Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s previous comments about censorship have resurfaced following his decision to do so put an end to fact-checking on its US platformsrevealing a legendary timeline of seemingly contradictory views that seemed to bring him into conflict with his company.
As controversy arose over his refusal to fact-check political ads in 2019, Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook did not support censoring its users, citing his belief that people had the right to “make their own decisions” based on the content presented.
‘I don’t think a private company should censor politicians or news’ Zuckerberg said in a CBS interview at the time.
“In general, I believe that people should basically decide what is credible, what they want to believe and who they want to vote for, and I don’t think that’s something that we want tech companies, or any kind, to do otherwise business (to) do,” he said in a Fox News interview that same year.
He also gave a speech at Georgetown University in 2019, condemning China for stifling freedom of expression on the internet.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, arrives to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2020, Zuckerberg doubled down on his stance, stating in a subsequent Fox News interview: “I just strongly believe that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of the truth about everything people say online. Private companies probably shouldn’t be , especially these platform companies should not be in a position to do that.”
TRUMP SAYS META ‘has come a long way’ AFTER ZUCKERBERG ENDS FACT-CHECKING ON PLATFORMS
But just a month after that appearance, Zuckerberg’s company Meta, and then Facebook, announced it was expanding its U.S. fact-checking program. recommend at the time as “an important part of our strategy to reduce the spread of misinformation” on the platform.
In the wake of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Facebook banned then-President Trump from the social media site. The company did not restore Trump’s account until January 2023.
In April 2024, Zuckerberg admitted by letter that Facebook was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor Americans regarding COVID-19 content. Zuckerberg said he did not support the decision despite admitting it, and expressed regret for giving in to pressure from Biden officials.
The tech mogul’s previous comments were thrust back into the spotlight this week after he announced that Meta is lifting restrictions on speech to restore “free speech” on Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms by ending its third-party fact-checking program, admitting that their content moderation practices have gone “too far.”
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was first implemented after the 2016 election and was used to manage “content” and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure,” executives said.
Meta platforms are displayed on a smartphone screen and the Meta logo appears in the background in Chania, Greece, on August 9, 2024. (Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
At the time of Zuckerberg’s announcement on Tuesday, 10 prominent fact-checking organizations were working with the company to moderate political content in the US.
FACEBOOK ADMITS ‘ERROR’ IN CENSORING ICONIC ATTEMPT ON TRUMP PHOTO: ‘THIS WAS AN ERROR’
Reuters, USA Today, The Dispatch, PolitiFact, Agence France-Presse US, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, Science Feedback and ElDetector Univision made up the team of third-party fact-checking partners, Facebook confirmed to Fox News Digital.
They were told to prioritize “provably false claims, especially if they are current, trending and consistent. They do not prioritize claims that are unimportant or contain only minor inaccuracies,” said one researcher. Meta 2024 press release.
Many of these organizations lamented Zuckerberg’s decision to ax their program Tuesday, calling his attempt to avoid online bias misguided and sudden.
Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk outlined his disappointment and disagreement with the move, stating that he was only made aware of the ended partnership through media coverage of Zuckerberg’s decision to discontinue the program.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook Inc., speaks during the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, on Friday, January 31, 2020. (George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed when he first heard about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking Partnership of which Lead Stories has been a part since 2019 through media reports and a press release,” he said wrote Tuesday.
The Facebook fact-checker, which employs several former CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the more prominent fact-checkers Facebook has used in recent years.
PolitiFact similarly mocked the move, which ended their eight-year partnership with Meta, stating that Meta first hired them “to identify false information and deception on its platforms.”
Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism organization that owns PolitiFact, called Zuckerberg’s statement “disappointing.”
“It perpetuates a misunderstanding about his own program,” Brown said of Zuckerberg’s statement. “Facts are not censorship. Fact checkers never censored anything. And Meta was always in control. It’s time to stop using inflammatory and false language when describing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”
AFP, a global news agency based in Paris, also said it had learned that Zuckerberg canceled the program at the same time as the public.
“It is a major blow to the fact-checking community and journalism. We are assessing the situation,” they told Reuters.
Zuckerberg’s decision was widely celebrated by conservativeswho have become frustrated with fact-checkers after a number of questionable practices sparked outrage among media critics and right-wing online users. In recent years, some have accused fact-checking websites of acting as a shield for the Democratic Party with partisan intentions.
‘BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS:’ A LOOK AT MARK ZUCKERBERG’S TENSION MOMENTS IN CONGRESSIONAL HEARERS
A PolitiFact executive has blasted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for announcing the end of fact-checking on his social media platforms. (Kent Nishimura for Getty.)
Conservative KTTH radio host Jason Rantz once called PolitiFact “Democratic Party activists who have chosen to weaponize truly objective analysis” after the organization published several highly controversial fact checks against Republicans.
Rantz, at the time the organization said was one of the most “transparently partisan” websites around, often used by left-wing media to amplify political propaganda.
When asked about the 2022 accusation, PolitFact editor-in-chief Katie Sanders stated that the fact-checking website stood by his reporting.
President-elect Donald Trump has often complained about fact-checkers whining about the people behind the moderation practice throughout the 2024 campaign. He celebrated Zuckerberg’s decision Tuesday to end Meta’s third-party fact-checking, telling Fox News Digital that the company has “come a long way.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Meta said repeatedly praised its third-party fact-checking initiative as an effective system to “reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users.”
All organizations, they said, were bound by the Code of principles prepared by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which includes qualities such as “impartiality, fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding and organization, and an open and fair corrections policy.”
Meta’s web page promoting the program remains active as of Wednesday, despite Zuckerberg blaming the organizations involved for taking their moderation practices “too far.”
In the video announcing the end of the program, Zuckerberg pledged to “return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms.”
Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, praised the move Tuesday as a “great opportunity for us to tip the scales in favor of free speech.”
“We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers,” he said later told Fox News Digital. “It has become clear that there is too much political bias in what they fact-check, because they can essentially fact-check everything they see on the platform.”
“We want to ensure that discourse can take place freely on the platform, without fear of censorship,” Kaplan added. “We have the power to change the rules and make them more supportive of free speech. And we’re not just changing the rules, we’re actually changing the way we enforce the rules.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Kaplan said Meta is “killing it completely” and will replace it with a “Community Notes” model similar to the one used on X, formerly Twitter.
Meta’s global fact-checking program will continue to run seemingly uninterrupted. The company did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital about the future of the global program.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Nikolus Lanum contributed to this report.
