Big Tech – Family Council

Meta Will Stop “Fact-Checking” on Facebook, Instagram

Jan 8, 2025Jerry CoxSocial MediaBig Tech, Facebook, Social Media

On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social media company would stop “fact-checking” on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta introduced “fact-checking” several years ago as a way to combat lies and misinformation online. However, Facebook fact-checkers have been accused of censoring unpopular opinions and squelching legitimate speech. For example, last year, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee saying the Biden Administration “pressured” his teams to censor content related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a video posted Tuesday, Zuckerberg said, “We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. . . . The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”

Zuckerberg said Facebook would replace “fact-checking” with a community notes system similar to X’s that would let users flag content that may be inappropriate or misleading.

Zuckerberg also said the social media platforms would eliminate restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender “that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”

Facebook’s decision to eliminate “fact-checking” sounds like a step in the right direction. In 2021 Facebook disabled Family Council’s advertising account with virtually no notice or explanation.

From time to time we use our Facebook ad account to advertise the stories and videos that we share on social media to make sure that people see them.

Facebook’s cancellation email indicated that we had violated its Unacceptable Business Practices Policy, but did not say exactly what we did wrong. We could not find anything on our Facebook page that ran afoul of that policy.

We appealed Facebook’s decision to cancel our advertising account. After a few days, Facebook sent us another terse email saying our advertising account had been reinstated.

We asked Facebook for an explanation outlining why our account had been disabled in the first place. But we never received any more information. To this day, we aren’t sure what we did that Facebook felt ran afoul of their advertising standards. But coincidentally, Facebook’s cancellation email arrived shortly after we tried to pay to promote a video about about inappropriate material at the Jonesboro Public Library. We’ve always assumed that video had something do with Facebook suspending our advertising account.

Facebook may be taking a step in the right direction, but tech companies still seem to have virtually no accountability when it comes to promoting or suppressing free speech. With that in mind, it’s important for Christians not to depend solely on social media for news and information.

That’s why we encourage all of our friends and supporters to join our mailing list. We send regular update letters and emails filled with information about current events in Arkansas. It’s completely free to sign up.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Federal Judge Blocks State of Arkansas’ Parental Consent Requirements for Social Media

Sep 1, 2023Jerry CoxSocial Media, TechnologyBig Tech, Facebook, Social Media, TikTok, Twitter

On Thursday a federal judge in Fayetteville blocked the State of Arkansas from requiring social media companies to obtain parental consent before letting children use their products.

In April the Arkansas Legislature passed the Social Media Safety Act — a good law by Sen. Tyler Dees (R – Siloam Springs) and Rep. Jon Eubanks (R – Paris) requiring major social media companies to ensure minors don’t access social media platforms without parental consent. A social media company that violated the law could be held liable.

In response, tech giants — such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok — as well as the ACLU have asked the federal courts to strike down the Social Media Safety Act as unconstitutional.

On Thursday U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks in Fayetteville blocked the state from enforcing this good law.

Among other things, Judge Brooks’ ruling claims that Arkansas’ Social Safety Act is unconstitutionally broad and vague, and that most social media content is not “damaging, harmful, or obscene as to minors.”

Social media platforms are a product created and managed by social media companies — and more and more evidence shows that social media is harmful to children.

In May the U.S. Surgeon General released a health advisory highlighting the dangers of social media use by children and calling on lawmakers to take action.

The advisory noted that, “Social media may perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors, social comparison, and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls,” and it encouraged policymakers to take steps to strengthen social media safety standards and limit social media access in ways that make it safer for children and better protect children’s privacy.

Right now, the State of Arkansas is suing Chinese company ByteDance — the parent company of TikTok — for allegedly violating Arkansas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

The State of Arkansas has alleged that that the social media giant failed to fully disclose that TikTok is subject to Chinese law — including “laws that mandate secret cooperation with intelligence activities of the People’s Republic of China” — and that that TikTok “routinely exposes Arkansas consumers’ data, without their knowledge, to access and exploitation by the Chinese Government and Communist Party.”

If that’s true, then that means TikTok might not be respecting the privacy of the millions of teenagers who use TikTok. That’s a serious problem.

The adults who operate these social media platforms should not be able to register children as users and let children post photos and videos on their platforms without parental consent.

Arkansas’ Social Safety Act is a good law that respects parental rights and protects children online. We believe higher courts will recognize that and uphold this law as constitutional.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

Apple Removes Bible and Qur’an from China

Jan 4, 2022John StonestreetChinaBig Tech, China

Two months ago, Apple quietly removed a Quran app and a Bible App from its app store in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. Apple claimed in a statement they had to do it because they have to, quote, “obey local laws.”

This is the same 2.8-trillion-dollar company with an “Inclusion and Diversity” initiative that claims, without a sense of irony, to hold a, quote, “long-standing commitment to making… the world more just.” According to its American website, that means hiring a more racially diverse group of employees. That’s great. It’s unclear how that helps the 1.4 billion people living under increasing religious oppression in China.

This is a good reminder. When companies like Apple throw around the word “inclusive,” it’s because they see a profit opportunity. When companies like Apple are happily complicit in outright oppression, it’s because they won’t risk a profit opportunity. If the day comes when American culture gives Apple an ultimatum: either nix the Bible here or lose your profit, we need only look to China to discover what they’d do.