Brazil expresses ‘enormous concern’ over Meta ending censorship in US
Brazil’s government is demanding answers from Meta after the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that the company will no longer use “fact-checkers” to censor content in the US.
Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, tech companies have been using “fact-checking” as a pretext to suppress content online. Companies like Meta have contracted with Left-wing organizations that determine whether content is true or false. Once a fact-checker labels a post “misinformation” or even partly false, social media platforms censor the content and sometimes suspend the user. Major fact-checking organizations are heavily funded by backers like Google, George Soros, Bill Gates, the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, and other globalist organizations.
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg said there is “too much censorship” and announced Meta is ending its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads for US users. The billionaire acknowledged that Trump’s victory in November has ushered in a “new era” that prizes free speech.
Despite the decision being limited to the US, Brazilian authorities reacted angrily to the announcement. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the change “extremely serious” and convened an urgent meeting with other officials, according to CNBC. Lula reportedly expressed pride in being called a communist and a socialist during his speech at a meeting of the São Paulo Forum in Brasília in 2023.
"Lula criticized the right wing and their attacks on the left, stating, 'They still accuse us of being communists and socialists and think they offend us like that. That makes us proud.'”
Solicitor General Jorge Messias has demanded Meta “explain” its actions by Monday.
“I’d like to express the Brazilian government’s enormous concern about the policy adopted by the Meta company, which is like an airport windsock, changing its position all the time according to the winds,” Messias told reporters. “Brazilian society will not be at the mercy of this kind of policy,” he added.
In Brazil, censorship is the law
Meta and other social media platforms have been feuding with Brazil’s government since 2023 when a law was passed forcing them to censor content and remove users at the behest of officials.
Social media companies that do not comply with government orders face fines of R$100,000 ($20,053) to R$150,000 ($30,080) per hour. Last year, X Corp was forced to pay the Brazilian government $5.5 million in fines after billionaire Elon Musk refused to censor users and content on behalf of authorities.
Zuckerberg: ‘We’re in a new era now’
Meta has been notorious for its censorship, which included suppressing the New York Post’s story about the Biden family’s corruption just before the 2020 election. It was later revealed that Meta has been working closely with the intelligence community and the Biden administration to censor content and users that challenge the government’s narratives. During COVID-19, for example, Facebook executives repeatedly approached the White House to ask for the government’s messaging, which they then enforced through censorship. Furthermore, any content about COVID-19 that fact-checkers declared “partly false” or “missing context," was treated by Facebook as completely false.
But “misinformation” is not the only reason social media companies censor content. Immediately after January 6, 2021, for example, Meta suspended Trump from Facebook over concerns about “inciting violence.”
Now the tech mogul is working hard to court Trump after spending eight years sidelining him. Shortly after Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late November, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last week, Meta added UFC CEO Dana White, one of Trump’s closest allies, to its board of directors.
In his video address announcing the termination of its fact-checking program, Zuckerberg claimed to have always championed free speech and expression.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he said. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
Zuckerberg acknowledged that “we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” but blamed it on the Biden administration and mainstream media.
“Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political,” he said, adding that the company’s sudden devotion to free speech is because of Trump’s election victory: “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
At another point in the video, the Meta CEO again blamed the mainstream media for censorship and tried to paint Meta as having pure motives.
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” said Zuckerberg.
He then pointed fingers at the Biden administration, though he did not address who was forcing him to censor content while Trump was in office.
“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, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.”
Zuckerberg also said the company would be taking some related measures like recommending political content to users because “it feels like we’re in a new era now.”
