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Censorship Industrial Complex

AboutFacebook: Zuckerberg zaps fact checkers in favour free speech

Published

10 months ago

9 minute read

It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people a voice.

Mark Zuckerberg surprised the planet today with the release of a 5 minute video detailing a 5 point plan to pave the way for more free expression on Facebook.

Zuckerberg says his goal has always been to “give people a voice”, but governments and legacy media have been pushing Facebook towards censorship.  Now Facebook is going to concentrate on censoring illegal issues, and back off on punishing speech.

The five part plan includes:

  1. Getting rid of fact checkers in favour of ‘X’ style “Community Notes”
  2. Simplifying content policies to get rid of restrictions around topics like immigration and gender.
  3. Focus filters on tackling illegal and ‘high severity violations’ instead of low severity violations.
  4. Bringing back ‘Civic Content’, so more ‘political’ content will be seen.
  5. Facebook will move Content Moderation Teams from California to Texas to help erase the ‘bias of our teams’ and work with Donald Trump’s government to help promote free speech around the world.

From Mark Zuckerberg Facebook

It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression. We’re replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes. Looking forward to this next chapter.

Zuckerberg’s full comments:

Hey, everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. But a lot has happened over the last several years. There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.

Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, Child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.

But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. 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. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we’re gonna 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 acts starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US. So over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system.

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.

Third, we’re changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. We used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation. Now we’re going to focus those filters on tackling illegal and high severity violations and for lower severity violations. We’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action. The problem is that the filters make mistakes and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t. So by dialing them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms. We’re also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is a tradeoff. 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.

Fourth, we’re bringing back civic content. For a while, the community asks to see less politics because there’s making people stressed. So we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we’re in a new era now and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again. So we’re going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.

Fifth, we’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US based content review is going to be based in Texas. As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally, we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world. They’re going after American companies and pushing to censor more.

The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censor apps from even working in the country.

The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years when even the US government has pushed for censorship by going after US and other American companies. It has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it. It’ll take time to get this right. And these are complex systems. They’re never going to be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove.

But the bottom line is that after. For years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content. It is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people a voice. I’m looking forward to this next chapter. Stay good out there. And more to come soon

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Senate Grills Meta and Google Over Biden Administration’s Role in COVID-Era Content Censorship

Published on November 2, 2025

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By Cindy Harper

Lawmakers pressed Meta and Google to explain how far White House outreach went in shaping their censorship decisions.

A Senate hearing this week discussed government influence on online speech, as senior executives from Meta and Google faced questions about the Biden administration’s communications with their companies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The session, titled “Part II of Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans,” highlighted the growing concern in Washington over what lawmakers describe as government-driven pressure to suppress lawful expression.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the hearing, began by declaring that “the right to speak out is the foundation of a free society” and warning that “censorship around the world is growing.”
He accused the Biden administration of pushing technology companies to restrict Americans’ speech during the pandemic, and he faulted both the companies and Democrats for failing to resist that pressure.
“Today, we pick off where the story left off,” Cruz said, pointing to Meta and Google as examples of firms that “were pressured by the Biden administration to censor the American people.”
He pledged to introduce the Jawbone Act, which he said would “provide a robust right to redress when Americans are targeted by their own government.”
Markham Erickson, Google’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, defended the company’s approach, emphasizing that its moderation decisions are guided by long-standing internal policies, not by government direction.
“While we are a company dedicated to the goal of making the world’s information universally accessible, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have certain rules,” Erickson said, citing restrictions on “terrorist content, child sexual abuse material, hate speech, and other harmful content.”
He acknowledged that officials in the Biden administration had contacted Google during the pandemic to urge the removal of certain COVID-19 content from YouTube.
But Erickson maintained that the company “develop[ed] and enforce[d] our policies independently” and “rejected suggestions that did not align with those policies.”
Erickson also alleged that Google has a record of resisting censorship demands from foreign governments, citing its refusal to remove politically sensitive videos in Russia despite threats of imprisonment against employees and fines “that exceed more than the world’s GDP.”
Neil Potts, Meta’s Vice President of Public Policy, took a more reflective stance.
He reiterated that Meta has a “foundational commitment to free expression” and acknowledged that the company had yielded to “repeated pressure” from the Biden White House to restrict COVID-related posts, including satire and humor.
“We believe that government pressure was wrong and wish we had been more outspoken about it,” Potts said. He added that Meta “should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.”
Potts pointed to policy changes the company has made since then, such as ending its third-party fact-checking program, reducing restrictions on political topics, and adopting what he described as “a more personalized approach to political content.”
These steps, he said, were intended to “return to our ideals about free expression” and “allow for more speech.”
Senator Cruz pressed both executives on whether their companies regretted complying with government demands.
Potts responded that Meta “do[es] regret our actions for not speaking out more forcefully.”
Erickson, however, declined to use similar language, saying Google regularly receives “outreach from a lot of actors” and evaluates flagged material independently.
The exchange grew more pointed as Cruz questioned Google’s removal of a YouTube video that compiled election-fraud claims made by both major parties. Erickson conceded, “Yes, that is news,” when Cruz asked whether statements by presidential candidates about election integrity should be considered newsworthy.
But Erickson defended YouTube’s policies during the 2020 election, saying that after states had certified results, the company acted against “claims of widespread fraud” due to potential “real-world harm.”
Cruz accused Google of ideological bias and suggested the company was “unwilling to express regret for anything at all.”
He contrasted that with Meta’s statement of remorse and concluded that Google’s position reflected “a level of contempt for free speech that does not reflect well.”
Where Erickson had insisted that Google “continued to develop and enforce our policies independently,” the company’s letter to Congress acknowledged that “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach” urging the removal of COVID-19 content that did not violate platform rules.
This was somewhat of a departure from the defensive posture Google maintained before the Senate.
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Every issue we publish is part of a larger fight: preserving the principles that built this country and protecting them from erosion in the digital age.
With your help, we can do more than simply hold the line: we can push back. We can shine a light on censorship, expose growing surveillance overreach, and give a voice to those being silenced.
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Censorship Industrial Complex

Pro-freedom group to expose dangers of Liberal ‘hate crime’ bill before parliamentary committee

Published on October 29, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Canada’s Liberal justice minister has confirmed that the legislation would allow a person to be criminally charged for social media posts deemed offensive by the government.

A top Canadian pro-freedom group has been asked to testify regarding the dangers of the Liberals’ proposed internet censorship legislation.

In an October 28 press release, the Democracy Fund (TDF) announced that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has invited them to appear at the House of Commons to debate Bill C-9, which experts have warned could kill free speech in Canada.

“Our lawyers have extensive experience defending Canadians accused of breaching speech codes or uttering speech deemed ‘offensive’ by authorities,” TDF litigation director Mark Joseph stated. “We look forward to sharing our legal expertise and concerns about Bill C-9 with the Committee.”

Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act, has been blasted by constitutional experts as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those it deems have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way.

Bill C-9 was brought forth in the House of Commons on September 19 by Justice Minister Sean Fraser. The Liberals have boasted that the bill will make it a crime for people to block the entrance to, or intimidate people from attending, a church or other place of worship, a school, or a community center. The bill would also make it a crime to promote so-called hate symbols and would, in effect, ban the display of certain symbols such as the Nazi flag.

Canada’s Liberal justice minister has confirmed that the legislation would allow a person to be criminally charged for social media posts deemed offensive by the government.

Currently, the legislation is undergoing debate as Canadian lawmakers discuss how best to frame and implement the bill. Issues with the legislation, as pointed out by TDF, include “broad and undefined language” that could allow for widespread censorship online.

TDF warned that the bill “could be used to justify increased censorship and restrict Canadians’ rights to peacefully assemble, protest, and speak freely, particularly on digital platforms.”

The Committee meeting, scheduled for November 6, is a crucial part of Parliament’s review process before the bill continues to its third reading in the House of Commons.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) president John Carpay has warned that Canada will be a “police state by Christmas” if lawmakers pass three new bills introduced by the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carpay further predicted that Bill C-9 would “empower police” and the government to go after those it deems have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way.

The proposed legislation mirrors a movement in Germany to restrict sharing controversial or anti-government content online by arresting citizens who posted content deemed ‘hateful’ by the German government.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported in June, German authorities conducted more than 180 operations across the country, targeting individuals accused of spreading hate and incitement online – most of them tied to content considered far-right.

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