about COVID-19. The Supreme Court majority declined to hear the case without explanation, but Alito disagreed and was the only dissenter to write for the court.
Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, denounced the video’s removal in a scathing dissent, saying the platform had censored a kind of political speech in its efforts to tackle disinformation, and could therefore be seen as acting on behalf of the USA government and possibly causing what he described as “irreparable” damage.
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Judge Samuel Alito Jr. during a formal group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Our democratic form of government is undermined when government officials prevent a candidate for high office from communicating with voters, and such efforts are especially dangerous when the officials who engage in such conduct are accountable to a rival candidate,” Alito said in the dissent .
“I would allow him to intervene to ensure that we can evaluate the merits of respondents’ claims and to prevent the irreparable loss of his First Amendment rights,” Alito added.
“Because Mr. Kennedy’s arguments on the merits are substantially the same as those of respondents, granting intervention would not significantly affect petitioners’ burdens on this issue,” Alito wrote. “But the refusal to intervene will likely prevent Mr. Kennedy from defending the rights he claims until the spring of 2024 and perhaps not until June of that year. And by then, several months of the presidential campaign will have passed.”
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Meta and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in a social media video that they had “gone too far” and allowed too much political bias from third-party fact-checkers. (Joe Rogan experience)
Zuckerberg announced earlier this month that Meta would end previous content restrictions on Facebook and Instagram — which were put in place after the 2016 election — and acknowledged in a social media video that they had “gone too far” and had too much allowed. political bias from external fact checkers.
“We’ve reached a point where there are just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said in the announcement.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural turning point to re-prioritize expression. So we’re going back to our roots, focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms.”
Meta will now replace that system with a “Community Notes”-style program, similar to social media platform X’s approach, he said. X is owned by Elon Muskthe co-director of the planned Department of Government Efficiency.
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That news was praised by Mollie Hemingway, the editor-in-chief of The Federalist, who commented on X that Zuckerberg’s decision “validated” Alito’s dissent. “Kind of crazy how Zuck said ‘what they did had to be illegal,’ but the majority in the court was like ‘I mean, who knows?'” Hemingway said of the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss the case to take.
