Mark Zuckerberg Told the Truth—and That's a Good Thing

In defense of Meta's CEO.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now admitted publicly that moderators at Facebook and Instagram faced vast pressure from the federal government to take down contrarian COVID-19 content, election-related content—including jokes and satire—as well as the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story. This led the platforms to make moderation decisions that Zuckerberg now regrets. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it," wrote Zuckerberg in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the suppression of speech on social media. "We're ready to pushback if something like this happens again."

This is a welcome development, although not everyone who previously complained about the company's moderation policies is happy about it. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein, for instance, opined that Zuckerberg's wealth should be "distributed to those he targeted and wronged" as recompense for what occurred under his watch.

Mark Zuckerberg owes a lot of people a lot of money in damages. Lost lives. Lost elections. Losses in reputation.

I'm delighted that he is turning around.

But those he hurt deserve deep financial compensation/exoneration.

We should not be having to say this on our own behalf.… https://t.co/Rnysmv3kbs pic.twitter.com/VDNIsxGTZp

— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) August 27, 2024

That's some serious victim-blaming. Zuckerberg's critics like to pretend that standing up to the federal government would have been an easy choice; obviously, it wasn't. President Joe Biden accused Facebook of "killing people" and implied that he would call for congressional action to punish the company if it did not fall in line. Kate Bedingfield, a member of Biden's communications team, explicitly told MSNBC that the administration would target Meta's Section 230 protection if the platforms did not heed the government's requests.

It wasn't as if Republicans had been offering incentives for Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs to act bravely. On the contrary: Many in the Republican Party are just as eager to abolish Section 230 as their Democratic counterparts. Former President Donald Trump, current Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), and many others have all inveighed against the law. This is foolishness.

230 Reasons Why

As a reminder, Section 230 is the federal statute that makes social media possible. Enacted in 1996 as part of the Communications Decency Act, the law establishes that internet websites are not generally liable for content generated by third parties. In a nutshell, this means that if a user writes something libelous on Facebook, that person can be sued—Facebook cannot be sued. It's impossible to overstate the importance of this legal protection; if websites were held liable for all content, they would become significantly more restrictive.

It's no surprise, then, that prominent Democrats are universally in support of removing Section 230 protections. They think social media companies do not moderate enough content, and that more ought to be done to curb so-called hate speech and misinformation. They correctly surmise that one way to encourage more heavy-handed moderation would be to eliminate Section 230, thus stripping social media sites of their protection from frivolous lawsuits. Democrats understand that the rise of social media has been a positive development for conservative, independent, libertarian, contrarian, and alternative media ecosystems; the swiftest way to destroy these ecosystems would be to deprive the platforms of their legal shield.

That's why the threats from the Biden administration were so very serious for Meta, X, Google, and other tech giants. There was a very real possibility that censorship-minded Democrats and misguided, tech-phobic Republicans would come together and approve federal legislation to punish social media sites. Many in the GOP were perfectly willing to abandon free market principles and join Democrats in going after Zuckerberg; is it any surprise, then, that Meta, lacking allies, was reluctant to tell the feds to buzz off?

 

Gift-Wrapped

Meanwhile, the worst reaction to Zuckerberg's letter came courtesy of CNN, which headlined the news writeup of the development in this manner: "Mark Zuckerberg's election-season gift to Republicans."

"Mark Zuckerberg is handing Republicans political victories ahead of the 2024 presidential election, acquiescing to years of GOP grievances over his company's policies," wrote CNN's Jon Passantino, a deputy managing editor.

According to the article's framing, the federal pressure campaign directed at Zuckerberg was not the problem—the real problem was Zuckerberg revealing the existence of the pressure campaign. Passantino seems to suggest that it was bad to expose the efforts by federal bureaucrats to browbeat social media companies into removing provocative content.

"The letter was immediately weaponized by Trump," he lamented.

If Zuckerberg's letter is a potent weapon for Republicans, perhaps the Biden administration deserves some blame for equipping them with it. Incessantly pestering social media companies—in a manner that raises fundamental First Amendment questions—was a choice, and a bad one. It's telling that CNN has little to say about this and would rather complain that Zuckerberg, at long last, has had enough.

 

This Week on Free Media

We are taking one more week off, but I'll be back next week with Amber Duke! In the meantime, check out this Rising segment in which we discuss the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov—an appalling attack on free speech. (Incidentally, this sort of thing is exactly why Section 230 is important: The owners of the platforms should not be held generally liable for the content.)

 

Worth Watching

I have just completed my semi-annual replay of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I have previously described as the greatest video game of all time (even though its sequel, Majora's Mask, is my personal favorite). As I wrote in Reason for OoT's 20th anniversary:

Midway through the game, everything changes. Link steps through the Door of Time and goes to sleep for seven years. When he wakes up, he's an adult, and the idyllic world of his childhood is gone. (The game won't even let Link use his slingshot anymore, even though it's still sitting right there in his inventory.) The marketplace that surrounds the castle is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the first living creature Link encounters tries to paralyze him, climb atop him, and drain his life force (a maneuver that looks a lot like sexual assault, in hindsight). Back at home in the forest, none of Link's friends recognize him, and his next destination, the Forest Temple, is the stuff of nightmares.

This is followed by the Fire Temple, and then the Water Temple, a dungeon so difficult that Nintendo actually toned it down when the game was re-released years later. By the time Link reaches the Shadow Temple, it's clear he's in a horror story, not a fairy tale. Working in the game's favor here are the creepy graphics, which were advanced enough to look somewhat real, but not real enough—inadvertently positioning most of the game's bad guys somewhere in the uncanny valley.

I must have been 10 years old when I unwrapped the game on Christmas morning in 1998. In the years before that Christmas, I read the Wizard of Oz and Narnia books; in the years immediately after, I would read The Lord of the Rings and Dune. I can't help but suppose that Link's journey through the Door of Time took place near the end of my own childhood, forever raising my expectations for what narrative fantasy could deliver, regardless of the medium. OoT did the same for the broader world of video gaming. You're all grown up now.

The game is available on the Nintendo Switch's virtual N64 console. Except for aiming with the bow and arrow—a nightmare on the Switch controller—the experience is just as enjoyable as it was in 1998.