Who would have guessed that Mark Zuckerberg is a free speech champion? In a video shared widely across social media, the Meta boss announced that it was time for Facebook to return to its “roots around free expression.” The billions invested in algorithms to detect ‘hate speech’ and the employment of fact-checkers, all aimed at curtailing ‘disinformation’ across his social media apps, are now apparently being replaced by users adding community notes to posts. No more AI-driven policing of speech.
When a powerful Big Tech baron comes out of the censor’s closet to declare his belief in free speech, we should welcome it. The alternative is worse. However, our freedom of speech should surely not be in the gift of any government, judge or Big Tech titan.
Zuckerberg has tremendous power: he owns and runs Facebook, which has around 3.07 billion users; Instagram, with around 2 billion; and WhatsApp, with at least 2 billion. His decision in favour of freedom will impact the policing of billions of people’s speech online.
But excuse me for raising a sceptical eyebrow. Zuckerberg’s U-turn might have something to do with his beliefs, but the history of Facebook and censorship should not generate uncritical confidence. It is a sordid history of commercial expediency rather than upholding political principles. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times reported that human resource workers quickly removed posts by employees who disagreed with the new free speech line after Zuckerberg’s video announcement. Free speech, indeed.
Zuckerberg has been a political chameleon who has changed colour as the political and cultural tide around him has fluctuated. Business interests rather than a deep attachment to freedom of expression have driven and continue to drive Mr. Zuckerberg.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for example, Facebook became an enthusiastic participant in the disinformation-is-destroying-democracy narrative, which was held responsible for Donald Trump’s shock win. In addition to instituting the fact-checking partnerships he has just announced he will abandon, Zuckerberg apologised to Congress for Facebook’s role in the election. He then set up and even invited the press to tour a Facebook war room dedicated to fighting ‘false information’ on the platform.
During the Biden administration, Facebook succumbed to pressure to take down COVID-19 content that challenged the official narrative, behaviour Zuckerberg’s later said he regretted. He was so attached to the Democrat elite’s disinformation narrative that he, in the name of defending U.S. democracy, banned Trump from Facebook when he was still the elected President of the United States. More recently, when Elon Musk exposed the attempt by the EU Commission to censor political content in the run-up to the EU elections, Meta remained silent when asked if it had co-operated.
Meta’s censorious behaviour has policed the speech of millions of people. Figures from a report by its Oversight Board are revealing. In response to apparent ‘hate speech’ transgressions, Meta developed an automated system to detect pre-publication content that potentially violated its policies. This notified users to review their posts before publishing them. Over 12 weeks in 2023, more than 100 million pieces of content triggered these user notifications, 17 million related to the Bullying and Harassment policy. This report also notes that in February 2024, Meta received more than seven million appeals from people whose content had been removed under its rules on ‘hate speech’.
Meta’s AI-driven automated ‘hate speech’ and disinformation systems (in which he has invested billions) remain the largest online language policeman on the planet. This is not going away. Indeed, Zuckerberg has announced his commitment to improving their accuracy, not curtailment.
And this is a critical point. Zuckerberg’s ability to control speech online has not been diminished. What has changed is the cultural and political climate. These potent systems remain under the control of unaccountable Tech titans. But now it appears they will be deployed in line with the new Trump administration.
Zuckerberg was upfront about this in his video announcement. He proudly paraded his commitment to work with President Trump “to push back on governments worldwide that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.” Europe’s ever-increasing laws institutionalising censorship—most notably the Digital Services Act, which Zuckerberg has happily co-operated with until now—may now become a target in a U.S. campaign against the EU’s digital regulation.
For those who take freedom of speech seriously, these developments raise questions for the future. The key one is its impact on free speech in Europe.
Online speech regulation will become part of the new geopolitics of the Trump administration, which means it will be an area of increased tension and contestation. These developments are also potentially dangerous, particularly for Europe’s rising conservative political movements.
The most significant danger is that it distracts the populists from the urgent need to build a political free-speech movement across Europe. Relying on U.S. Big Tech to do this would be naïve and self-defeating.
For years, Europe’s political elite has promoted the narrative that ordinary people lack the moral fibre or intelligence to distinguish truth from disinformation. Their hateful narrative, which Big Tech has supported until now, rests on the idea that ordinary people cannot shape their nations through democracy and are thus in need of guidance, protection, and censure when they stray from the status quo script.
The EU’s censorship operating system is a top-down technocratic authoritarian conceit by an elite that thinks they know what’s best for the rest of us. It is designed to ensure that they determine what can and cannot be said online.
Relying on U.S. Big Tech to fight this war on our behalf would replace one technocratic elitist narrative with another. Placing faith in unaccountable tech titans to lead the battle against censorship and for free speech is not only naïve and distracting. It would simply morally rehabilitate technocratic managerialism—the very thing populist politics needs to destroy.
It is not a newly- converted free speech Tech titan we need to have faith in, but the wisdom of ordinary people. Unlike the Left, we need a movement that defends free speech for all, not just the views we agree with. Free speech is too important an issue to be left to the vagaries and interests of fickle technocrats.
