FLASHBACK: Zuckerberg and Facebook’s conflicting positions over the years on censorship

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s previous comments about censorship have resurfaced following his decision to end data verification on its US platformsrevealing a historical chronology of seemingly contradictory positions that seemed to put him at odds with his company.

As controversy grew over his refusal to fact-check political ads in 2019, Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook did not support censorship of 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 the news,” Zuckerberg said in a CBS interview At the moment.

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“In general, I think that, as a principle, people should decide what is credible, what they want to believe and who they want to vote for, and I don’t think that should be something we want for tech companies or any kind of other company (for) do”, he said in a Fox News interview that same year.

He also gave a speech at Georgetown University in 2019, criticizing China for strangling free speech on the Internet.

In 2020, Zuckerberg doubled down on his position, stating in a subsequent Fox News interview: “I firmly believe that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth for everything people say online. Private companies probably shouldn’t be, especially these “. “Platform companies should not be in the position to do that.”

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But just a month after that appearance, Zuckerberg’s company Meta, then Facebook, announced that it was expanding its fact-checking program in the United States. promoting it at that time as “a key piece of our strategy to reduce the spread of misinformation” on the platform.

In the wake of the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, Facebook banned then-President Trump from accessing the social network. The company did not reinstate Trump’s account until January 2023.

In April 2024, Zuckerberg admitted in a 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 acknowledging it, and expressed remorse for bowing to pressure from Biden officials.

The tech mogul’s previous comments came back into the spotlight this week after he announced that Meta was lifting restrictions on speech to “restore free expression” on the Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms by ending its third-party fact-checking program, admitting that its 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.

At the time of Zuckerberg’s announcement on Tuesday, ten prominent fact-checking organizations were working with the company to moderate political content in the US.

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Reuters, USA Today, The Dispatch, PolitiFact, Agence France-Presse US, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, Science Feedback and ElDetector Univision formed the team of third-party fact-checking partners, Facebook confirmed to Fox News. Digital.

They were told to prioritize “demonstrably false claims, especially those that are timely, trending, and consequential. They do not prioritize claims that are inconsequential or contain only minor inaccuracies,” according to a Meta 2024 press release.

Many of these organizations lamented Zuckerberg’s decision to scrap their program on Tuesday, calling his attempt to prevent online bias misguided and sudden.

Lead Stories editor Maarten Schenk described his disappointment and disagreement with the move, stating that he was only informed of the partnership’s termination through media reports about Zuckerberg’s decision to cut the program.

“Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed to first learn through media reports and a press release about the end of the Meta Third-Party Fact-Checking partnership that Lead Stories has been a part of since 2019,” it said. . he wrote on Tuesday.

The Facebook fact-checker, which employs several CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the most prominent fact-checkers used by Facebook in recent years.

PolitiFact also mocked the move, which ended its eight-year partnership with Meta, stating that Meta first hired them “to identify false information and hoaxes on their platforms.”

Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism organization that owns PolitiFact, called Zuckerberg’s statement “disappointing.”

“It perpetuates a misunderstanding of its own program,” Brown said of Zuckerberg’s statement. “Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything. And Meta always held the cards. It’s time to stop invoking inflammatory and false language when describing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”

AFP, a global news agency based in Paris, said they also learned that Zuckerberg was canceling the show at the same time as the public.

“This is a blow to the fact-checking community and journalism. We are evaluating the situation.” they told Reuters.

Zuckerberg’s decision was widely celebrated by conservativeswho have become frustrated with fact-checkers after a series of dubious practices sparked outrage from media critics and right-wing online users. In recent years, some have accused fact-checking websites of acting as shields for the Democratic Party, with partisan intentions.

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Conservative KTTH radio host Jason Rantz once called PolitiFact “Democratic Party activists who have chosen to weaponize what should be truly objective analysis” after the organization published several highly controversial fact checks against Republicans. .

Rantz, at that time, said the organization was one of the most “transparently partisan” websites available, often used by left-wing media to amplify political propaganda.

When asked about the 2022 indictment, PolitFact managing editor Katie Sanders stated that the fact-checking website kept his reports.

President-elect Donald Trump has frequently complained about fact-checkers, often complaining about people behind the moderation practice throughout the 2024 campaign. He welcomed Zuckerberg’s decision to end Meta’s third-party fact-checking on Tuesday, telling Fox News Digital that the company has “come a long way.” path”.

Ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Meta repeatedly promoted its third-party fact-checking initiative as an effective system to “reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users.”

All the organizations, they said, were linked to the Code of principles drafted by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which includes qualities such as “non-partisanship, fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding and organization, and an open and honest correctional policy.”

The Meta website promoting the program remains active as of Wednesday, even though Zuckerberg blamed 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 expression on our platforms.”

Meta global affairs director Joel Kaplan praised the move as a “great opportunity for us to strike a balance in favor of free expression” on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.

“We used independent, third-party fact-checkers,” he later said. he told Fox News Digital. “It has become clear that there is too much political bias in what they choose to verify because they can basically verify everything they see on the platform.”

“We want to ensure that speech can develop 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 expression. And we’re not just changing the rules, we’re actually changing the way we enforce them.”

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Kaplan said Meta is “putting an end to that completely” and will replace it with a “Community Notes” model similar to that used on X, formerly Twitter.

Meta’s global fact-checking program will apparently continue to run uninterrupted. The company did not respond when asked by Fox News Digital about the future of the global program.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and Nikolus Lanum contributed to this report.