Guess who's joining Elon Musk and Donald Trump in a fight for free speech? Or at least free-ish speech? We certainly didn't have "Meta Goes MAGA" on our Bingo card for this week, but here we are. We think. Maybe. 

Starting today, "fact checks" will cease on Meta, Mark Zuckerberg announced in a five-minute video this morning. 

Zuckerberg says Facebook and Instagram will now prioritize free speech.

Attributes a recent cultural tipping point to debates like immigration and gender where censorship is now "out of touch".

Says fact checkers were too biased and legacy media too political about censorship pic.twitter.com/1ituXsFm5s

— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) January 7, 2025

“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video Tuesday. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.” ...

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he said.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”

Zuckerberg directly referenced Trump several times in the video, criticizing the legacy media for their coverage of his first term in office. He also said that fact-checkers had become “too politically biased.”

Just how serious is this? ABC reports that Zuckerberg has shuffled the board at Meta, adding a key Trump ally to the mix:

Meta has appointed three new members to its board of directors, including Dana White, the president and CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a key figure in the orbit of incoming President Donald Trump. ...

His ties with White date back to 2001, when White hosted a UFC at the Republican's former casino-hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Trump Taj Mahal. Trump has also appeared with White at UFC matches over the years, especially in his 2024 campaign as part of efforts to appeal to younger male voters.

White, in turn, has had speaking roles at the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions and appeared on stage at Trump’s election victory party in November, even speaking briefly to the crowd.

That seems more like favor-currying than anything else. It still demonstrates a willingness to get a broader spectrum of voices at Meta than just the progressive-Academia elite clique that Zuckerberg favored when that clique managed to win elections. That's a substantive change, even apart from Zuckerberg's motives and commitment to this cause. (Beege has a scorching post coming up next on those points, so be sure to watch for it.)

Let's instead focus on what this means for users, and what it means for the current political environment. I'd all but given up Facebook over its cooperation with the Big Tech/Big Gov't Censorship Complex, which Elon Musk exposed after buying Twitter outright. Without the heavy hand of government-influenced speech restrictions, Facebook might become more useful, although I'd bet that Zuckerberg has ceded the Public Square concession to Twitter/X by waiting this long to come around. Those user who still engage in debate on Meta's platforms will still have the benefit of having their voice restored and being allowed to make their arguments openly and honestly, something that only the Left has enjoyed on Meta for the last several years. 

Politically, it's a body blow to the Left. Until now, the censorship activists and narrative martinets have been able to focus all of their ire on Musk, who seems to enjoy the fight. Zuckerberg clearly doesn't, but he's not going it alone with Musk already in the ring. Now they have to to fight a two-front war, and they will likely retreat further into Bluesky to do it. Zuckerberg also hints at joining Musk and Trump to fight the EU on speech policies and censorship, which complicates matters for the EU Stasi too. They might have been able to demonize Musk by himself and encourage people to migrate to Meta by forcing Twitter/X out of their markets. If Zuckerberg plans to join forces with Musk on this, then EUcrats will have to either back down or tell their constituents to go to, er ... where? Telegram? Vladimir Putin would love that.

Anyway, I'd advice everyone to remain as skeptical as possible about Zuckerberg's commitment to this position, as Beege will argue shortly. But let's also recognize that the incentives are suddenly shifting away from Big Brother ... and that's no small improvement over the staus quo ante.