Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the technological giant responsible for Facebook, Instagram, etc., recently announced that his platforms would no longer be subjecting their users to the restrictions which he had previously thought to be absolutely mandatory. That his endorsement of this “new” approach to public discourse was inspired by Elon Musk, has apparently enraged the political Left. On Jan. 8, NBC posted an article entitled: “How Zuckerberg’s fact-checking rollback could usher in a new, chaotic era for social media.” The point of the article is that he has succumbed to the “conservative” notion that attempts to thwart “misinformation” constitute “censorship” rather than a “public service.”
Apparently NBC, and indeed the entire Left, do not understand the basic principle behind the Enlightenment’s endorsement of “free speech.” The philosophers of that era, deeming the majority of Men to be capable of Reason and preeminently committed to the pursuit of the Good, felt all Democracies would ultimately if not consistently lead their people in the right direction. Free and open political discourse, that is to say, would weed out that which is hateful, irrational and destructive without the need of some All-Knowing, Censoring Elite!
The American public, apparently beguiled in 2019 by the good intentions of the political Left, recently decided that a number of Biden’s policies were in fact nonsensical, counter-productive and even oppressive. Should Trump engage in any of the vile, anti-democratic antics predicted by his opponents, he too, I am sure, will be reprimanded by the voting public. That is what Democracy is all about. The most disgusting, oppressive nations on the planet are Dictatorships! And yet Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps motivated more by self-interest than by principle, having opted for a truly Democratic approach to public discourse on his websites, has been condemned by NBC for opening the door to the “chaos” of Free Speech. Truly bizarre!