Photo: Alamy
The Trump ripple effect of advocating for freedom of speech in big tech continues to make waves after his historic election win. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a video on Monday the reversal of of independent fact-checking by mirroring X’s community notes.
Zuckerberg said in his video: “It’s time to get We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
“More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S,” Zuckerberg continued.
This unprecedented move by Zuckerberg happened just less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump makes his return back to the White House on Inauguration Day.
Looking back four years ago, Trump became the first sitting president who was suspended from every social media platform due to the aftermath of January 6, 2021. Conservative users in social media also faced censorship and account suspensions throughout the last four years by independent fact-checkers, who consisted of third-party organizations that analyzed users post based on left-leaning bias.
Big tech picked and chose which unpopular opinion to censor and cancel that affected millions of users worldwide. This is a huge deal as Zuckerberg recognized the shift in the political landscape after president 47’s win to end Facebook and Instagram’s censorship policies.
Freedom of speech was stablished by America’s Founding Fathers that declares in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
In modern times, protecting freedom of speech also includes social media.
