A week after committing to free speech, Meta blocks decentralized competitor

Social media giant Meta is blocking links to a competing platform less than a week after the company said it was committing to freedom of speech — raising questions about whether Mark Zuckerberg’s firm was sincere in reducing censorship.

According to a 404 Media report, the Meta-owned Facebook has been actively deleting links to a decentralized Instagram competitor known as Pixelfed. All links to Pixelfed.social have been labeled “spam” and removed immediately. 

Meta acquired Instagram in 2012, broadening its social media umbrella to include the popular photo-sharing app. 

The apparent censorship of Pixelfed was initially identified by AJ Sadauskas on Bluesky Social, an X.com competitor founded in 2019 by entrepreneur Jack Dorsey. 

Source: Bluesky Social

Sadauskas shared screenshots showing Pixelfed links on Facebook being deleted “within seconds.” 

Fellow Bluesky user Johan Vandevelde said the censorship wasn’t just limited to Pixelfed but included other Facebook competitors. 

“Someone was asking for [Facebook] alternatives and I gave a link to Mastodon. My comment was immediately removed, also because of ‘spam’,” said Vandevelde. 

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Selective expression? 

On Jan. 7, Meta issued a news release titled, “More Speech and Fewer Mistakes.”

The article was penned by the company’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, and featured a five-minute video from Zuckerberg promising that the company would ‘get back to its roots around free expression.’

Zuckerberg promised that his company would get back to its roots of freedom of expression. Source: Meta

In addition to enabling freer speech, Meta promised to scrap its third-party fact-checkers with a community notes model similar to X.com’s. 

Meta’s pivot was welcomed by President-elect Donald Trump, who said the decision was “probably” in response to threats made against the social media giant in the past.

However, members of Meta’s top brass, including Michael McConnell, who co-chairs the company’s oversight board, criticized Zuckerberg for “buckling to political pressure” ahead of Trump’s inauguration. 

While the apparent censorship of Pixelfed could be explained as Meta’s way of blocking the promotion of direct competitors on its platform rather than suppressing freedom of speech per se, it doesn’t appear to be aligned with the company’s new stated vision. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board said Meta’s new playbook revolves mostly around mending political fences rather than an outright promotion of free speech.

“Such changes may be in part motivated by Meta’s desire to mend fences with Republicans who will soon control Washington and head off regulation. But Mr. Zuckerberg no doubt is also responding to the message that voters sent by electing Mr. Trump,” the Editorial Board said.

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