Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg — can we trust them? When shrewd tech businessmen react to political change and suddenly announce themselves the champions of free speech and lovers of liberty, it is important to assess their past and ongoing actions to see if they’re sincere. And in the cases of Musk and Zuckerberg, some uncomfortable truths undermine the rosy view they’d like you and me to have of them.
Mark Zuckerberg has once again come out and admitted that Meta wrongly censors free speech under government pressure. It has become quite a habit for him this year, but this time he is actually proposing some concrete changes. What he is not doing is admitting that free speech should be inviolable, no matter what the government says, nor is he apparently engaging in any massive restitution to the countless users who lost their data, their businesses, and more to Meta censorship (PJ Media was one outlet that was targeted). His previous apologies were followed by no changes in behavior. Now his behavior is changing, but he does not seem to be acknowledging that the lies and false views that drove previous Meta censorship are fundamentally problematic.
One thing Zuckerberg did not do in his video, for instance, was say that the tech company should resist governments when they demand censorship of citizens, even if they haven’t done so previously. Indeed, his whole argument as to why he couldn’t reverse Meta censorship before this was that the U.S. government and other governments have pressured his company to censor. That is not a sufficient excuse. We do not exonerate companies that worked for the Nazi government of all blame just because the government told them to do so. Why should the principle be different when it comes to corrupt regimes in China, Europe, and America — especially America, with our First Amendment?
Zuckerberg essentially admitted that his company’s policies are heavily dependent on who happens to be in the White House. Now that Trump is in, he wants to work with Trump, he says. If ever anti-speech Democrats like Joe Biden should take power again, would Meta resume aggressive censorship? The answer would seem to be yes. In fact, censorship isn’t going away. Zuck promised still to work “very hard” to remove supposedly “illegal” content. And frankly, I don’t think Meta should be coordinating with any president, even Trump. Is it a private company or an arm of the government?
Furthermore, the fact-checking program is being changed at Meta, but it is not being canceled. Fact-checking has no place on social media platforms, especially those that coordinate with government officials, not as an official company program. It is antithetical to the First Amendment. But just because Zuckerberg is overhauling it, we are supposed to be excited. This is the same man who has been interfering in our elections for years, including this past year.
This new fact-checking system brings us to Elon Musk, as the new program on Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram is supposed to be similar to X’s (according to Zuckerberg). This is not a positive, and it is astounding how many people are already celebrating this as a victory. Leaving aside Zuckerberg‘s track record of authoritarianism and dishonesty, let’s look at how fact-checking works on X, which Musk claims is such a bastion of free speech. Musk changed the mode of censorship somewhat; that is true. Instead of outright banning people, his policy is usually what he calls “freedom of speech, not reach.” Hence, if you say something he or his censors do not approve of, you could find yourself fact-checked, suppressed, demonetized, or otherwise restricted.
New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.
You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.
If you become a target of X Community Notes, which the new Meta fact-checking imitates, your content will be demonetized and users who interacted with your post will all be notified. Community Notes recently went after the New York Post for showing that Musk had made contradictory statements about H1-B visas, censoring the Post and defending Musk. Community Notes also go after users who are pro-life, anti-Islamic Jihad, or critical of LGBTQ ideology. Censorship occurs daily on X; the platform’s CEO Linda Yaccarino openly bragged about censoring speech in order to appease advertisers. MRC’s CensorTrack database records many cases of X censorship, and Musk just announced new efforts to suppress “negativity” on X.
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It is, in fact, worrisome that Musk, with his contradictory actions and words, his radical climate alarmism, his desire for more cheap foreign labor, and most especially his heavy investments in Communist China, should be so close to Trump right now. True, he helped Trump in this last election, but he is still acting and speaking on some key topics very much as he always has. Like Zuckerberg, he joined the winning team and it is paying off — for now. Meanwhile, the American people are still at the mercy of clever Big Tech oligarchs who change their minds constantly on what speech they will allow and what they will crush.
