Zuckerberg Wants Free Speech for All (As Long As Trump Likes It)

Issue #304 | Jan. 7, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg wants you to believe he’s a fearless champion of your free speech. The bold crusader for your right to say anything, anytime, anywhere. That is, of course, unless it happens to upset Donald Trump.

In what could be described as a frat-bro hostage video, Zuckerberg has unveiled Meta’s new platform guidelines. The headline? Axing third-party fact-checkers who currently verify information in over 60 languages. Instead of maintaining a system designed to prevent misinformation from swaying elections or inciting genocide, Zuckerberg wants to adopt a “community-driven” system. That means trusting users to fact-check lies. This same system is used by X, the toxic wasteland posing as a social media platform.

For context, posts containing misinformation on X garnered over 2 billion views last year alone, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Experts have already linked this misinformation deluge to influencing election results in battleground states. That seems like a winning model to emulate.

Capping off the news, Zuckerberg also announced that he plans to add Dana White—a guy who slapped his wife in public but insists it was mutual—to Facebook’s board. It’s like Zuckerberg is trying to be the Elon Musk of Meta. He is happy to ruin his platform in the service of the most powerful man in the world. Instead of removing blue checkmarks, Zuckerberg is burning through the thin threads of accountability that keep Meta from descending into disinformation chaos.

To make it even clearer where his allegiances lie, Zuckerberg announced the “simplification” of content policies. This simplification includes removing restrictions on sensitive topics like immigration and gender. Trust and safety teams will also be relocated from California to Texas.

These changes come after Zuckerberg’s million-dollar donation to Trump’s inaugural fund and his meeting with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago last November. Trump isn’t even pretending that this wasn’t what he wanted and personally asked for. This is the broligarchy at its finest: a group of rich men wielding their influence to empower and enrich themselves, all while systematically excluding women, minorities, and dissenting voices to tighten their grip on power.

Let’s be real. This isn’t free speech. It’s bowing to Trump and his cronies while giving yourself a pat on the back and shouting “freedom.” The hypocrisy was made obvious when, hours after Zuckerberg’s big announcement, posts by employees expressing frustration at his decision mysteriously vanished from Workplace, Meta’s internal employee platform.

“Why do critical comments of this announcement keep getting deleted?” one employee reportedly asked on the system. Another chimed in, “If any criticism of company decisions falls under the ‘disruptive content’ bucket, the future of the company is looking bleak.”

Zuckerberg wants the public to believe that he is a bastion of free expression, while dissenting voices about Trump, his allies, or Zuckerberg’s connections to them are already being swiftly erased in his own house.

In Zuckerberg’s bizarre utopia, “free speech” means you can spout all the conspiracy theories you want, spread blatant misinformation, or harass strangers on the internet with zero consequences. Just so long as you agree with him. Criticizing him or the former president is the wrong kind of free speech, even on an internal platform.

Zuckerberg is bending over backward to protect a man who screams “fake news” while sharing memes about windmills causing cancer. Trump won the last election for many reasons, but let’s not sugarcoat it: the main one is that he cheated and lied. He ran on the premise that he never lost an election that he very much lost. And when the media coddles him instead of calling him out, we’re not just in trouble—we’re in freefall.

This matters because misinformation is progressively defining our politics more than actual politics. We now know that the political divide in America is increasingly no longer about right versus left—it’s about who is right and who is wrong.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll from the 2024 election highlights this starkly: the strongest predictor of how someone voted wasn’t their political affiliation but how misinformed they were on key issues.

For instance, among voters who were wrong about the inflation rate, Trump had a 19-point advantage. Voters who were misinformed about violent crime rates broke for Trump by 26 points. One’s exposure to incorrect information is now replacing and profoundly shaping people’s political ideology. And that’s the thing about misinformed people: they don’t know what they don’t know.

You’d think this worrying collapse of our media ecosystem and its consequences on our democracy would motivate leaders like Zuckerberg to fight for truth, strengthening systems to combat misinformation. But no. His goal isn’t truth or freedom—it’s protecting himself and Meta from government oversight. And in a world where keeping Trump happy takes priority over protecting democracy, the consequences could be devastating for all of us.

It’s easy to see how these changes would disparately make women and minorities vulnerable. Zuckerberg’s announcement is a gift to the men who prey on isolated men and boys on the internet. The decision to strip away fact-checkers isn’t just going to weaken our democracy. It’s a gift to the radicalization pipeline that preys on male vulnerabilities.

While Zuckerberg postures as a macho, no-nonsense defender of “freedom,” the real-world impact of his decisions doesn’t endanger men like him or Trump. It endangers the men with far less power—isolated, vulnerable men who are already teetering on the edge of radicalization.

Zuckerberg will be fine without any guardrails, and Trump will thrive. Ironically, the demographic they claim to be empowering will bear the brunt of this dangerous experiment.

– Liz Plank, Passionfruit Contributor

PLATFORMS

Meta Gives Up On Facts

Who needs accepted reality?

By Charlotte Colombo, Passionfruit Contributor

→ READ THE FULL STORY

Meet Your All-In-One Creator Store

Stan empowers creators to monetize their skills and expertise through courses, digital products, and services—all hosted within your link-in-bio. Start a free trial today to launch your shop and start selling in minutes!

Free Trial

IN THE BIZ

AI Vtuber Neuro-sama broke a new hype train record.
Bluesky’s rapid growth from X’s user exodus is slowing down.
TikTok predicts that the app’s banning could cause small businesses to lose $1 billion in revenue.
Reddit rolled out new trends tools for businesses and an AMA ad format.

PLATFORMS

Meta Is Deleting Its Own AI Bots

The bots aren’t as reliable as we think.

By Charlotte Colombo, Passionfruit Contributor

READ THE FULL STORY →

PLATFORMS

Donald Trump with background of Scales of Justice

The DOJ Says Trump’s Request To Pause TikTok Ban Has No Legal Standing

What does this mean for the “ban or sell” case?

By Charlotte Colombo, Passionfruit Contributor

READ THE FULL STORY →

JOB BOARD

Chef Nick DiGiovanni is looking for a Newsletter Editor.
Reg is looking for a Video Editor.
Madewell is looking for a Video Editor.
Iconic Saga is looking for a Thumbnail Designer.

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Passionfruit contributor Taylor Lorenz hosts the Power User podcast, where she delves into how technology and the internet are reshaping our lives and the world around us.

In this episode, she discusses the biggest moments on the internet in 2024. From the Costco Guys to the Hawk Tuah girl to TikTok’s looming ban – it’s been a wild ride. Check it out below!