Facebook Fundamentally Misunderstands Freedom of Speech
Last Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered a speech at Georgetown University adamantly declaring that his company is a protector of free speech and democracy. He emphasized Facebook’s commitment towards “giving everyone a voice” and insisted that social networks should not censor news coverage and politicians’ posts. This speech was Zuckerberg’s latest defense of Facebook’s contentious community standard policies that have been widely criticized for categorizing false information as protected free speech. Facebook’s refusal to remove disinformation off of its platform is nothing but a phony, neutral posture of defending First Amendment rights, reflecting a fundamental misconception of freedom of speech.
Facebook’s platform has been used as a controversial force in global politics for the last decade. During the 2016 United States presidential election, Russian intelligence officers used Facebook, and its photo-sharing application Instagram, to propagate a disinformation campaign that manipulated and divided the American electorate. Last year, members of the Myanmar military launched a propaganda campaign over Facebook to incite the ethnic cleansing of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority group. Leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the American public is already beginning to witness the powerful influence Facebook holds over political coverage. After Facebook officially declared that politicians' speech is exempt from their fact-checking and decency standards, Donald Trump’s reelection campaign posted a video ad falsely accusing Joe Biden of having used his power as vice president to threaten Ukraine into halting their investigation of his son Hunter Biden. Facebook denied the Biden campaign’s request to take down the misleading video and responded that the decision was “grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process.”
What is frustrating, however, is that Facebook has been quietly taking down political ads this entire time. Buzzfeed News investigated the platform’s ad library and discovered that in the first half of October, Facebook censored more than 160 ads posted by the presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, and Donald Trump for a variety of reasons— from profanity to broken links. Facebook reveals its priorities by cracking down on broken links but sits idly by while millions of Americans consume false political information. Zuckerberg also refuses to acknowledge that an open platform does not necessarily provide a user with equal access to different opinions. An individual’s Facebook feed is not a chronological timeline of content but rather a highly specific group of posts curated by an algorithm designed to maximize the user’s engagement. These algorithms tend to create “echo chambers” of information by only showing posts from users’ like-minded friends and media sources aligned with their political preference. Around 45 percent of American adults use Facebook as their primary news source, granting the company a staggering amount of power over the political content consumed in this country.
Facebook’s vast influence comes with an equally large amount of responsibility to ensure politicians do not openly lie to the public. Zuckerberg has argued that “people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying,” but there is a clear difference between politicians sharing their opinions and Facebook accepting money from political campaigns to promote ads that intentionally mislead and polarize voters.
This problem stems from Facebook’s failure to grasp the fundamental concept of free speech. Freedom of speech—the inalienable right of an individual to express their opinion without retaliation—is inherently biased because some forms of speech will inevitably silence others. Zuckerberg does acknowledge that individuals “shouldn’t be able to say things that put people in danger,” however, he does not commit to creating a level playing field where one person’s opinion cannot dominate. If Facebook allows discriminatory speech, minority groups are overpowered, and conversely, if the company condemns hate speech, racist people cannot freely express their opinions. Therefore, it is impossible to protect all voices equally; Facebook must decide which forms of speech to allow on its platform. Zuckerberg cannot take a hands-off approach to regulating disinformation and discriminatory content when it encourages hatred and violence.
As Facebook becomes more intertwined with the current political climate, Zuckerberg is in an admittedly unenviable position of having to set the standard for online public discourse. Last Monday, the company disclosed that it had removed four foreign interference operations from Iran and Russia, including one that specifically targeted the 2020 presidential election. Facebook also announced last month its plan to establish the Oversight Board, an independent, global panel of judges who will hear appeals from users and review Facebook’s policy decisions. It is worth questioning whether judges paid by Facebook can be unbiased in their evaluations of company policies, but these latest efforts seem like a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, Facebook must reevaluate its philosophical approach to ensuring freedom of speech and consider how a neutral stance can create a harmful environment for its users.