Is the end of the Big Tech industrial censorship upon us?

The vibe shift is real. Yes, all the chatter about the re-election of Donald Trump causing a cultural sea change in American life might just have something to it — if Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s shock announcement is anything to go by.

In a five-minute video, Zuck — who also appears to have undergone a Gen Z makeover — has announced that Facebook and Instagram will be scaling back their censorship rules, especially when it comes to contentious topics like “immigration and gender.” Those who draw up their “content policies” will now be based in Texas, rather than California, to allay conservatives’ concerns about political bias. “Expert” fact-checkers will be swapped for X-style “community notes,” too. Indeed, he name-checks X explicitly, making clear he plans to emulate Elon Musk’s more anti-censorship model.

Make no mistake: this is seismic

Zuckerberg also mentions Trump, saying he intends to “work with” the incoming president to oppose attempts by foreign governments to force US companies to censor their users. He even criticizes previous American administrations, saying their own demands for censorship “emboldened other governments even further.” There’s even a pop at the European Union, and the plethora of European speech laws that make it “difficult to build anything innovative there.” No wonder Europhile Nick Clegg has just been given the heave-ho at Meta in favor of former Republican operative Joel Kaplan.

Make no mistake: this is seismic. Over the past decade, Big Tech firms have become ever-more censorious, in response to demands from the Democrats, the liberal media and the security services. The shock election of Trump in 2016 sent the American elites looking for excuses and rationalizations, and social media became the whipping boy. While the proof will be in the pudding, that one of the biggest tech giants is making an about-face is hugely significant. Where Musk so controversially led, others are now keen to follow. (Indeed, the advertising boycott that has so plagued X since Musk’s takeover might begin to break down too, if Facebook edges closer towards its policies.)

The reasons for this mea culpa are almost certainly more self-interested than principled. The tech firms have, for years now, been threatened with regulation or being broken up by Republicans and Democrats alike — the former wanting conservative speech to be protected and the latter wanting it censored. Just as Zuckerberg was willing to kow-tow to Democrats, now he’s making nice with the Republicans. If nothing else, this move suggests that, as far as Zuckerberg is concerned, Trump really is in the driving seat now. Indeed, many of Meta’s censorship rules came in during Trump’s first term, especially during the pandemic, when The Donald’s grip on the institutions was weaker and the liberal elites felt more empowered to dictate the terms of public debate. But things feel very different this time around.

Zuck’s MAGA glow-up is all the more stunning considering Facebook was among the many platforms to ban Trump following the January 6 riot of 2021, on the absurd grounds he had “incited violence.” Well, in the end, power talks. That Facebook and Twitter waited until Trump was on the way out before giving him the boot was telling. But now he’s back. Plus, the emphatic mandate Trump received in the last election may well have made Zuckerberg realize just how far his company, and its staff, had drifted away from the values of the users he is trying to monetize.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about Big Tech censorship — certainly at Zuckerberg’s Meta — is that it is always a case of ideologues imposing their views on the plebs. No doubt this is true of many platforms, in many cases, and among the rank-and-file moderators. But Zuckerberg for one was often dragged, kicking and screaming, towards tighter rules. In 2018, he went as far as to say he wouldn’t even censor Holocaust denial, on the grounds that he didn’t want to be an arbiter of debate, however offensive he found it as a Jewish man. This was not out of any personal liberal conviction, of course (he did a reverse ferret on that score a few years later). But he seemed at least to recognize that being the Ministry of Truth would be both an impossible and thankless task. The Democrats certainly never thanked him for it, forever blasting him for failing to go further.

Any paring back of Meta’s speech codes is, of course, welcome. Facebook and Instagram account for a huge proportion of what we have come to call the digital public square. And yet, no one should be comfortable with the state of free speech online being so prone to the whims and calculations of billionaires — and the politicians they are currently sucking up to.