Game-Changer? Are Meta And Zuckerberg Ready To Fight For Free Speech

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I created a Facebook account recently.

No one was more surprised than myself.

From my book, “The Indispensable Right,” to my past columns, I have been one of the most vocal critics of Facebook and Meta regarding their free speech policies.

From their expansive censorship record to their failure to disclose details on their coordination with the federal government, many in the free speech community saw Meta as the embodiment of the anti-free speech movement growing around the world.

Then something happened. Elon Musk happened.

He bought Twitter and dismantled its massive censorship operation. He then turned over what became known as the Twitter Files.

Those files confirmed extensive coordination by the government with academia and social media companies to censor speech, including core political speech.

Eventually, Facebook released its files, and founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the censorship that had occurred under the prior system, pledging to restore free speech protections. In doing so, Meta adopted some of the changes Musk made at the newly named X.

Meta can be a gamechanger for free speech

For many, the Meta culpa seemed strained and opportunistic. However, I had the opportunity to have in-depth discussions with Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan about these plans. I was impressed and I wrote that, despite the bad blood with the company, the free speech community should give Meta a chance to prove that it was serious about restoring free speech protections.

As I stated in my column, we need Meta. Musk changed the trajectory of the fight for free speech, but the difference between the two companies is impossible to ignore. X reports that it has roughly 600 million users. Facebook remains the largest social media company, with more than 3 billion users.

For free speech defenders, it is the difference between England’s entry into World War II and the United States’ entry. Musk slowed the progress of the anti-free speech movement. Zuckerberg could reverse the direction.

Recently, Kaplan and I reviewed the progress at Meta. He was remarkably transparent and candid about their efforts, and what I learned was heartening.

The chief global affairs officer stated that “we are allowing more speech,” but the company has not seen an explosion of hate speech as a result of greater tolerance for opposing views.

He admitted that “content was being taken down that should not have been taken down. We reduced over-enforcement.”

“We reduced the number of false positives by more than 50% without an explosion of prevalence,” Kaplan said.

“We track how many times our classifiers ‘get it wrong’ through labeling and human review.”

What he found was that “we had this blunt approach to reduce civic content in their feeds on Facebook and Instagram. We removed those and started treating political content like other content. We fundamentally changed how we treat content.”

Facebook is relying more on community notes rather than removal of postings, much like X. The company now has a massive number of community note contributors and a system designed to counter the most biased or strident posters.

The biggest change has resulted from modifying the company’s classifiers, the automated systems used to enforce policies. Meta found that these classifiers were too broad, resulting in excessive content being taken down. It turned off low-precision classifiers, except for illegal and high-severity areas ‒ like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams.

At the same time, Meta has implemented greater monitoring to track “false positives.” It was able to reduce the number of false positives by more than half without any significant increase in violating content. Now, in its integrity report for the second quarter, Meta shows that it has achieved an even more impressive mark in reducing over-enforcement, cutting enforcement mistakes in the United States by more than 75% every week.

The experience at Meta seems to confirm what some of us have long argued. Yielding to those who demand censorship only produces an insatiable appetite for more speech curtailment. It fuels a class of speech phobes, who spend more time trying to silence others than speaking their own voices.

Meta experienced this same snowballing of censorship. Notably, when the company moved to restore greater free speech protection, it did not experience a comparative rise in violative speech.

European Union poses biggest challenge to free speech

The greatest challenge, however, still lies ahead for the company. The European Union remains the greatest threat to free speech facing Americans. After Musk purchased X with a pledge to restore free speech, figures like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that the EU use its infamous Digital Services Act to force X to censor Americans.

The EU has threatened Musk with confiscatory fines that could surpass $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

Meta is clearly trying to find an accommodation with the EU, which may still object to its move to rely on community notes rather than direct censorship. The EU could also object to the reduction of broad classifiers in allowing a greater scope of discussion and dissent.

However, with the Trump administration warning the EU about its efforts to censor Americans, Meta could help recreate a formidable alliance for free speech. For the first time, the free speech community might have a coalition of government and corporate allies that could stand up to the EU.

Hopefully, Meta will expand its notification to citizens in EU countries that they are being denied access to information due to “geoblocking” pursuant to EU censorship regulations. With a united front in the United States for free speech, we can serve as a bastion for those who value this human right.

That is why I have created a Facebook account (jonathanturleyUSA). No doubt, it was the moment that Zuckerberg had long dreamed of.

However, it’s possible that he truly wants to restore free speech in social media. What is clear is that he is already drawing the ire of the anti-free speech movement, which previously unleashed an unrelenting campaign against Musk and his businesses.

The free speech community needs to support Meta. That does not mean that we are chumps. We have often found false friends in both government and corporations.

If Meta stays on this course, we could finally have a coalition of the willing to fight for free speech on a global scale.

Call it a leap of faith in Facebook with our eyes wide open.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”