Michele Tafoya Blasts Mark Zuckerberg For Damage Facebook Has Done In Wake Of Fact-Checker Program Ending

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the biased fact-checking program used across Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, is being removed after more than eight years as the company looks to return to “free expression.”

While the announcement is a see-it-to-believe-it scenario given Facebook’s deplorable track record, it appears to be a step in the right direction. However, that doesn’t mean Zuckerberg and Facebook deserve some sort of grand applause given the immeasurable amount of damage they’ve inflicted on free speech, businesses, and independent voices over the years, which is the exact point former NFL reporter Michele Tafoya made shortly after the news.

Tafoya appeared on OutKick’s “Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich” to discuss Meta’s decision. She was asked what gave Zuckerberg to turn this 180, about-face move, which led her into an important criticism.

“Absolutely nothing, this is not unique to Facebook,” Tafoya explained. “I had a guest on my podcast yesterday, Gad Saad, a professor out of Canada, so much has gone on up there under the Justin Trudeau administration that has been really similar,” Tafoya said. “People being absolutely wiped out of their professions. We’re talking doctors, researchers, professors, medical experts, because they either said something kind of cutesy that someone was uncomfortable with.”

“This suppression of human thought, this suppression of human opinion, is completely antithetical to America and free speech. People don’t see it happening, or they’re OK with it. This should be massive, flashing red light. Mark Zuckerberg knows what he did was wrong, and now he’s going to try and fix it and hope we just say, ‘Oh, good for you, you fixed it, Mark.’”

Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program was implemented after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Meta has spent the last eight years trying to convince the world that there hasn’t been a bias in favor of liberal media and opinion across its platforms, but 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.

Again, this new message appears to be a step in the right direction, but it’s not overly dramatic to state that Facebook’s fact-checking program ruined lives as a result of suppressing free speech and, in turn, shutting down businesses around the world.