Latest news with #RestoringFreedomofSpeechandEndingFederalCensorship
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why deregulating online platforms is actually bad for free speech
One of the first executive orders that President Trump signed after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, was titled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship. The order accused the previous administration of having 'trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans' speech on online platforms.' What Trump was referring to as censorship was the government's attempt to work with social media and broadcasting platforms to regulate misinformation, disinformation and misleading information by removing content, limiting its dissemination or labeling it, sometimes with fact-checking included. Similar accusations had been brought before the Supreme Court in 2024, where the justices sided with the federal government, preserving its ability to interact and coordinate with social media platforms. However, the decision came during a trend toward deregulation of online platforms as Elon Musk removed guardrails after acquiring X, and Meta and YouTube removed policies meant to combat hate and misinformation. With Trump's commitment to free speech protections through deregulation, online platforms are likely to remove more guardrails. As a scholar of legal and political philosophy, I know that deregulation and free speech are often linked. Recently there has been a significant increase in broad court rulings on the First Amendment that support deregulation in all sorts of market sectors, from contributions to political campaigns to graphic labels on cigarettes. This is not surprising considering that free speech has long been associated with the metaphor of free trade in ideas, closely tied to the value of a deregulated market economy. The presumption has been that the way to protect freedom of speech is through a deregulated marketplace, and speech on social media platforms is no exception. However, research on online speech shows the opposite to be the case: Regulating online speech protects free speech. Free speech in the U.S. has always been accompanied by a series of exceptions, laid out clearly by the courts, that constrain speech based on a competing concern for the prevention of harm. For example, speech that threatens, incites or directly causes harm is not protected speech. Yet, when it comes to content-based regulation dealing with ideas or ideological expression, the courts have been clear that the government should not place burdens on speech that is objectionable. The government cannot censor speech that is false but does not lead to a specific, identifiable harm. Despite these legal constraints, researchers have suggested that upholding the value of free speech requires some content-based regulation. To understand this seemingly paradoxical conclusion, it's important to understand why free speech is valuable in the first place. Free speech enables you to be an autonomous member of society by allowing you to express yourself and hear other people express themselves. People consider it wrong when a government bans discussion of a viewpoint or piece of content because that violates their right as speakers and listeners to engage with the viewpoint or content. In other words, having free speech is essential because citizens need to be able to choose freely what they say and listen to. In addition, democracy is served by having a citizenry that is able to engage freely and meaningfully in the content of their choosing. Democratic dissent, after all, was the original inspiration for free speech protections and serves as the backbone of their protections today. The need for citizens in a democratic state to be autonomous speakers and thinkers underscores the importance of content-based regulation in upholding free speech. Research has shown that hate speech online in particular and the proliferation of extremism online in general have a chilling effect on online speech through intimidation and fear. So, restrictions on hate speech can support free speech rather than undermining it. In addition, the spread of online misinformation and the challenges of detecting it can similarly undermine the people's ability to exchange ideas and evaluate viewpoints as autonomous speakers or listeners. In fact, research shows that users are bad at distinguishing between true and false claims online. This fundamental weakness undermines your ability to operate as an autonomous speaker or listener. Finally, increased polarization online, caused by the dissemination of falsehoods, undermines the democratic point of free speech protections. People cannot meaningfully engage in the marketplace of ideas on a platform where falsehoods are amplified. Importantly, this insight aligns with users' preference that platforms remove disinformation rather than protect it. All of this is evidence that deregulating social media platforms is a net loss for free speech. In economic markets, maintaining a consumer's freedom of choice requires regulations against coercion and deceit. In the marketplace of ideas, the principle is the same: The free trade of ideas requires regulation. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Michael Gregory, Clemson University Read more: Elon Musk is wrong: Research shows content rules on Twitter help preserve free speech from bots and other manipulation AI chatbots refuse to produce 'controversial' output − why that's a free speech problem Americans love free speech, survey finds − until they realize everyone else has it, too Michael Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Trump's new purge of climate language, even ‘resilience' isn't safe
In his first hours back in the White House in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled 'Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.' Yet it was immediately clear he was in fact imposing rules on language, ordering the government to recognize only two genders and shut down any diversity equity and inclusion programs. In one executive order, he redefined 'energy' to exclude solar and wind power. Within days, not just 'diversity,' but also 'clean energy' and 'climate change' began vanishing from federal websites. Other institutions and organizations started scrubbing their websites. Scientists who receive federal funding were told to end any activities that contradicted Trump's executive orders. Government employees — at least, the ones who hadn't been fired — began finding ways to take their climate work underground, worried that even acknowledging the existence of global warming could put their jobs at risk. The Trump administration's crackdown on words tied to progressive causes reflects the rise of what's been called the 'woke right,' a reactionary movement with its own language rules in opposition to 'woke' terms that have become more prevalent in recent years. Since Trump took office, federal agencies have deleted climate change information from more than 200 government websites, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a network that tracks these changes. These shifts in language lay the groundwork for how people understand what's real and true, widening the deepening divide between how Republicans and Democrats understand the world. 'I think that all powerful individuals and all powerful entities are in some sense trying to bend reality to favor them, to play for their own interests,' said Norma Mendoza-Denton, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who co-edited a book about Trump's use of language. 'So it's not unique, but definitely the scope at which it's happening, the way it's happening, the speed of it right now, is unprecedented.' Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, says that government sites are one of the few sources the public trusts for authoritative, reliable information, which is why removing facts about climate change from them is such a problem. 'It really does alter our ability as a collective society to be able to identify and discuss reality,' Gehrke said. 'If we only are dealing with the information that we're receiving via social media, we're literally operating in different realities.' Institutions that fail to follow Trump's executive orders have already faced consequences. After Trump rechristened the Gulf of Mexico 'the Gulf of America,' for instance, the Associated Press stood by the original, centuries-old name in its coverage — and its reporters lost access to the White House as a result. The effects of these language mandates have reverberated across society, with university researchers, nonprofits, and business executives searching for MAGA-friendly phrases to stay out of the administration's crosshairs. The solar industry is no longer talking about climate change, for instance, but 'American energy dominance,' echoing Trump's platform. The new language rules are expected to limit what many scientists are permitted to research. 'It's going to make it really hard to do the climate justice work,' said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the field that studies how a warming planet affects people unequally. The National Science Foundation, which accounts for about a quarter of federal support to universities, has been flagging studies that might violate Trump's executive orders on gender and diversity initiatives based on a search for words such as 'female,' 'institutional,' 'biases,' 'marginalized,' and 'trauma.' 'I do think that deleting information and repressing and silencing scientists, it just has a chilling effect,' Fencl said. 'It's really demoralizing.' During Trump's first term, references to climate change disappeared from federal environmental websites, with the use of the term declining by roughly 38 percent between 2016 and 2020, only to reappear under the Biden administration. Trump's second term appears to be taking a much more aggressive stance on wiping out words used by left-leaning organizations, scientists, and the broader public, likely with more to come. Last summer, a leaked video from Project 2025 — a policy agenda organized by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — revealed a former Trump official declaring that political appointees would have to 'eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.' Read Next DeSantis says he's 'restoring sanity' by erasing climate change from Florida laws Kate Yoder Some government employees are finding ways to continue their climate work, despite the hostile atmosphere. The Atlantic reported in February that one team of federal workers at an unnamed agency had sealed itself off in a technology-free room to conduct meetings related to climate change, with employees using encrypted Signal messages instead of email. 'All I have ever wanted to do was help the American people become more resilient to climate change,' an anonymous source at the agency reportedly said. 'Now I am being treated like a criminal.' The last time Trump was in office, federal employees replaced many references to 'climate change' with softer phrases like 'sustainability' and 'resilience.' Now, many of those vague, previously safe terms are disappearing from websites, too, leaving fewer and fewer options for raising concerns about the environment. 'You really cannot address a problem that you can't identify,' Gehrke said. A study in the journal Ecological Economics in 2022 examined euphemisms for climate change used under the previous Trump administration and argued that the avoidance of clear language could undermine efforts to raise awareness for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet using more palatable synonyms could also be viewed as a way for scientists and government employees to continue doing important work. For example, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebranded its 'Climate Resilience' site to 'Future Conditions' in January, it stripped references to climate change from its main landing page while leaving them in subpages. 'To me, that reads as trying to fly under the radar,' Gehrke said. Of course, the reality of the changing climate won't disappear, even if the phrase itself goes into hiding. Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who last year signed a bill deleting most mentions of climate change from Florida state law, is still dealing with the consequences of a warming planet, continuing to approve funding for coastal communities to adapt to flooding and protect themselves against hurricanes. He just calls it 'strengthening and fortifying Florida' without any mention of climate change. 'You can ban a word if you want,' Mendoza-Denton said, 'but the concept still needs to be talked about.' This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Trump's new purge of climate language, even 'resilience' isn't safe on Mar 11, 2025.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Donald Trump Is No Warrior for Free Speech
OVER THE COURSE OF DONALD TRUMP'S re-election campaign, he cast himself as a warrior for free speech—so no surprise that among the first executive orders of his second term was one titled 'Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.' Its preamble slams the Biden administration for supposedly having 'censor[ed] Americans' speech on online platforms.' It asserts that 'government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society' and proclaims its intent to 'secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech' free from interference by federal employees or federal programs. The executive order has drawn praise not only from Trump cultists but from some outside the MAGA camp, including NetChoice, a trade organization that represents Amazon, Google, Meta, and other major tech companies. Reason's Robby Soave has chided disinformation experts critical of the order. And Martin Gurri, writing in the Free Press, casts the executive order as a 'good beginning' to a monumental task: 'the resumption of the great American debate, of speech that is unencumbered and unafraid, of a Jeffersonian open society' after four years of being stifled by 'the Biden cabal.' What a thrilling new birth of freedom! But wait—what about Trump's lawsuits against media organizations that have angered him? For instance, his suit against CBS for running a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that he groundlessly claims was edited in a too-flattering way. Or his suit against the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll shortly before the election that showed Harris leading in Iowa. How does this truculent litigation fit into the exuberantly Jeffersonian picture of Trump as free speech warrior? The anti-censorship executive order could still have merit even if Trump is a hypocrite; we'll get to that in a moment. But the idea that the second Trump administration will usher in a new golden age for free speech in America is as bizarre as the idea that Biden's America was a dreary intellectual gulag where debate was muzzled and only officially approved speech was allowed. Yes, progressive speech suppression and debate-muzzling has been a real problem in the last decade, and liberal attempts to dismiss concerns about it as a 'moral panic' are misguided. But it's downright deluded to tout Trump as a remedy to these problems. Share LET'S START WITH THE EXECUTIVE ORDER—a major component of which is the Trumpian quest for revenge against the Biden administration. The order's first section asserts that 'over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights . . . often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.' This charge seems to refer exclusively to speech related to COVID-19—that is, to federal health officials asking social media companies to remove COVID misinformation. Recently on Joe Rogan's podcast, newly MAGA-friendly Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that 'people from the Biden administration would call up our team, and, like, scream at them and curse,' though he acknowledged that he wasn't involved in any of these conversations and that none of them were recorded. Zuckerberg has also acknowledged that it was ultimately Facebook's decision whether to remove the content in question. Notably, last June, in a 7–2 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court rejected claims of First Amendment violations by the Biden administration with regard to social media moderation. Defenders of the 'censorship' narrative claim that the decision didn't address the merits of the case but simply held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. Yet the opinion, penned by Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett, did touch on merit: The plaintiffs, Barrett wrote, couldn't show that their speech was suppressed due to interventions from administration officials in part because 'the platforms began to suppress the plaintiffs' COVID–19 content' before these interventions. In fact, all the major platforms adopted fairly strict policies against COVID-19 disinformation in spring 2020—that is, under the first Trump administration and months before Joe Biden's election victory. Thus, a video promoting the 'documentary' Plandemic, which claimed that COVID was deliberately engineered and spread by vaccine-profiteering billionaires, was removed from Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms in May 2020; the full-length film was taken down in August of that year. Keep up with all our articles, newsletters, podcasts, and livestreams: It is still possible that Biden health officials' interactions with social media staffers was too heavy-handed You can decide that for yourself: Read through the details of the exchanges between the Biden White House and Facebook officials that were published in a May 2024 report from the Republican staff of Rep. Jim Jordan's 'weaponization of government' subcommittee. You'll see how two Biden administration staffers, Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, had many emails and phone calls in 2021 with Facebook officials trying to understand the company's policies relating to the circulation of false information about COVID. According to the Facebook officials, the two Biden staffers repeatedly 'urged' the company to remove or suppress misleading or false health information. And yes, sometimes the conversations became heated and profane. But there is no evidence that the Biden staffers ordered Facebook to take any specific action, or even threatened the company.1 It seems like an inappropriately close relationship between, on the one hand, government officials frustrated by the challenges of getting reliable information before the public during a global health crisis, and on the other hand, representatives of a tech company struggling to balance conflicting obligations to freedom and truth. All this is troubling even if it didn't cross constitutional lines. Trump's new executive order seeks to deal with such situations in the future by mandating that 'no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent' may engage in or facilitate 'any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.' Setting aside the fact that the Biden staffers dealing with Facebook apparently did not violate any Americans' constitutional rights, this order seems much too broad and could conceivably endanger public safety. Would the FBI be barred from asking Meta to remove a post falsely claiming that terrorists have poisoned the water supply in several major American cities, or revealing information that jeopardizes an ongoing investigation? (Neither of those would fall into the unprotected speech category unless they involved defamation, extortion, or criminal conspiracy.) The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has proposed a requirement for federal employees to disclose 'any communications sent in their official capacity to social media companies about content on their platforms.' That makes eminent sense, with temporary exceptions for emergencies. (Federal employees are already required by law to preserve the records of such communications, and many of those records would be accessible to the public via Freedom of Information Act requests; FIRE's proposal would be a reasonable step toward further transparency.) But Trump's executive order is not about a sensible balance; it is, first and foremost, about a vendetta. Its mandate to 'identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech' hints at a (yet another) purge of federal employees. Meanwhile, Trump will be receiving a $25 million settlement from Meta for exercising its First Amendment rights as a private platform to ban him for incitement of violence in January 2021. And one could note that Zuckerberg's claims of Biden administration censorship—like his other Trump-pleasing moves—come in the context not only of obvious motives to seek favors from the new administration but of Trump's threats during his 2024 campaign to put 'Zuckerbucks' behind bars for supposed election fraud by donating to an election board in Georgia in 2020. How very Jeffersonian. Join now THE 'RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH' executive order also takes a crudely partisan approach the issue of misinformation and disinformation, suggesting that any efforts to combat them are simply attempts to impose 'the Government's preferred narrative' on public debate. Yes, of course government policing of information—even misinformation and disinformation—should concern us, even in minimally coercive form. But the fact is also that disinformation, some or even much of it the product of hostile foreign powers, is a real danger to liberal democracy—as staunch proponents of free speech such as author Jonathan Rauch have recognized for some time. How to counter and curb disinformation without abridging and trampling basic speech rights is a difficult challenge. Brushing it aside by caricaturing all such concerns as an attempt to stamp out 'wrongthink' helps no one except purveyors of falsehood. It should be straightforwardly acknowledged that left-wing efforts to police speech and debate in the name of social justice, especially over the past ten years, are a reality and have contributed to our current mess, both by compromising the pursuit of truth and by creating a backlash. (Rauch, incidentally, wrote about the danger of such efforts more than thirty years ago.) While these efforts have generally involved social rather than governmental coercion, they have also included federal moves under the Obama administration to restrict campus speech under a troublingly broad definition of sexual and gender-based harassment. That aside, societal pressures and the actions of private institutions can also create a chilly climate for speech. Share The Bulwark At the same time, attempts to portray the Biden administration as a time when the government and its minions waged a relentless war on public debate are absurd. For one thing, it was the first Trump administration that coincided with the peak of the illiberal left, particularly the racial 'reckoning' of the summer of 2020. What's more, the left-wing illiberalism quickly received pushback from various quarters. To say that Trump doesn't come to this issue as a champion for pluralism is to state the obvious. Andy Craig, a fellow with the libertarian Institute for Humane Studies, points out that not only Trump but Elon Musk and other Trump associates have been waging a 'vicious campaign' against speech and press through retaliatory 'lawfare.'2 It goes without saying that Trump's presidential authority makes these efforts much more intimidating. And Trump's actions since signing the executive order on 'Restoring Freedom of Speech' do nothing to allay such concerns. He has retaliated against former officials from his first administration who have criticized him by taking away their security clearances and security details, incurring cautious dissent even from loyalists like Sen. Tom Cotton. His executive orders targeting 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' and 'gender ideology' have raised concerns about curbs on the exploration of disfavored 'ideas and perspectives' even among groups that support many elements of these orders. And one may share concerns about the application of progressive ideas about racism in public schools while also seeing that Trump's new executive order seeking to root out 'critical race theory' and 'gender ideology' in public education could easily become a vehicle for a new orthodoxy. 'Free speech for me but not for thee' is a pithy saying that has long summed up an all-too-prevalent attitude toward speech across the political spectrum. There may be no more perfect embodiment of this maxim than Donald Trump. Exercise your free speech—send this article to a friend or post it on social media: Share 1 The closest that Jordan's 'weaponization committee' staffers could come to finding a threat from the Biden administration to Facebook was this line in a March 15, 2021 email from Slavitt to someone at the company: 'Internally we have been considering our options on what to do about it.' If that was intended as a threat, even the Jordan staffers were forced to concede it was a 'vague' one. 2 Relatedly, the news organization Who What Why revealed this week that another faux free speech warrior from the Trump circle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been trying to use litigation to silence a blogger who covered his association with far-right elements in Germany in 2020 during protests against COVID-related public health measures.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - We need content moderation: Meta is out of step with public opinion
This is a bad moment for fact-checking. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order titled 'Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,' which targets social media platforms' use of fact-checkers to moderate misinformation. And earlier this month, Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — claiming Trump's victory shows that Americans prioritize free speech over combating misinformation, announced an end to its partnership with independent fact-checking organizations in the U.S. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, acknowledged that these changes will allow more 'bad stuff' on its sites with the promised benefit of reducing the amount of 'censorship' on the platforms. While Republican leaders have been railing against fact-checking for years, that does not mean these changes reflect the will of the public. In polls of thousands of Americans, we found the opposite — there is broad bipartisan support for platforms taking action against harmfully misleading content, and relying on the judgment of experts to make such decisions. Meta's actions are out of step with the desires of its users. From 2016 until recently, Facebook and Instagram posts deemed inaccurate by fact-checking partners certified through the nonpartisan International Fact-Checking Network had received warning labels and be demoted in users' feeds, so that fewer people would see unlabeled false content. Meta's recent announcement signals an end to this status quo and a plan to move to a crowdsourced fact-checking model similar to X's Community Notes, where it is up to users to classify posts as misleading. These changes are the latest in a series of corporate and political moves to restrict tech platforms' efforts to moderate content and suppress misinformation. After Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X), the company quickly ended its policies prohibiting users from sharing false information about COVID-19 or vaccines, dissolved Twitter's Trust and Safety Council and moved the platform's content moderation efforts to largely rely on its fledgling Community Notes system. Soon after, similar rollbacks of content moderation efforts occurred at Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube) and Meta. For instance, in 2023 YouTube reversed its policy disallowing content advancing claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. And Meta enacted layoffs drastically reducing its trust and safety team and curtailing the development of fact-checking tools. These changes are a fairly clear response to efforts by Republicans to pressure tech platforms to stop moderating false content. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas have attempted to pass laws prohibiting social media platforms from banning or moderating posts from political candidates, claiming censorship of conservative voices. At the same time, Republicans in Congress, led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have put academics researching misinformation under legal scrutiny over alleged targeting of right-wing political views. This jeopardizes the ability of academics to evaluate the online information landscape and the effects of waning moderation efforts. Trump's new executive order is the latest round of such efforts. But what does the American public actually want in terms of content moderation? Along with our colleagues Adam Berinsky, Amy Zhang and Paul Resnick, we first assessed this question in summer 2023 through a nationally representative poll of nearly 3,000 Americans. We asked respondents whether, in general, social media companies should try and reduce the spread of harmful misinformation on their platforms. Americans overwhelmingly agreed — 80 percent indicated that the companies should indeed be trying to reduce harmful misinformation on their platforms. And while this was especially the case for Democrats (93 percent), the majority of Republicans (65 percent) also agreed. We again examined public opinion on this issue shortly after Meta announced its policy change this month. We asked a new set of nearly 1,000 respondents if they thought social media companies should try to reduce the spread of harmfully misleading content on their platforms. Again, the vast majority (84 percent) agreed — including majority support across Democrats (97 percent), independents (78 percent) and Republicans (65 percent). We also found that a clear majority of respondents (83 percent), including the majority of Republicans (63 percent), supported attaching warning labels that say 'false information' to posts evaluated as such by independent fact-checkers and including links to sources with verifiably correct information. And although Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checkers 'have destroyed more trust than they created,' we found in a large online experiment that even Republicans perceived fact-checkers as more legitimate at doing content moderation compared to social media users. These findings may foretell a decline in confidence in Meta's content moderation procedures as they pivot to replacing professional fact-checkers with user-based community notes. Indeed, in our most recent public opinion survey from this month, relying solely on community fact-checking was very unpopular across respondents. We asked which group social media platforms should use to evaluate whether online posts are false — independent fact-checkers, users, a combination of the two or neither. Only 8 percent of respondents (and 11 percent of Republicans) selected the policy using only users to flag and fact-check each other's posts. In contrast, about 39 percent of respondents chose the policy using only independent fact-checkers, and another 40 percent advocated for the policy combining professional fact-checkers and users. There is an appetite among the mass public for social media companies to continue using moderation policies targeting misleading content. Even the majority of Republicans want these companies to reduce misleading content online and support policies such as the labeling of harmfully misleading content about issues like election integrity. And while user-based content moderation approaches like Community Notes have shown promise, they best serve as a complement to, rather than replacement for, other tools for mitigating falsehoods, such as fact-checker warning labels and downranking misinformation. Rather than a rollback of moderation efforts, Americans want progress on, not prevention of, platform governance. Instead, Trump's executive order and the recent changes from Meta and other tech giants reflect a major political bias in policy — a bias towards the beliefs of tech billionaires and conservative political elites and away from what the broad public wants. David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Cameron Martel is a PhD candidate at MIT. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
28-01-2025
- Business
- The Hill
We need content moderation: Meta is out of step with public opinion
This is a bad moment for fact-checking. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order titled 'Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,' which targets social media platforms' use of fact-checkers to moderate misinformation. And earlier this month, Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — claiming Trump's victory shows that Americans prioritize free speech over combating misinformation, announced an end to its partnership with independent fact-checking organizations in the U.S. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, acknowledged that these changes will allow more 'bad stuff' on its sites with the promised benefit of reducing the amount of 'censorship' on the platforms. While Republican leaders have been railing against fact-checking for years, that does not mean these changes reflect the will of the public. In polls of thousands of Americans, we found the opposite — there is broad bipartisan support for platforms taking action against harmfully misleading content, and relying on the judgment of experts to make such decisions. Meta's actions are out of step with the desires of its users. From 2016 until recently, Facebook and Instagram posts deemed inaccurate by fact-checking partners certified through the nonpartisan International Fact-Checking Network had received warning labels and be demoted in users' feeds, so that fewer people would see unlabeled false content. Meta's recent announcement signals an end to this status quo and a plan to move to a crowdsourced fact-checking model similar to X's Community Notes, where it is up to users to classify posts as misleading. These changes are the latest in a series of corporate and political moves to restrict tech platforms' efforts to moderate content and suppress misinformation. After Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X), the company quickly ended its policies prohibiting users from sharing false information about COVID-19 or vaccines, dissolved Twitter's Trust and Safety Council and moved the platform's content moderation efforts to largely rely on its fledgling Community Notes system. Soon after, similar rollbacks of content moderation efforts occurred at Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube) and Meta. For instance, in 2023 YouTube reversed its policy disallowing content advancing claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. And Meta enacted layoffs drastically reducing its trust and safety team and curtailing the development of fact-checking tools. These changes are a fairly clear response to efforts by Republicans to pressure tech platforms to stop moderating false content. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas have attempted to pass laws prohibiting social media platforms from banning or moderating posts from political candidates, claiming censorship of conservative voices. At the same time, Republicans in Congress, led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have put academics researching misinformation under legal scrutiny over alleged targeting of right-wing political views. This jeopardizes the ability of academics to evaluate the online information landscape and the effects of waning moderation efforts. Trump's new executive order is the latest round of such efforts. But what does the American public actually want in terms of content moderation? Along with our colleagues Adam Berinsky, Amy Zhang and Paul Resnick, we first assessed this question in summer 2023 through a nationally representative poll of nearly 3,000 Americans. We asked respondents whether, in general, social media companies should try and reduce the spread of harmful misinformation on their platforms. Americans overwhelmingly agreed — 80 percent indicated that the companies should indeed be trying to reduce harmful misinformation on their platforms. And while this was especially the case for Democrats (93 percent), the majority of Republicans (65 percent) also agreed. We again examined public opinion on this issue shortly after Meta announced its policy change this month. We asked a new set of nearly 1,000 respondents if they thought social media companies should try to reduce the spread of harmfully misleading content on their platforms. Again, the vast majority (84 percent) agreed — including majority support across Democrats (97 percent), independents (78 percent) and Republicans (65 percent). We also found that a clear majority of respondents (83 percent), including the majority of Republicans (63 percent), supported attaching warning labels that say 'false information' to posts evaluated as such by independent fact-checkers and including links to sources with verifiably correct information. And although Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checkers 'have destroyed more trust than they created,' we found in a large online experiment that even Republicans perceived fact-checkers as more legitimate at doing content moderation compared to social media users. These findings may foretell a decline in confidence in Meta's content moderation procedures as they pivot to replacing professional fact-checkers with user-based community notes. Indeed, in our most recent public opinion survey from this month, relying solely on community fact-checking was very unpopular across respondents. We asked which group social media platforms should use to evaluate whether online posts are false — independent fact-checkers, users, a combination of the two or neither. Only 8 percent of respondents (and 11 percent of Republicans) selected the policy using only users to flag and fact-check each other's posts. In contrast, about 39 percent of respondents chose the policy using only independent fact-checkers, and another 40 percent advocated for the policy combining professional fact-checkers and users. There is an appetite among the mass public for social media companies to continue using moderation policies targeting misleading content. Even the majority of Republicans want these companies to reduce misleading content online and support policies such as the labeling of harmfully misleading content about issues like election integrity. And while user-based content moderation approaches like Community Notes have shown promise, they best serve as a complement to, rather than replacement for, other tools for mitigating falsehoods, such as fact-checker warning labels and downranking misinformation. Rather than a rollback of moderation efforts, Americans want progress on, not prevention of, platform governance. Instead, Trump's executive order and the recent changes from Meta and other tech giants reflect a major political bias in policy — a bias towards the beliefs of tech billionaires and conservative political elites and away from what the broad public wants.
