Zuckerberg pledges to 'dramatically reduce the amount of censorship' on Facebook, Instagram

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has promised a back-to-basics revolution at Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

In a video posted this morning, the tech magnate praised President-elect Donald Trump and pledged to bring freedom of speech back to his social media platforms.

Among the changes he pledged were ditching “politically biased” fact-checkers, creating an X-style community notes feature, removing censorship filters and blocks on topics such as immigration and gender, and allowing politics to once again flourish as a topic of debate among users.

Zuckerberg said there had been “too much censorship” at his platforms and took a not-so-subtle swipe at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for demanding restrictions on free speech.

In a press release written by his new chief global affairs officer, former George W. Bush adviser Joel Kaplan, the company said: “Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do.

“We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression. Today, we’re making some changes to stay true to that ideal.”

Zuckerberg also said:

• Europe had increasingly become home to “laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative”

• Countries in Latin America, meanwhile, “have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down.”

• The election of Donald Trump in November was a “cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech”

• Meta will continue to take content relating to terrorism, child exploitation and drugs “very seriously”

• The new policies will “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms”

• But they will also mean Meta will “catch less bad stuff”

• Meta’s “content moderation teams,” meanwhile, will be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”

It’s the latest indication of Zuckerberg’s changing political and philosophical views.

In recent months he has become more and more favourable towards the incoming Republican administration in the US.

That has included meeting with Trump and donating to his inauguration fund.

Meta’s announcement today shows the marketplace of ideas in action. Its users want a social media platform that doesn’t suppress political content or use top-down fact-checkers.

The company concedes that its past moderation practices have introduced bias and haven’t worked,… pic.twitter.com/fZc5NJe9IV

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) January 7, 2025

He also praised the president after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania last July in an attempted assassination.

It comes after many years in which the tech magnate was accused of draconian censorship on his platforms, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He also banned President Donald Trump from Meta products in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 riots in Washington, DC.

News remains banned on Meta platforms in Canada as part of the firm's conflict with the Liberal government's Online News Act.