On Mark Zuckerberg's Speech Announcement

The Meta chief's surprising public address on free speech hints at a coming battle between the U.S. and the rest of the world

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a video promising a shift toward free speech:

The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government, and that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years, when even the US government has pushed for censorship by going after us and other American companies.

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the most popular person. Some consider him a self-directed oddball rightfully savaged by the likes of South Park, while others see an opportunist who engaged in censorship when it suited him, changing colors only out of fear of retaliation. Others can sort that out. For now, his comments feel significant both as confirmation of reporting on the topic, and as an assessment of coming challenges.

If Zuckerberg’s words sound familiar, it may be because speech advocates have been singing that tune for a while. I said something similar in last September’s “Rescue the Republic” speech. The Twitter Files, the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case, Jim Jordan’s Facebook Files, and other probes offered a peek into the “pushing” Zuckerberg describes. These investigations focused on U.S. agencies like the FBI, DHS and GEC, but a broader problem involving foreign pressures is hinted at in Zuckerberg’s announcement.

Beyond new laws like Europe’s Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act lay a series of less-well-known agreements and working groups, like Europe’s Code of Practice on Disinformation or the Global Risks Initiative. In recent years the United States has been participating in discussions about such agreements, sometimes with the idea of creating analogs to European or global rule systems that could be enforced via Executive Branch authority (say, through the FTC). My own personal “time to panic” moment came when I learned the U.S. was considering moves to join such international speech codes that wouldn’t have required consulting Congress.

Zuckerberg may be referring to such worries when he says that “we have an opportunity to restore free expression” but “it’ll take time to get this right, and these are complex systems.” More on the topic soon, but Zuckerberg’s video is more subtle and meaningful than naysaying reports in places like the New York Times (“Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False”) would have you believe. The Meta CEO is claiming the U.S. and its closest allies are about to have a showdown on speech. If he’s right, bring it on. It’s overdue.