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.
