Dr Verena K Brändle, explains what the changes to Meta's fact-checking and free speech rules mean for public discourse and political influence.
On 7 January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta would “get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes” and “simplify content policies”, specifically lifting restrictions on “topics like immigration and gender”. His explanation was that previous restrictions “are just out of touch with mainstream discourse”. He further said that “[t]he recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech”. These changes affect only US-based users so far. Yet, experts fear a worsening of hate and discriminatory speech on Meta’s platforms more broadly, which we know disproportionally affects women, especially women of colour, and LGBTQ+ people. Social media companies’ products afford minoritised people with novel opportunities to participate in politics, but equally allow the amplification of messages to silence such groups and to discipline political behaviour. Indeed, the result of Meta’s move may well end up being ‘free speech’ for some, while others withdraw.
A democratically elected government is shaping “mainstream discourse” in its favour through social media corporations as intermediaries, and so further defines the boundaries of what can and cannot be said in public.
But besides the ongoing debate about where sensible content moderation ends and ‘censorship’ begins (a helpful clarification can be found here), there is another aspect to this story. The incoming US government likely stands for wider changes in the communication of public administrations and agencies. Such government communication is vital to inform the public about political decisions, to justify such decisions, and so ideally supports political accountability and democratic participation. Government communication should therefore comply with certain norms, such as reliability, objectivity, transparency, and integrity. This concerns all policy fields from border politics to health. The wording differs but most democratic governments have given themselves such guidelines, including the US with the Information Quality Act. Yet, in Meta’s announcement, we can see clearly how public discourse is being shaped to match the communication of the incoming government (and its voters), not the public. In my view, Zuckerberg seems to be well aware of this when he reflects on the recent US election results as “a cultural tipping point” – an interesting euphemism for the country’s move further toward the far right. As pointed out by João C. Magalhães, Zuckerberg is “indirectly apologizing” to the new government, particularly to President-elect Trump, who had been banned from Meta’s platforms almost exactly four years ago (and reinstated in 2023).
If the lines between democratic discourse, economic greed, and political self-interests were blurry before, they have now effectively dissolved.
Seen from this perspective, Meta’s announcement has little to do with being “in touch” with “mainstream discourse” on gender and immigration on social media and much more with the company’s anticipation that, without adapting, it might have faced renewed attacks from the new-old government. Meta’s fact-checkers and content moderators would have to review the content of, say, a health secretary who is an outspoken critic of vaccination programmes. Another incentive for the shift is that the incoming US government is already on a collision course with the EU regarding trade and tariffs, the same EU which has pressed Meta & Co. to comply with stricter hate speech laws for EU-based users.
These points should not be misunderstood as an attempt to justify Meta’s decisions. Rather, they highlight the significance of what is going on: A democratically elected government is shaping “mainstream discourse” in its favour through social media corporations as intermediaries, and so further defines the boundaries of what can and cannot be said in public. And more so, the chairman of another global social media company, X, will soon have a role in said government. If the lines between democratic discourse, economic greed, and political self-interests were blurry before, they have now effectively dissolved.
...questioning the health, experiences and even existence of minoritised people is now explicitly permitted. It is hard to think of a more exclusionary way to expand ‘free speech’.
It is possible that, once in power, institutional restraints soften the blow a bit and some of the current political intentions lose their extreme edge. But the damage is done. Meta now explicitly “allow[s] allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality […]”. Targeted cursing is still not okay, but questioning the health, experiences and even existence of minoritised people is now explicitly permitted. It is hard to think of a more exclusionary way to expand ‘free speech’.
The struggle about who has authority over what kinds of truths and facts plays an important role in democratic societies - even if governments engage as well, which I have criticised in relation to a migration-related issue elsewhere. But this fight is now more difficult to fight. By now it must be evident that social media companies are not the protectors of democratic discourse but self-interested actors in pursuit of commercial gains. It seems strange to think that they could - and would want to - do both because they profit from content creation. What remains is the realisation that for democracy to work, we need mechanisms in place that support participatory equity. Our over-reliance on tech giants to do that job for us has really left us in a dire state.
Assistant Professor
Dr. Brändle is a political scientist specialising in European politics at the University of Birmingham
