A Win for (Religious) Free Speech?
Jason Thacker May/June 2025One person’s “content moderation” is another’s “censorship.” Given social media’s tortuous free speech history, what does Meta’s latest policy change mean for religious expression online?
Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, released a video on social media announcing massive shifts in how the company will deal with speech on its suite of platforms. Zuckerberg opened by highlighting that they wanted to “get back to their roots” on free expression, especially amid the politically motivated push by many companies, governments, and media to “censor more and more” in recent years.
Meta’s new policies follow similar shifts in recent years at X (formerly Twitter), after Elon Musk’s move to take Twitter private and dismantle its content moderation policies. Meta’s announcement also followed new regulations from the European Union concerning online speech, as well as changes in the political landscape of the United States, including the election of Donald J. Trump—who, in his first presidential term, had been removed from many platforms, including Facebook and X (Twitter), following the events of January 6, 2021.
According to Zuckerberg, Meta’s new policies will allow more speech on its platforms, and this, he says, will be fundamentally better than pursuing an endlessly complex and expensive effort to police online speech. As Joe Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, noted in a blog post about the changes: “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad, and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.”1 Zuckerberg noted that if Meta’s automated systems made just 1 percent error, it would result in the speech of millions of people being affected online. In order to prioritize more speech, the company announced its intention to end its fact-checking system and replace this with “community notes”; end suppression and removal of topics that are central to mainstream discourse; shift to only moderating illegal content; and allow more political content on its platforms.
Mixed Blessings
For many, these shifts toward more speech on Meta’s platforms are welcome news—especially following years of selective application of content moderation rules and inconsistent “fact checking,” which often favored one worldview over others. As has been long recognized, nothing (and no one) is truly neutral, including content moderation policies.
But this shift has also generated great angst among others regarding what this might mean for potential online harms, including cyberbullying; the rise of ill-defined hate speech and mis- or disinformation; speech that incites real-world physical harms; and much more. These were some of the concerns, in fact, that drove Meta’s original content moderation regime.
Balancing all these realities is a tall order, but prioritizing more speech is the best policy for online platforms—a reality that has long been recognized within First Amendment doctrine in the United States. Many of the worst forms of online harms are already illegal. Other potential harms ought to be debated, and an informed and active citizenry can help hold governments accountable for passing laws to help mitigate these.
Looking back, it seems ironic that social media companies attempted to go above and beyond nearly 250 years of American jurisprudence and debate about the nature of free speech and religious freedom. If America has yet to fully resolve questions about balancing these goods within a free democratic society, how could a technology giant expect to resolve them within just a few years?
Of course, these shifts by Zuckerberg and Meta were clearly motivated by much more than simple convictions about free expression. Rarely are things that clear-cut. There are always numerous factors at play in any major decisions by Meta, all of which are made in the best interest of the company. While claiming these shifts were for principled reasons (which is arguably part of what is going on), it is also clear that Zuckerberg and Meta see where the cultural winds are blowing. Meta is also increasingly frustrated by the endless resources needed to keep up with European-like protections for users and moderation of online content, and the company recognizes the growing angst in the United States and abroad over ideologically driven censorship.
A Net Positive
But, despite what may have motivated these changes in content moderation and policing, and despite the real-world challenges we continue to face in today’s digital public square, Meta’s policy shift is nevertheless welcome news for free expression and religious freedom online.
We live in an increasingly digital world and must recognize that although these private companies are not directly bound by constitutional guarantees of free speech and religious freedom for citizens, it is nevertheless good and wise policy for these powerful technology giants to promote free expression and religious freedom for all—not just for a select group whose ideas are currently in vogue, or who draw the support of social elites. Dissidents’ voices matter, and their ideas should be able to be examined in light of reasoned debate. As John Leland, an early Baptist voice for religious freedom in America, once noted: “It is error, and error alone, that needs human support; and whenever men fly to the law or sword to protect their system of religion and force it upon others, it is evident that they have something in their system that will not bear the light and cannot stand upon the basis of truth.”2
Attempting to force beliefs upon others, though, isn’t just confined to the realm of religious ideas. Increasingly, those holding ideological viewpoints demand more than toleration; they demand that their views be celebrated by all, regardless of whether these ideas conflict with others’ deeply held beliefs.
Championing free expression and religious freedom will lead to better outcomes for society as a whole. But more than this, championing these values will help protect the dignity of all people as God’s image bearers—whether that is protecting them from tyrannical governments or from the transnational technology companies that build and maintain our new digital public square.
While these changes at Meta will inevitably bring about online content that we do not agree with or prefer not to be exposed to, more speech is still better. It is better than the ideologically motivated alternative, which empowers unaccountable teams at social media companies to set policies that affect millions of people worldwide, including those in areas controlled by the heavy hand of authoritarian regimes, where there is little to no free expression and religious freedom.
Despite what may have driven Zuckerberg’s surprising announcement and other similar changes in the social media ecosystem, protecting free speech and religious freedom for all can aid in promoting a principled pluralism; a true toleration for dissident ideas amid an ever-shifting social and political landscape.
1 Joe Kaplan, “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes,” Jan. 7, 2025, www.about.fb.com/news/.
2 John Leland, ”The Rights of Conscience Inalienable,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 1079-1099.
Article Author: Jason Thacker
Jason Thacker serves as assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College and a senior fellow in Christian ethics at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including Following Jesus in a Digital Age and The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society.