Does Anyone Else Find It Hard To Digest Zuckerberg's Sudden 'About Face?'

This comes as a surprise, considering his previous stance on the issue.

During his appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience," Zuckerberg stated, "People in the administration calling up the guys on our team, and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we dont take down things that are true its pretty bad, it sounds illegal. I was just like well, were not going to do that."

January 16, 2025

While Zuckerberg's company did not explicitly remove truthful content, the Facebook Files reveal that when the Biden administration demanded the removal of "true information about side effects" of vaccines, the company confessed to labeling and demoting some of this content.

According to The Federalist, Meta has recently discontinued its fact-checking program, promising "more speech and fewer mistakes." Zuckerberg portrayed the company as a champion of "free expression" during his conversation with Rogan. However, this raises questions about why Facebook was willing to censor content at the Biden administration's behest in the first place.

In the case of Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs accused federal officials and agencies of forming a censorship complex between the Biden White House and Facebook. A majority of Supreme Court justices, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, ruled against the plaintiffs, stating they failed to "demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction."

Zuckerberg's recent admission that Facebook initially complied with the Biden administration's suggestions contradicts this ruling. He stated, "At the beginning it kind of seemed like, Okay, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this."

Zuckerberg's description of briefings with the Biden White House about shaping the Covid narrative as "a little bit of deference" is questionable. Documents published by the House Judiciary Committee reveal that Facebook was fully aware of Biden's intent to censor inconvenient information. However, Zuckerberg attempted to downplay the situation, claiming it spiraled out of control.

He described a scenario where the company was battling government overreach, stating, "All these different agencies and branches of government basically just started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal." This statement overlooks the fact that Facebook was aiding the government in silencing political dissidents and already had its own censorship policies in place.

Zuckerberg acknowledged in the interview that Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for secretary of defense, would have faced censorship under the company's old standards. He stated, "Pete Hegseth is going to probably be defending his nomination for Secretary of Defense on the Senate floor, and I think one of the points that hes made is that he thinks that women shouldnt be able to be in certain combat roles. Until we updated our policies, that wouldnt have been a thing that you could have said on our platforms because it would call for the exclusion of a protected category of people."

Meta has since introduced a new set of standards that it claims will allow more speech on the company's platforms. However, when The Federalist previously inquired, a company spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

Zuckerberg's assertion that the company has always valued free expression is dubious, given its past policies and actions as a branch of government censorship. Meta also prioritized "international human rights norms" over the First Amendment, as reported by The Federalist last year. This raises the question: What prompted the change of heart?

Zuckerberg told Rogan that the company refused to comply when the government pushed for censorship that "sounds illegal," implying he was aware the company could be implicated if it went too far. He noted, "the First Amendment doesnt apply to companies in our content moderation" "but the First Amendment does apply to the government." This suggests that the company's refusal to censor truthful content may have been a self-serving attempt to avoid liability.

Zuckerberg's transformation from the billionaire who assisted Biden in winning office and censored anti-vaccine speech in 2020 to a young personality advocating for free expression is striking, especially since it coincided with former President Donald Trump's promise to hold people accountable after winning reelection.

Zuckerberg told Rogan, "A lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing, its because they kind of look at the timing, and theyre like Hey, youre doing this right after the election. Its like, okay, I try not to change our content rules right in the middle of an election."

This statement disregards the fact that Zuckerberg aided leftist nonprofits in altering election rules in 2020 by donating $350 million to local election offices. His company also directly censored The Federalist at least 11 times, along with various other conservative groups.

Despite claiming to Rogan that he wants to enable free expression and believes Trump "just wants America to win," Meta continues to respond to government requests for user data and imposes content restrictions at the request of governments worldwide.

To convince Americans that Meta is no longer colluding with government bureaucrats to suppress speech, Zuckerberg should publish all requests from the White House or other federal officials to censor users since the Facebook Files of 2021. In response, congressional investigators must ensure that the White House and other unelected bureaucrats are not still colluding with Meta or other Big Tech companies to silence online speech.