Social Media, Censorship, and Owning our Futures

Mark Zuckerberg has decided to join the parade of tech oligarchs collaborating with the incoming regime. First, his umbrella corporation, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund. Then came the real work.

Zuckerberg has overhauled their moderation and hate speech policies in ways that bring them far more in line with Elon Musk’s approach over at the platform formerly known as Twitter, and in line with the belief system of the far right.

In Meta’s public announcement, the company tried to phrase it all as neutrally as possible. The new take on moderation was framed as permitting “more speech,” a hollow euphemism which is meant to hide more than it reveals. The real changes can be seen in the altered and removed language of the tech giant’s hate speech policy. Meta deleted clauses that forbid specific derogatory statements about various groups of people, effectively declaring open season on these historically marginalized and oppressed groups.

The clearest revisions to their policies might come in Zuckerberg’s alterations to what can be said about women, trans, and other queer people. As The Independent reported: “Gone is the clause saying you cannot compare women to ‘household objects or property.’ Also removed is a prohibition on claiming that there is ‘no such thing’ as a trans or gay person.”

The new language specifically states, “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.” And, despite growing harder to shock over the years, I was floored when I first read this. In going out of their way to declare this, Meta is doing more than just permitting this hateful speech, they’re encouraging it. Zuckerberg is deliberately putting out the far-right bat signal. We know how Elon Musk’s behavior along these same lines has wiped out 80% of Twitter’s value, but that appears to be secondary for yet another tech oligarch. Bowing down to Trump, staving off the monopoly lawsuits that federal regulators are currently bringing, and supporting the brand of politics he either believes in or thinks are most helpful to his long-term prospects all take precedence.

Zuckerberg says that the previous hate speech terms and moderation efforts were “limiting legitimate political debate.” He apparently views calling queer people and women mentally ill to be legitimate political speech now. But we can all rest assured that advocating for the freedom of Palestine, pushing back against fascism and capitalism and policing, and generally advocating for our collective liberation will not suddenly become legitimate political debate on Meta’s platforms. That is to say, there is no compelling reason to suspect that this will be anything like real free speech. Both from the example of Twitter, which has banned plenty of left-wing accounts and journalists even as Musk declares a free speech zone for Nazis and others, and from the language in Zuck’s update, even-handedness is not to be expected.

Meta’s new policies open the door to overt racism. These new terms go so far as removing the ban on calling comparing groups of people to “feces”, “filth”, or “primitives.” This is the new social media landscape we must either learn to navigate, or remove ourselves from. With TikTok officially being banned, Instagram is likely to grow substantially. We’ve already gotten a glimpse of the damage that right-wing oligarchical control of social media can do, and Zuckerberg is likely to multiply that harm many times over.

As we create new platforms, we can own our words and our voices, and we don’t have to give in to giant centralized hubs controlled by the worst people on Earth who see violence and division and the world on fire and think only of their profit margins. When we tie ourselves only to Facebook and Instagram we tie ourselves to a man who is stealing Hawai’ian land to build a $100 million compound. He’s eagerly shoving AI down the throats of everyone using his platforms, not caring that it uses immense amounts of water and energy thus fueling climate change, because he has at least one bunker to run to as things fall apart— probably more.

Not only are we able to break free and create our own digital spaces, we have an obligation to do so. Millions of people have come to know Instagram and Facebook and other platforms as their primary third spaces. **The fact that these online platforms are not in fact real third spaces, nor primarily sites of human connection but rather, sites of profit generation, is almost immaterial here. The fact is that people are attempting to use them to find joy, pleasure, connection, and more. Therefore, we have an obligation to provide something better: an offramp, somewhere for people to go as these big social media hubs grow increasingly fascistic and bleak. ** Everything is Political is just one example of the sort of online future we need, and it’s just beginning. It and similar alternatives are the necessary way forward on an internet owned by fewer and fewer people who openly move further and further right.

We also need to make connections with one another, we need to build with each other and take power from those who rule over us, on and offline. It’ll take a lot of work, a lot of fight, a lot of organization, but the future of humanity and ecosystems everywhere demands it. We need a livable future, we need a future that puts people over profit, and we need a future rooted in making collective liberation our material reality. There is work to do online, and there is just as much to do in our communities. The task before us is clear, so let’s get to it.