AI Summary
5 min readIn January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of Facebook’s fact-checking program, saying the company needed to “get back to our roots around free expression.” For law professor Kate Klonick, who has tracked social media content moderation for years, the announcement was less a genuine policy shift than a political signal—a gesture toward a particular party that felt targeted by tech censorship. But beneath that headline, a deeper transformation has been underway: the entire logic of how platforms decide what we see has flipped, and the consequences are only now becoming clear.
The TikTok model: pushing up instead of pulling down
The most significant change in content moderation between 2020 and 2025, Klonick explains, is the rise of TikTok and its fundamentally different approach. Earlier platforms like Facebook and YouTube operated on a “keep up unless we have to take it down” philosophy. Content stayed visible until it was reported as harmful, and then rules were made to limit it while preserving as much “voice” as possible. That was the industry term for free speech.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:51) **Episode Setup & Guest Introduction** - Simon Adler introduces the episode and guest Kate Klonick, a law professor who has previously discussed Facebook's content moderation rules.
- 2 (04:16) **The Rise of TikTok and Its Different Moderation Model** - Kate explains the fundamental shift in content moderation since 2020, driven by TikTok's rise.
- 3 (10:30) **Facebook's Shift: The End of Fact-Checking** - Mark Zuckerberg's January 2025 announcement to end the fact-checking program and move toward community notes.
- 4 (15:00) **The Political Reality: "Their Speech, Not Free Speech"** - Kate argues the current administration's stance on content moderation is not about free speech but about controlling speech for political ends.
- 5 (19:15) **From Filter Bubbles to Platform Islands** - The conversation shifts to how users now self-select into platforms based on expected content, creating "platform islands."
- 6 (23:24) **The Scariest Part: No More Pretext** - Kate notes that platform owners are no longer hiding behind algorithms; they openly force content on users.
- 7 (26:47) **Content Moderation as a Vector for Power** - Kate concludes that content moderation is now seen as a tool as valuable as "oil and guns" for shaping public opinion and political outcomes.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Over the past five years TikTok has radically changed the online world. But trust us when we say, it’s not how you’d expect.
Today we continue our yearslong exploration of what you can and can’t post online. We look at how Facebook’s approach to free speech has evolved since Trump’s victory. How TikTok upended everything we see. And what all this means for the future of our political and digital lives.
Special thanks to Kate Klonick
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Simon Adler
Produced by - Simon Adler
Original music from - Simon Adler
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloome
Fact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini
Lateral Cuts:
The Trust Engineers
Facebook’s Supreme Court
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