Mark Zuckerberg stunned the world when he announced this week that Meta would embrace free speech on its platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. But to hold the billionaire to his promises of removing bias and censorship from these platforms, we must first acknowledge the terrible levels of censorship faced by conservatives on Zuckerberg’s platforms since 2016. Here are six particularly egregious examples from Zuckerberg’s inglorious reign as the internet’s arbiter of truth.
On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced there would be major changes to the content moderation policies on Facebook and Instagram, citing a desire to embrace free speech and avoid censorship. Zuckerberg explained that one of the first steps will be to axe Facebook’s third-party “fact check” system, which is notorious for its leftist bias.
While many cheer in response to Zuckerberg saying his platforms will pivot to a pro-free speech agenda, others argue that the Meta CEO appears to be simply conceding the defeat of wokeism following the 2024 presidential election and is now looking to jump on the MAGA bandwagon to protect his own interests.
Whatever his actual motivation is, Breitbart News will carefully monitor and report on if Facebook and Instagram live up to Zuckerberg’s promises. To remind readers of just how much censorship has been enforced on Zuck’s platforms over the better part of the last decade, here are six examples of Facebook and Instagram attempting to stifle Breitbart News, Donald Trump, and the entire conservative movement.
1) Hiding the Story on Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell
Zuckerberg recently acknowledged that his company allowed itself to be used by the government in an effort to censor the bombshell reporting by the New York Post story the 2020 presidential election. In August, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook killed the Hunter Biden “Laptop from Hell” story after the FBI falsely told tech companies that the forthcoming October 2020 report was Russian misinformation. The Meta CEO acknowledged his company “shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
2) Creating the Leftist “Fact Checker” Industry
Meta infamously deployed third-party “fact checkers” to both its Facebook and Instagram platforms, putting users’ content visibility in the hands of people who flagged posts based on their opinions, rather than facts. The vast majority of these “fact checkers” displayed extreme leftist bias, allowing Zuckerberg’s platforms to diminish the reach of stories often based on asinine or completely incorrect fact checks.
3) Dropping Donald Trump’s Engagement by 45% in 2018
In early 2018, engagement on President Donald Trump’s Facebook posts dropped by approximately 45 percent since the platform introduced a new algorithm change. This came after a year of pressure from the mainstream media, politicians, and left-wing employees for “allowing” Trump to win the 2016 election. Before Trump’s Facebook account suffered a sharp decline, the company had announced a major algorithm change to its newsfeed, with Zuckerberg claiming that its goal was to prioritize posts from “friends, family and groups” rather than “businesses, brands and media.”
But when Trump’s Facebook engagement was compared to high-profile Democrats, the 45th president’s political counterparts didn’t seem to have suffered a comparable decline.
4) Banning President Donald Trump
The Meta CEO blacklisted Trump, a sitting U.S. President, from both Facebook and Instagram “indefinitely” in early 2021. The company justified its actions in statement that read in part:
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
Incredibly, the ban lasted all the way until February 2023.
5) Unpersoning Regular People for “Misinformation”
Shortly after banning Trump, Facebook turned its focus onto his followers — regular Facebook users. Zuckerberg’s company vowed to ban anyone caught spreading content deemed “misinformation,” despite the social media giant and its army of opinionated leftist “fact checkers” struggling with the definition of the word.
6) Killing the Reach of Political Content
In 2021 Facebook adjusted its algorithm to reduce the visibility of political posts, a move that hurt the top-performing political pages on the platform — most of which were conservative. Zuckerberg claimed at the time that users were not interested in seeing political content, without specifying who was giving him that feedback. As part of his recent announcement, Zuckerberg specifically acknowledged the company would open up its algorithm for political content, contending that Americans are suddenly more interesting in seeing politics in their social media feed again.
Mark Zuckerberg has promised a new era of free speech on Facebook and Instagram, but will battle the deep state, the censorship cartel, academia, and his own employees to make it happen. Breitbart News will continue to report on Zuckerberg’s changes at Meta in the coming days.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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