Zuckerberg announces changes to free speech on Meta (including the topic of gender)

[Justme56]

There are a few clips on TwiX but as not everyone e is on this platform I am linking to You tube (apologies I don't know anything about this site). Some interesting points including:

"Second we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas and it's gone too far so I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms."

Who knows if anything will come of this, but it is a change in direction.

I've had many Facebook bans and lost profiles thanks to the left wing biased moderation on Facebook.

Let's hope we can now say what we want.

Surely admins of FB groups will still do as they please?

https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/

We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement. We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate. It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms. These policy changes may take a few weeks to be fully implemented.

Facebook is a law unto itself so time will tell. I've lost count of the bans I've had and I've never posted anything controversial.

I used to admin a GC Facebook group. Occasionally we would get a notification from Facebook that they removed something someone posted in the group. It was done automatically based on algorithms. Often use of words like dyke would trigger it.

you're right, they can, you can set the rules in your own groups - but FB are moving THEIR moderation operation to TEXAS from California, away from the bias (which is a VERY interesting corporate move I think) so you cannot be automatically banned / posts deleted for "wrong think" on gender.

This is US election result-related, isn't it?

Because he didn't give a shit about restricting (left-abhorred) free speech when the Dems were in.

It sounds potentially very interesting and positive on the whole. I suppose the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. It is hard to know which parts of what he says are motivated by a genuine and principled desire to promote free and constructive discourse, and which parts are weaselly responses to perceived threats to his business model.

I disliked his claim that the pressure towards censorship has largely come from 'legacy media' and foreign states. Most of the censorship faced by gender critical women seems to come precisely from the US and social media.

Still, what matters is whether there is improvement based on the changes he has announced. Watch and wait seems in order.

This is very good news. I think that X relaxing its moderation has had a noticeable effect in shifting elite opinions on this and other issues. And FB is way more widely used than X.

It's depressing of course how unprincipled it all is (I doubt this would have happened if Kamala had won). But we must take our wins where we find them!

Good points made above about group rules and automatic censorship. I post links toarticles abput women's rights that dance around the edges of gender, hoping my friends and relations will join the dots in their own woke heads, but might try something more on point after this announcement. It's a bit awkward given the brother situation.

I did also see Nick Clegg has left FB and wondering where he will pop up next. Maybe the family wants to come back to the UK and he will be looking for some quango top job.

Reading that statement it feels like the house of cards could be collapsing for gender

'Changes to free speech' is one way of putting it, but it also means that Meta is doing away with third-party fact checking, which, it used to proudly boast, was an ethically-inspired defence against misinformation.

If 'fact-checking' was indeed the source of censorship, It's a good thing it's gone, but isn't it interesting how quickly 'ethics' gets dumped by these big companies when the political climate changes?

Zuckerberg said
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US” .

I'm not on social media, but I gather that X is even worse than Twitter, so the idea of FB, Insta and the other Meta platforms modelling themselves on X doesn't sound great.

Unless of course it encourages even more people to leave the billionaire tech-bros profit-driven universe of social media ...

Yep.

I used to admin a GC Facebook group. Occasionally we would get a notification from Facebook that they removed something someone posted in the group.

Yes I get those fairly regularly. Where you can see what they were, 9 times out of ten they strike me as a bit ridiculous.

I got banned for liking too many cat posts on their suggested videos . Ie they thought i was spam . I mean I've seen spam constantly on most Facebook posts that are fake American soldiers but seems nothing is actually done to actual spammers/scammers

So did Nick Clegg see the writing on the wall, or was he pushed?

Presumably this will also affect Instagram, so I wonder where all the institutions who gleefully announced they were leaving X in the past month or 2 to focus on Insta/Facebook plan to relocate now.

I'm not on social media, but I gather that X is even worse than Twitter, so the idea of FB, Insta and the other Meta platforms modelling themselves on X doesn't sound great.

Community Notes is much better than "fact checks" by people with a particular bias.

Its worth remembering that most deletes on facebook have been because someone has reported you.

There are very few automatic deletes.

So you may think you are part of a FB group that is supportive and friendly, but you can be sure that in that group will be someone whose sole purpose is to report posts they dont like.

These same self appointed thought police do the same on FWR as we know.

The issue then becomes that those who decide what is a valid complaint are more than likely be totally unqualified to arbitrate, and / or be by instinct an unrecontructed incel.

I have no faith in Zugerberg but I think even he has had to accept that appointing 3rd party groups to do their censorship for them is far too open to bias.

So apart from ingratiating himself with Trump (and contradicting his view point of a few years ago) he has also accepted that you cant delegate an unacountable group of people to take decisions you then have to support.

ie using freemarket methods to set up proper oversight of comments doesn't work.

But then given the culture in the states, I doubt an in house system would be much better.

Its not just that the tech bros rule the internet but increasingly the IRL world.

Their values will still prevail.

As much because too many users want to use their products.

Meta’s decision to scrap its third-party fact-checking and to loosen content moderation has been labelled “chilling” and could have “dire consequences” for online safety, experts and campaigners have said.

The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads said it was ending third-party fact-checking on posts in the US and would instead switch to an X-style Community Notes system where users flag content as false or misleading.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said the decision was about “restoring free expression” on its platforms and “reducing mistakes” it said automated content moderation systems were making, with Meta saying it believed it was amounting to censorship in some cases, accusing some fact-checkers of being influenced by their own biases.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/mark-zuckerberg-meta-facebook-instagram-donald-trump-b2675302.html

Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Donald Trump to the White House and said that, starting in the US, he would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”.

X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, relies on other users to add caveats and context to contentious posts.

Zuckerberg said Meta’s “factcheckers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created”. The tech firm’s content moderation teams will be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”, he said. He admitted that changes to the way Meta filters content would mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff”.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/meta-facebook-instagram-threads-mark-zuckerberg-remove-fact-checkers-recommend-political-content

I got a month long ban for commenting on a cat video. It was a news article about a man drop kicking someone's cat across the road. Apparently saying that I'd rip his head off if that were my cat, is inciting violence and against their rules. But videos of real cats being hurt is totally fine.

Not a spoof headline - actually from the New York Times:

Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False.

Fact-checking groups that worked with Meta said they had no role in deciding what the company did with the content that was fact-checked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/business/mark-zuckerberg-meta-fact-check.html

These same self appointed thought police do the same on FWR as we know

IMO this will be no better for women and girls.

The whole nod towards ‘free speech’ is disingenuous. Dropping fact checkers is purely political ingratiation with Trump with some happy coincidence of lower costs thrown in. Who has the time, energy and inclination to become gate keepers moderators? It’ll be mostly men. Look at Wikipedia and how anti-women those moderators are. FB will become just like that.

Edited to add that Zuckerberg threw the fact checking companies under the bus pinning all blame on them for not being objective. As opposed to the thousands of Russian bot farms.

If it works in the same way as Community Notes on Twitter it will work better. The problem is when you start dictating that only some responses are allowed. It's fairer than Wikipedia.

Does anyone, anywhere have any actual morals or principles? This weasel was happy to censor views and suppress stories when the wind was blowing in the other direction, now he’s suddenly concerned about free speech?

I genuinely love the move from California to Texas. Way to go to get rid of all the grievance gerbils (sorry grim butts).