Mark Zuckerberg Faces Backlash Against Free Speech from Meta Workers and Facebook 'Supreme Court'

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has come under fire from both the “Facebook Supreme Court” and its own employees following Zuckerberg’s decision this week to embrace free speech on his heavily censored platforms.

Breitbart News recently reported that in a significant shift in content moderation strategy, Meta has announced sweeping changes to what content is allowed on its platforms and how it is moderated. The decision, which aims to prioritize free expression and scrap its extremely biased third-party “fact checker” program, has faced a backlash from his employees and the co-chair of Meta’s independent oversight board, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, Thorning-Schmidt, a former Prime Minister of Denmark, expressed her reservations about the potential impact of these changes. While she welcomed certain aspects of the shake-up, such as the introduction of “community notes” that allow users to provide input on the accuracy of posts, she emphasized that there were “huge problems” with the overall announcement.

Thorning-Schmidt highlighted what she considers the risks to the LGBTQ+ community, as well as gender and trans rights. She cautioned, “We are seeing many instances where hate speech can lead to real-life harm, so we will be watching that space very carefully.”

Mark Zuckerberg, defended the decision in a video posted alongside the company’s blog post, claiming that the move was motivated by a desire to return to the company’s roots of promoting free expression. He argued that the current system of third-party fact-checkers was “too politically biased,” resulting in the censorship of too many users. The decision has also raised questions about the future of Meta’s oversight board, commonly referred to as the Facebook “Supreme Court” and overwhelmingly leftist in its political orientation.

CNBC reports that the content policy changes, announced by Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer and former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, have also sparked internal criticism from Meta employees. On the company’s internal communications tool, Workplace, employees voiced their concerns about the decision to end third-party fact-checking just two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

One worker wrote they were “extremely concerned” about the decision, saying it appears Meta is “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.” Another employee commented that “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take.”

Other comments expressed concern about the impact the policy change could have on the discourse around topics such as immigration and gender identity, which, according to one employee, could result in an “influx of racist and transphobic content.” A separate employee said they were scared that “we’re entering into really dangerous territory by paving the way for the further spread of misinformation.”

The changes weren’t universally criticized, as some Meta workers congratulated the company’s decision to end third-party fact checking. One wrote that X’s Community Notes feature has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”