Republicans welcome Facebook’s withdrawal of censorship

Conservatives praised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for ending his company’s long-standing practice of censoring political speech.

Facebook, which has already been pressured by the Biden administration to engage in censorship, will end its fact-checking program and replace it with a Community Notes approach; offer a more personalized approach to political content; and eliminate some content policies regarding hot-button issues, refocusing its automated moderation systems on “high-severity violations.”

“We will return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platforms,” Zuckerberg announced Tuesday. “More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we will get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community ratings similar to X, starting with the United States. »

X users immediately praised Zuckerberg for changing his company’s focus toward free speech.

“The future of free speech online looks brighter than it has in a long time,” Charlie Kirk job. “Time will tell how successful Zuckerberg will be in implementing some of these changes, but they are bold steps in the right direction and we should hope for their success.”

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) job: “@Meta finally admits to having censored speech… what a great birthday present to wake up to and a huge victory for freedom of expression.

Account X DC Draino said Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was a catalyst in restoring free speech.

“Elon didn’t just spend $44 billion to save free speech on X,” he said. job on

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, called Facebook’s new leadership a “step back from political censorship”:

GOOD NEWS: Facebook/@Meta announces support for more freedom of expression – will abandon political censorship! @META is: End our third-party fact-checking program that allowed leftists to censor conservative speech and move to a community notes model based on @ElonMuskIt is @X; Change content policies to remove certain restrictions and allow more room for debate and discussion on topics such as immigration, gender identity and gender issues; Simplify our systems to reduce over-enforcement and reduce errors, focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations like terrorism, drugs and frauds and scams; and We will begin to gradually reintroduce civic content with a more personalized approach and control so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can do so.

Not all conservatives have praised Zuckerberg. Some expressed concern that the changes were due to the new Trump administration.

“Now that President Trump is about to take office, Meta has reportedly decided to stop censoring conservatives,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn. said. “It’s a ploy to avoid being regulated.” We won’t be fooled. »