Meta Adds Censorship Supporter To Board Of Directors

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Texas billionaire John Arnold has long held a notorious position for many in the free speech community as the financier for efforts to establish massive censorship systems in the United States. While Elon Musk has been attacked for his effort to reduce such censorship at X (formerly Twitter), Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have long pushed censorship efforts, even funding a commercial campaign to get people to embrace what they call “content moderation.” Now Zuckerberg has put Arnold on the Meta Board of Directors in a blow to efforts to get the company to accept free speech values.

Arnold has given millions to organizations pushing censorship systems. The Washington Examiner has revealed how Arnold Ventures has given $13.7 million to five groups seeking to expand censorship programs in the name of combating disinformation.

Among the recipients was the Social Science Research Council, a nonprofit group that runs the Social Media and Democracy Initiative and the project Mediawell. It “curates” news for “digital disinformation and misinformation.” Its site runs studies and articles that advocate government and corporate censorship efforts. For example, one explainer listed government intervention as a solution to climate change denial or disinformation:

The CAAD coalition emphasizes the importance of systemic solutions to prevent the spread of mis-/disinformation. CAAD recommends that online platforms adopt concrete measures to address mis-/disinformation and encourages governments to require advertising technology, broadcast, publishing, and social media companies to adhere to those measures.

The concern is that Zuckerberg has never been a defender of free speech at Facebook and Arnold will only reinforce an inclination toward censorship. While X opened up its files to reveal the massive censorship system coordinated with the government, Facebook has resisted such efforts.

Facebook has long tried to get the public to embrace its role as some kind of speech overlord. Years ago, Facebook rolled out an Orwellian commercial campaign to get the public to embrace censorship. The commercials showed young people heralding how they grew up on the internet and how the world was changing, creating a need for censorship under the guise of “content moderation.” Facebook, they promised, was offering the “blending of the real world and the internet world.”