Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will ease censorship in favor of free speech

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced big changes for the influential social media platform to encourage free and open speech.

Critics have accused social media companies of selective application of censorship policies to privilege partisan politics. Zuckerberg has denied accusations of intentional political bias but in his announcement acknowledged that the election results pushed him toward changing censorship policies.

‘We’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our 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 on social media.

He said that his company would implement a community notes program similar to that used by the X platform rather than the third-party fact-checking policies that have been greatly criticized. Some topics that were previously suppressed, like immigration and gender issues, will face less censorship.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg admitted. “So we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

The new policies will apply to Facebook as well as Instagram, which was acquired by Meta, the parent company of Facebook. The platforms serve billions of users across the globe.

Zuckerberg explained that the complex moderation systems that were in place would punish millions of innocent users when mistakes were made.

“Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people, and we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he said.

“The reality is that this is a trade-off,” Zuckerberg added. “It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”

In November, after the election, Trump’s team confirmed that Zuckerberg had dinner with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

“Mark, obviously, he has his own interest, and he has his own company, and he has his own agenda,” said Trump’s appointed deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. “But he’s made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership.”

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