Facebook Finally Gives Thumbs down to Censorship
(Today’s edition will be short because of doctor visits.)
The most interesting thing I found in the news today was the way Mark Zuckerberg did an about Facebook on censorship. While he played along with the censorship pressed for relentlessly by the Biden administration, he has suddenly made a change of face to free speech now that he sees the writing on the wall of the new Trump administration.
That is certainly a positive change brought about by Trump before he is even in office (credit wherever credit is due). Of course, Facebook’s hired fact checkers are whining about it, but Zuck actually took a pretty strong stand, including sharply rebuking Europe:
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.
So, he’s sided with America, likely to the consternation of Europe due to his barbed criticism.
While his statement is strong, one can’t help but wonder how much had to do with him getting religion on freedom of speech and how much with not wanting to be on the losing end of Facebook/Meta doing fact checking on Donald Trump for the next four years now that the Don’s star is in the ascendancy. I think the prospects of Four more years of war with Trump v Facebook from the bully pulpit gave Zuck a change of heart. With more of America standing behind Trump by voting for him, continuing to let his own company employees be the arbiter’s of truth for all of the rest of us would likely bring a lot of hostility and loss of business Facebook’s way.
Zuckerberg’s might be a religion of convenience; but it’s also good to see he is openly critical of the current Biden administration by coming out of the closet, at last, and saying Biden pushed censorship pretty hard. So, the rescue of free speech may begin under Trump in America.
Of course, we’ve also seen how free-speech advocates like Zuck’s competitor, Musk, are champions of the cause until the freed speech turns on them. More than once, Musk has struck out at people on his platform for speaking against him, and he didn’t just strike with speech of his own in a competition of ideas. He’s deplatformed people, and most recently he demonitized some who spoke against him. We’ll have to see how much in favor of free speech Trump is when critics rise again him.
A news tidbit
When stocks fell again today, the press noted the fall was due to rising interest, which was due to rising inflation:
Bond yields rose on the data, adding onto the recent climb in yields fueled largely by bets that the incoming administration’s tariff plans could boost inflation. The 10-year Treasury yield was last up more than 7 basis points at 4.693% and earlier hit an intraday high of 4.699%, its highest level since April.
“You’re getting a recalibration of inflation expectations and Fed rate expectations. That’s triggered this small sell-off in the equity markets after the earlier enthusiasm,” said Tom Hainlin, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management Group.
It is not, however, all just due to what tariffs will do to inflation, but also due to the Fed’s failure to arrest inflation, which is slowly sinking in.
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