Media Research Center data indicates that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to implement pro-free speech policies across Meta appears to have had an almost immediate impact.
“Zuckerberg has put his money where his mouth is,” said MRC Vice President Dan Schneider. “And he’s fulfilling his promises. Meta still needs to do what’s right for all those conservative outlets that it previously censored, but I’m willing to give credit where credit is due.”
MRC has seen a substantial boost in traffic to its websites from social media, particularly from Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram.
Typically, from December to February, MRC experiences an increase of 10-20 percent in monthly site visits from social media. However, between December 2024 and February 2025, MRC websites saw a staggering 117 percent increase in traffic—far surpassing the 16 percent growth over the same period a year prior.
“As former President Ronald Reagan so eloquently put, ‘Trust, but verify,’” said Ed Molchany, the MRC chief operating officer. “Early indications are that Zuckerberg is doing what he said he would do with his platforms, and the free speech reforms are welcome. But there’s still a long way to go before Meta can earn the trust of conservatives who have been the target of Big Tech censorship for many years.”
The not-insignificant readership boost from social media users followed Zuckerberg’s Jan.7 announcement that Meta would overhaul its content moderation policies—long criticized for its strict censorship mandates. MRC researchers have recorded a whopping total of 1,728 documented cases of censorship for Meta platforms in our unique CensorTrack.org database, making Meta responsible for approximately 21 percent of the total entries.
Among the changes, Meta canceled its third-party fact-checking program, lifted restrictions on posts about gender and immigration and revamped its algorithms to allow users to see political content if they so choose.
Instead of relying on biased so-called fact-checkers, Zuckerberg has determined his platforms will roll out a Community Notes system, similar to Elon Musk’s X, where users flag posts containing alleged misleading or false information. Communities Notes have long been criticized as another censorship tool. However, unlike X, Meta promises its system will not penalize or remove the monetization of accounts that receive a community note, according to Meta Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan.
"The third-party fact-checking program, in addition to the bias, had penalties attached to it, where if something was rated false, we would dramatically reduce its distribution," Kaplan said earlier this month. "And that turned a program that was intended to be about providing additional information into one that was essentially a censorship tool.”
In a now-viral video posted on Meta, Zuckerberg explained that it was time for Meta-owned platforms to “get back around our roots of free expression.”
“I started building social media to give people a voice,” he stated, recalling his 2019 speech at Georgetown University, where he described free speech as the driving force behind American progress.
“[S]ome people believe that giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing people together,” Zuckerberg stated in 2019. “More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes that they think matter is more important than every person having a voice and being heard, and I think that that’s dangerous.”
Zuckerberg’s remarks followed the overwhelming rejection of Democratic Party rule and the Biden administration’s censorship initiatives in the November 2024 election.
Zuckerberg himself condemned the administration’s push for Big Tech companies to crack down on constitutionally-protected posts. Among those censored were fact-based discussions on vaccines, the origins of COVID-19 and criticism of mask and vaccine mandates.
Time will tell if these changes will last, or if this is merely a political stop-gap to curry favor amidst a swell of pro-free speech fervor.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Meta and other tech companies and encourage them to continue to push for more pro-American, pro-free speech policies. Let the platforms know that the American people will continue to be vigilant to keep a watchful eye on changes that might show a return to tech's recent, not-easily-forgotten anti-free speech past.
