Facebook Surrenders Its War On Free Speech By Ending Its Biased And Destructive Fact-Checking Program

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Facebook waged a war on free speech more than eight years ago when it introduced a third-party fact-checking program to monitor misinformation. Now, having already inflicted an immeasurable amount of damage on businesses and ruined livelihoods around the world, the social media giant is putting an end to the fact-checking program after concluding that things have “gone too far.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the fact-checkers will be removed from Facebook and other Meta platforms, including Instagram. The announcement comes on the heels of UFC President Dana White being elected to Meta’s board of directors.

Zuckerberg admitted in his statement that the company had been ignoring the right to free speech, but he strategically used the term “free expression.” It appears that he’s not looking to testify before the U.S. Senate again or at least trying to delay that potential, probably very likely, date.

“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Tuesday morning. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”

While “restoring free expression” is a broad description that covers, well, everything, it’s no secret that this change largely centers around bringing conservative voices and common sense back to the platform instead of hiding them as it has for the last eight-plus years.

It’s worth remembering that the third-party fact-checking program was implemented after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Misinformation must not have existed before Trump was elected President, or maybe it was just a coincidence the two events aligned.

While Facebook and Instagram have spent the last eight years trying to convince the world that there hasn’t been a bias in favor of liberal media, voices, and opinions on the platforms, they’re done playing that game, or at least they claim to be.

“We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers,” Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Digital. “It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform.” 

“We want to make sure that discourse can happen freely on the platform without fear of censorship,” Kaplan continued.

Kaplan admitting political bias within the fact-checking program is a step in the right direction, but what about the last eight years of destruction caused by the program and the higher-ups at Meta? If the company had it its way, all would be swept under the rug and forgotten.

Social media isn’t real life, because in the real world, people don’t forget, and we certainly never will here at OutKick.

In August 2020, OutKick founder Clay Travis welcomed President Trump onto his morning radio show. After the 25-minute interview, OutKick published stories to the website about the conversation because when you speak to the leader of the free world, you build content around that experience and discussion. 

Site traffic took off throughout the day, which is ideal given we are paid based on the number of impressions our content receives. When the sun came up the next day, the traffic to the site was obliterated, and it stayed that way for the next week, and Facebook was responsible.

OutKick lost 68% of our Facebook users and 76% of new users on the site, ultimately costing us tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next month. At the time, websites could essentially keep their lights on due to clicks, shares, and the spreading of news directly on Facebook.

A week after the Trump interview debacle, OutKick shared an opinion piece based on a Wall Street Journal editorial by Johns Hopkins professor, Dr. Marty Makary. The title of the story was ‘Johns Hopkins Medical Professional: Herd Immunity Will Be Here By April.’ Shortly after sharing the story to the OutKick Facebook page, an email hit the inbox with the subject line ‘Important Notification: Misinformation Violation.’

A ‘misinformation violation’ for an opinion piece shared on a social media platform.

Fast-forward to March 2021, and Travis was invited to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, and not only came with cold-hard numbers but with a powerful message.

“Before I agreed to speak today, there was an internal debate inside OutKick,” Clay told the Committee. “Should we or should we not speak the truth today, knowing that in so doing, there was a very real chance these tech monopolies might take aim at us and attempt to cancel our business?

“As the owner of the company, it was ultimately my choice, and I decided to say what many media companies in the country are too afraid to say: it’s time for Big Tech to be held accountable for their censorious and anti-First Amendment practices.”

Facebook’s overarching reach did not stop there. 

This past October, Fox News’ Tyrus sat down with Donald Trump for an exclusive interview on OutKick’s ‘Maintaining With Tyrus.’ The conversation focused on religion, manhood, schools, and the assassination attempt on Trump’s life.

When trying to share the YouTube video of the interview to Facebook, OutKick and readers attempting to do so were greeted with the following message: “Your content couldn’t be shared because this goes against our Community Standards.” OutKick then tried to share Travis’ interview with Trump from the Alabama-Georgia football game from earlier in the month but was hit with the same message.

After reaching out to Meta, an official from the company said the restriction of sharing the links was “an error.”

Mistakes are bound to happen on a social media site with more than 3 billion active users, but finding mistakes and looking for mistakes are two different things, and it’s clear the latter was taking place with OutKick and other common-sense-focused businesses and voices on the platform.

The buck with Facebook’s censorship for OutKick and others hasn’t stopped with stories about Trump or COVID. Websites and businesses have continuously had to pick and choose what they share, consciously knowing Meta could nuke their business and revenue stream at any moment.

Stating that transgender women do not belong in women’s sports, for example, can put businesses and content creators in a stranglehold in the form of a shadowban. Anything that falls under the umbrella of ‘politics’ that does not fit into Meta’s worldview could mean you are out, and you will stay out, until you fall in line and begin altering your content, and therefore your opinion, to Meta’s liking.

Meta may be removing fact-checkers and promoting free expression to begin 2025, but after eight-plus years of eviscerating free speech and those who believe in it, the world needs to see it to believe it.