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Mark Zuckerberg promises end to fact-checkers, says Facebook censorship has ‘gone too far’

Published

11 months ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

In a surprise early morning post, Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram to announce that Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – will be taking steps to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms,” while seemingly placing a large share of the blame for past extreme censorship measures on pressure from the Biden administration and legacy media.

“The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” noted Zuckerberg, who met with president-elect Donald Trump shortly after his decisive election victory.  

Zuckerberg said that while he started building social media “to give people a voice,” “governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.” 

“A lot of this is clearly political,” he noted.  

He explained that Meta’s complex systems for guarding against harmful content such as drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation have been prone to make mistakes: “It’s just too many mistakes, and too much censorship.” 

 

Following X/Twitter’s lead, Meta platforms will replace “fact-checkers” with “community notes.”

“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” said Zuckerberg, but Meta’s fact checkers have been “too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.” 

Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and its U.S.-based content review will soon be based in Texas.  

“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,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s gone too far.” 

‘It feels like a new era now’ 

“We’re bringing back civic content,” said Zuckerberg. “For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was 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.” 

“We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” said the social media titan.  

“The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world,” but other countries continue to exert substantial force to limit free speech on the internet. 

Zuckerberg explained: 

  • 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 censored our 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 U.S. government,” he insisted. “And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship.”  

“By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further,” he continued. “But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.”  

‘Humility’ to now play a role in Meta’s management of its platforms 

In his 2019 speech at Georgetown University that portended social media’s crackdown on free speech, especially those expressing thoughts at odds with woke ideology, Zuckerberg claimed, “Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous.”  

The changes that were announced by Zuckerberg this morning are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression he set out in his Georgetown speech, according to Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer.  

“That means being vigilant about the impact our policies and systems are having on people’s ability to make their voices heard, and having the humility to change our approach when we know we’re getting things wrong.” 

However, Facebook has long faced criticism for its harsh censorship regime, including for deplatforming conservative users and censoring speech critical of COVID mandates and the LGBT agenda, in addition to facilitating child sex trafficking. 

In 2020, Zuckerberg spent more than $400 million to influence the presidential race that year, which election integrity advocates have credited with likely handing the White House to Joe Biden. 

X/Twitter and Facebook headed in opposite directions? 

Just as Mark Zuckerberg announced a new era of free speech on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Elon Musk and his social media giant, X (formerly Twitter) seemed to be headed in the opposite direction, toward increased censorship and suppression.

Musk and X were slammed on X over the weekend after new restrictions and punitive measures were revealed for posts critical of X, those that are deemed to be too negative, and even those that “critique or challenge other users or public figures in a way that’s perceived as harsh or personal rather than constructive.” 

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Business

Canada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.

Published on November 20, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari

Short-term climate pledges simply chase deadlines, not results

The annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is dedicated to implementing international action on climate change, is now underway in Brazil. Like other signatories to the Paris Agreement, Canada is required to provide a progress update on our pledge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. After decades of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulations aimed at decarbonizing our economy, we’re far from achieving that goal. It’s time for Canada to move past arbitrary short-term goals and deadlines, and instead focus on more effective ways to support climate objectives.

Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the federal government has introduced dozens of measures intended to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions, including more than $150 billion in “green economy” spending, the national carbon tax, the arbitrary cap on emissions imposed exclusively on the oil and gas sector, stronger energy efficiency requirements for buildings and automobiles, electric vehicle mandates, and stricter methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.

Recent estimates show that achieving the federal government’s target will impose significant costs on Canadians, including 164,000 job losses and a reduction in economic output of 6.2 per cent by 2030 (compared to a scenario where we don’t have these measures in place). For Canadian workers, this means losing $6,700 (each, on average) annually by 2030.

Yet even with all these costly measures, Canada will only achieve 57 per cent of its goal for emissions reductions. Several studies have already confirmed that Canada, despite massive green spending and heavy-handed regulations to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, remains off track to meet its 2030 emission reduction target.

And even if Canada somehow met its costly and stringent emission reduction target, the impact on the Earth’s climate would be minimal. Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions, and that share is projected to fall as developing countries consume increasing quantities of energy to support rising living standards. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), emerging and developing economies are driving 80 per cent of the growth in global energy demand. Further, IEA projects that fossil fuels will remain foundational to the global energy mix for decades, especially in developing economies. This means that even if Canada were to aggressively pursue short-term emission reductions and all the economic costs it would imposes on Canadians, the overall climate results would be negligible.

Rather than focusing on arbitrary deadline-contingent pledges to reduce Canadian emissions, we should shift our focus to think about how we can lower global GHG emissions. A recent study showed that doubling Canada’s production of liquefied natural gas and exporting to Asia to displace an equivalent amount of coal could lower global GHG emissions by about 1.7 per cent or about 630 million tonnes of GHG emissions. For reference, that’s the equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s annual GHG emissions. This type of approach reflects Canada’s existing strength as an energy producer and would address the fastest-growing sources of emissions, namely developing countries.

As the 2030 deadline grows closer, even top climate advocates are starting to emphasize a more pragmatic approach to climate action. In a recent memo, Bill Gates warned that unfounded climate pessimism “is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Even within the federal ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the tone is shifting. Despite the 2030 emissions goal having been a hallmark of Canadian climate policy in recent years, in a recent interview, Minister Julie Dabrusin declined to affirm that the 2030 targets remain feasible.

Instead of scrambling to satisfy short-term national emissions limits, governments in Canada should prioritize strategies that will reduce global emissions where they’re growing the fastest.

Annika Segelhorst

Junior Economist

Elmira Aliakbari

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute
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Artificial Intelligence

Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data

Published on November 19, 2025

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By Ken Macon

Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.

When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.
Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.
Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.
The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.
It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”
The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”
Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.
Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.
The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”
This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.
There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.
They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.
The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.
Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”
In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.
The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.
The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”
The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.
Google is yet to comment on the filing.
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