{"id":2390499,"date":"2025-01-15T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/its-hard-to-take-zuckerbergs-fee-speech-about-face-seriously\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T10:07:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T15:07:37","slug":"its-hard-to-take-zuckerbergs-fee-speech-about-face-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/its-hard-to-take-zuckerbergs-fee-speech-about-face-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Hard To Take Zuckerberg&#8217;s Fee Speech About-Face Seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fits-hard-to-take-zuckerbergs-fee-speech-about-face-seriously%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2390499&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In an\u200d interview with Joe rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed concerns about government censorship, particularly during teh Biden \u200dgovernance. He recounted how officials from the administration \u2064pressured Facebook to remove posts about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fact-check-did-the-supreme-court-cancel-universal-vaccination\/\" title=\"FACT CHECK: Did The Supreme Court \u2018Cancel\u2019 Universal Vaccination?\">vaccine side effects<\/a>,which Zuckerberg considered troubling and possibly illegal,though he claimed that \u2064Facebook only labeled and demoted such content rather than removing it outright.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Zuckerberg&#8217;s assertions of defending free expression, critics \u200bquestion why \u200bFacebook complied with government requests to censor information in the \u200bfrist place. A Supreme Court case,**Murthy \u200dv. Missouri**, revealed this tension; the court ruled against plaintiffs who argued that cooperation between the Biden administration and Facebook amounted \u2062to censorship, stating they didn\u2019t prove \u200ca ample\u2062 risk of injury.<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg \u200cadmitted that Facebook initially deferred to the government on\u2064 handling COVID-19 narratives, describing the interactions as challenging. He highlighted the pressure from multiple government agencies on the company, framing it as a battle against overreach. Though, he also recognized that his company&#8217;s previous policies could have led \u200bto the censorship \u200bof dissenting views, such as those expressed by Pete Hegseth regarding women in combat roles, underlining a complex relationship with free speech standards.<\/p>\n<p>While Meta has since\u200d revised its policies to promote\u2064 what it calls &#8220;more speech and fewer mistakes,&#8221; \u200cskepticism remains about the sincerity of Zuckerberg&#8217;s commitment to free expression, given the historical context of the company&#8217;s actions in relation to government censorship.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Joe Rogan, he pointed to the danger of government censorship &mdash; but also raised the question, why the change in tune?<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;People in the administration calling up the guys on our team, and yelling at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don&rsquo;t take down things that are true &mdash; it&rsquo;s pretty bad, it sounds illegal,&rdquo; Zuckerberg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7k1ehaE0bdU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> on &ldquo;The Joe Rogan Experience.&rdquo; &ldquo;I was just like well, we&rsquo;re not going to do that.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg is technically right &mdash; his company did not strictly &ldquo;take down&rdquo; things that are true. But, according to the Facebook Files, when the President Joe Biden&rsquo;s administration demanded the company remove &ldquo;true information about side effects&rdquo; of vaccines, the company <a href=\"https:\/\/judiciary.house.gov\/sites\/evo-subsites\/republicans-judiciary.house.gov\/files\/evo-media-document\/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">admitted<\/a> it &ldquo;currently label[ed] all of this content and demote[d] some of it.&rdquo;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The company has recently done away with its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/report-secret-facebook-program-exempted-celebrities-vips-from-moderation-policies-internal-review-calls-it-breach-of-trust\/\" title=\"Report: Secret Facebook Program Exempted Celebrities, VIPs From Moderation Policies, Internal Review Calls It \u2018Breach of Trust\u2019\">fact checking program<\/a>, promising &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2025\/01\/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more speech and fewer mistakes<\/a>&rdquo; &mdash; and Zuckerberg cast the company as standing for &ldquo;free expression&rdquo; while speaking to Rogan. But if Zuckerberg and Facebook stood so adamantly against government censorship, one wonders why they were willing to censor content for the Biden regime in the first place.<\/p>\n<h2>Speech Enforcement<\/h2>\n<p>In <em>Murthy v. Missouri<\/em>, plaintiffs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/23pdf\/23-411_3dq3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">sued<\/a> federal officials and agencies with concerns regarding the government-tech censorship complex formed between the Biden White House and Facebook. A majority of Supreme Court justices &mdash; including Justice Amy Coney Barrett &mdash; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/23pdf\/23-411_3dq3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ruled<\/a> against plaintiffs, holding they failed to &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If the <a href=\"https:\/\/judiciary.house.gov\/sites\/evo-subsites\/republicans-judiciary.house.gov\/files\/evo-media-document\/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Facebook Files<\/a> weren&rsquo;t enough to prove this wrong, one needs look only at Zuckerberg&rsquo;s recent admission that Facebook went along with the Biden administration&rsquo;s suggestions at first.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;At the beginning it kind of seemed like, &lsquo;Okay, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this,&rsquo;&rdquo; Zuckerberg said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, Zuckerberg considers briefings with the Biden White House about shaping the Covid narrative just &ldquo;a little bit of deference.&rdquo; Documents published by the House Judiciary Committee make clear that Facebook was well <a href=\"https:\/\/judiciary.house.gov\/sites\/evo-subsites\/republicans-judiciary.house.gov\/files\/evo-media-document\/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">aware<\/a> of Biden&rsquo;s intent to censor inconvenient information, but Zuckerberg tried to claim the situation just got out of hand.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Everything was shifting around, it just became very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme I&rsquo;d say during the Biden Administration,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He painted a picture of the company fighting government overreach.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;All these different agencies and branches of government basically just started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal,&rdquo; Zuckerberg said &mdash; never mind the fact that Facebook was <a href=\"https:\/\/judiciary.house.gov\/sites\/evo-subsites\/republicans-judiciary.house.gov\/files\/evo-media-document\/Biden-WH-Censorship-Report-final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">helping<\/a> the government silence political dissidents and already had its own censorship policies in place.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Zuckerberg admitted in the interview that Pete Hegseth &mdash; Trump&rsquo;s nominee for secretary of defense &mdash; would have faced censorship under the company&rsquo;s old standards.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;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 he&rsquo;s made is that he thinks that women shouldn&rsquo;t be able to be in certain combat <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/01\/14\/us-news\/dems-to-grill-pete-hegseth-about-his-views-on-women-in-combat-despite-him-publicly-changing-his-stance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">roles<\/a>,&rdquo; Zuckerberg said. &ldquo;Until we updated our policies, that wouldn&rsquo;t 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.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<h2>A Change Of Heart?<\/h2>\n<p>Meta has since adopted a new set of standards that it promises will allow more speech on the company&rsquo;s platforms &mdash; even though when The Federalist previously reached out, a company spokesperson <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/01\/10\/meta-refuses-to-answer-reporters-questions-about-claims-its-reducing-censorship\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">declined<\/a> to answer any questions about this on the record.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg claims the company always cared about free expression, but this seems unlikely considering its previous <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/05\/10\/meta-relies-on-human-rights-norms-to-censor-protected-speech-board-member-admits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">policies<\/a> and actions as a government censorship branch. Meta also <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/05\/10\/meta-relies-on-human-rights-norms-to-censor-protected-speech-board-member-admits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">relied<\/a> on &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">international human rights norms&#038;rdquo<\/a>; above the First Amendment, as The Federalist reported last year &mdash; so it hardly has a commitment to the free expression as guaranteed in the constitution. This raises the question: Why the change of heart?<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg told Rogan the company refused to comply when the government pushed censorship that &ldquo;sounds illegal&rdquo; &mdash; suggesting he knew the company could be implicated if it went this far.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He pointed out &ldquo;the First Amendment doesn&rsquo;t apply to companies in our content moderation&rdquo; &mdash; &ldquo;but the First Amendment does apply to the government,&rdquo; so he apparently knew the company would be implicating itself in potentially illegal activity if it agreed to censor true content.&nbsp;It seems, then, the company&rsquo;s refusal to censor true content may have been a self-serving attempt to escape liability.<\/p>\n<p>After all, ever since former President Donald Trump won reelection promising to hold people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/trump-addresses-concerns-he-would-seek-retribution-i-would-have-every-right-go-after-them\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">accountable<\/a>, Zuckerberg has done an about-face &mdash; rebranding himself as a young personality friendly to free expression, a far cry from the billionaire who <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/12\/26\/the-incoming-congress-should-immediately-ban-zuckbucks-across-the-nation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">helped Biden<\/a> win office and censored anti-vaccine speech in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;A lot of people look at this as like a purely political thing, it&rsquo;s because they kind of look at the timing, and they&rsquo;re like &lsquo;Hey, you&rsquo;re doing this right after the election,&rsquo;&rdquo; Zuckerberg said to Rogan. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like, okay, I try not to change our content rules right in the middle of an election.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Never mind that Zuckerberg helped leftist nonprofits <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/10\/12\/the-2020-election-wasnt-stolen-it-was-bought-by-mark-zuckerberg\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shift<\/a> election rules in 2020, when he <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/tag\/zuckbucks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dumped<\/a> $350 million into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-zuckerberg-broke-law-with-dropboxes\/\" title=\"Trump: Zuckerberg &#039;Broke Law&#039; with Dropboxes\">local election offices<\/a>. His company also directly <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/01\/07\/were-still-waiting-for-facebook-to-atone-for-the-11-times-we-know-of-it-censored-the-federalist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">censored<\/a> The Federalist at least 11 times &mdash; not to mention various other conservative groups.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, he told Rogan he wants to enable free expression and thinks Trump &ldquo;just wants America to win.&rdquo; But Meta still <a href=\"https:\/\/transparency.meta.com\/reports\/government-data-requests\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">responds<\/a> to government requests for user data and imposes content <a href=\"https:\/\/transparency.meta.com\/reports\/content-restrictions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">restrictions<\/a> at the request of governments around the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So to assure Americans Meta is no longer colluding with government bureaucrats to silence speech, Zuckerberg should publish all requests from the White House or other federal officials to censor users since the Facebook Files of 2021. In turn, congressional investigators must ensure the White House and other unelected bureaucrats are not still colluding with Meta or other Big Tech companies to silence speech online.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Logan Washburn is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lawsuit-clark-county-keeps-commercial-addresses-on-voter-rolls\/\" title=\"Lawsuit: Clark County Keeps Commercial Addresses On Voter Rolls\">staff writer covering election integrity<\/a>. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo&#8217;s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zuckerberg discussed government censorship&#8217;s dangers with Rogan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":2390500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-14-at-5.06.04%E2%80%AFPM-1024x571.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[48539,48538,36174,32364,4576],"class_list":["post-2390499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-ethics","tag-fee-speech","tag-public-perception","tag-social-media","tag-zuckerberg"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-14-at-5.06.04%E2%80%AFPM-1024x571.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2390503,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390499\/revisions\/2390503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2390500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}