Meta’s recent announcements have sent shockwaves through the tech world, as the company vows to discard traditional fact-checking methods in favor of more community-driven approaches. With significant board changes, including the addition of high-profile conservative figures, Meta appears to be aligning its strategies more closely with free speech advocates. We explore the potential impacts of these pivotal decisions on both the platform’s users and the broader social media industry. Tune in as we analyze Zuckerberg’s message on restoring public trust and fostering open dialogue in this rapidly evolving digital landscape.
SPEAKER 09 :
Mark Zuckerberg makes two shocking moves in one day as Meta seems to go MAGA.
SPEAKER 02 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekula.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome to Sekula. We are going to be taking your calls. I’d love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110 as some pretty big announcements come out of Meta. Of course, Meta is Mark Zuckerberg’s platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, all of the Meta universe, the Metaverse. And the statements that have come out of Mark Zuckerberg really over the last few months, and maybe you can even say the last year, have seemed to be presenting a sort of changing tide that’s happening within social media. And you have a moment where, of course, we specifically, even the ACLJ, have had a lot of issues with Facebook over the years in terms of fact-checking and some of the issues that have come out. Now, we’ve got friends at Facebook. They’ve taken care of us. And I believe of all of our fact-checks, we have never had one that was not overturned by Facebook once the higher ups, I guess, got involved. But now what you’ve seen is Mark Zuckerberg make this announcement of they are doing away with fact checking. That’s right, all those little fact checks that you saw over the last four or five years, gone they will be uh now replaced with something similar and those are the words of Mark Zuckerberg we’ll play in the next segment um some videos and some clips from Mark Zuckerberg where he lays this out in a way that feels very Trump if I’m being honest they use words like legacy media and having issues with that and telling the truth and free speech and how community notes that was developed on X is going to be essentially uh beefed up and brought over to the Meta platform. So on Facebook and Instagram, take this as a huge win, everyone. The fact that it took some time, but you have someone like Mark Zuckerberg seemingly seeing what’s happening on X, not being afraid now to stand up. And at the same time, he’s made some shifts in the board of directors at Meta, which not only included a Republican congressperson, is that right? Yes. Republican congressperson, but also- A lobbyist, Republican lobbyist. Lobbyist, sorry. lobbyist who you may not know but that’s okay because he put in also Dana White, the head of the UFC, the creator of the UFC, and really, and now running TKO, part of Endeavor, and someone who has been a massive supporter of President Trump. Maybe when other people weren’t, you had Dana White out there. And now he’s going to be on the board of directors at one of the biggest platforms in the world. Of course, that’s Facebook, Instagram, the metaverse, and meta in general. And we actually have some official news. statements from our friends at Meta. We’re going to read those coming up in the next segment. But I want to know from you, how do you feel about this? Do you think this is a true sign of change? Is this just a business saying, hey, we got to make sure we can stay around, stay relevant, and we can’t be doing what we’re doing? Because they lay out specific issues, Will, in this that they are no longer going to be censoring.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right, and they even get into it, and we’ll play some of this, about how pushing back against governments, including the United States government, saying they’re going to work with President Trump and the government to push back on these policies where the government was pushing them to censor certain content. Now, obviously, there’s going to be a lot of people that are skeptical. Is this just trying to deal the cards you’re dealt, play the cards you’re dealt with a new president? Maybe, perhaps. However, this cannot be lost that this is a big win. You have to take these wins and then continue the pressure. Ensure that the people in the new administration work with these platforms to ensure that free speech continues. It’s why when the liberals lost their minds over Elon Musk buying Twitter, it ended up being one of the best things for free speech, not just because of that Twitter platform, but now the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is even saying it will be like the community notes on X is He’s pointing to the fact that’s been a big win for free speech, and they realize they have to adapt and change if they want to stay in business. We’ll get into more of it. We’ll take your phone calls, 1-800-684-3110. Do you trust this move? Are you skeptical? Let us know. 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, we’ve been fighting censorship on social media for years.
SPEAKER 09 :
And you can still get involved. You can still sign our petition related to that at ACLJ.org slash sign. Take this as a big win. I know sometimes it’s hard to celebrate the wins, but Facebook is getting rid of fact checkers, something we have been fighting for years. And we’ve actually won in the courts. And of course, we’ve won with every strike. Facebook and Instagram and all the platforms have tried to come against us. Sign the petition right now. We’re going to take your calls coming up. Welcome back to Secular. We are going to take your calls about this and other topics as well. If you have a question or comment of anything related to the news right now, give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. If you’re watching on YouTube, I’m going to ask you to hit that thumbs up and also put in a comment. If you don’t know what to comment, tell me where you’re watching from. I always like to see that. We need to make sure more people… get this in their feeds because it’s a really interesting story and I think we need to play well some clips from Mark Zuckerberg himself and I will also give you some headlines some sort of top lines that we got from our friends at Meta to share which I thought was pretty interesting again big moves and i believe you can credit uh elon musk for a lot of this uh you can credit the success they’ve had on x and maybe you could also credit threads you know not exactly blowing the doors down when they had the you know the x alternative um and it’s an interesting time i think we should play a clip i mean you could see it’s not just a quick press release hey we’re doing this mark zuckerberg sort of Pleads with the American people. Pleads with the world to say, hey, we messed up. We went way too far and we’re going to do what we can to redeem ourselves. Should we go ahead and play a bite? Yeah, let’s go ahead and play bite two. This is from a video released this morning from Mark Zuckerberg.
SPEAKER 01 :
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.
SPEAKER 09 :
So let me read that to you. The fact checkers have become too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S. We can say without a doubt because we had this happen to us and we have a lawyer on staff whose main job. It’s to make sure we have a voice advocating for ourselves on these social media platforms. Because, Will, there were times where we would have a case and we were making our argument in the case. And Facebook or the Facebook fact checkers, the independent fact checkers, would come in and say, no, what you’re spreading is lies.
SPEAKER 10 :
And there’s one very specific instance that I remember was when it was with a bill that was going in the, not Minnesota, I’m sorry, Maryland State House. It was going forward. It had that language about perinatal abortion, which we were pointing out that that term includes the period after birth as well. In that hearing, The lawyers for the Democrats conceded that that’s actually what that means. There could be some unintended consequences here. It wasn’t even the conservative pro-life faction that was saying this. It was the lawyers for the Democrats. And we were pointing this out. Our lawyers were presenting in this hearing, testifying before a legislative body. We had a post about that very issue. And the liberal fact checkers that Facebook was using rated it as false. Not only does that make the post not get shown up, but it hurts your entire brand and category of having your posts and information seen. We fought it, we were able to successfully overturn it by showing documentation of what we testified, what the Democrat lawyers in that state house testified, and showed them the record and got it overturned with no long-term damage to the organization’s social media accounts. However, that is just one caveat, one small thing, because we had the proof, the wherewithal to fight it, and even some connections at Facebook to know the right channels to go to. Most people did not even have the time to continue to push to overturn or even know that they could push to overturn these fact checkers. And even there, Mark Zuckerberg points out that the fact-checkers have been too politically biased. That goes to what we’ve been saying. It goes to our own experience. I know it goes to your experience out there that’s watching, that you saw things that were demoted, shadow banned, or disappeared, or fact-checked because it wasn’t even necessarily Facebook themselves, but this team of fact-checkers that they had were all left of center and all targeting conservative voices.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and we saw that over and over again. Let’s go take a call. Let’s go to Lynn in Florida who’s listening on the radio. Lynn, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes. Metta has not suddenly decided to be a friend of MAGA. They’re just doing this to, I guess, not suffer the consequences. They didn’t decide overnight to not be evil. If you believe this, you lack wisdom, you lack knowledge, and you lack understanding. Exactly.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I appreciate you calling in. And I understand after many years of dealing with that, I’m a little more hopeful. I’m a little more hopeful that maybe they see the writing on the wall and maybe this was something that was not directly. I mean, I’m sure. Look, they saw the change in the feelings of the American people. Mark Zuckerberg says it in that video. Would this have happened if Kamala Harris had won? Maybe so, because you’re trying to keep your business going. You’re trying to keep your audience happy. And of course, we’ve seen so much change in social media over the last few years that people have left platforms. They’ve joined platforms. The liberal groups all were on Twitter. Then they all left X and it goes back and forth and back and forth. And maybe you could have sort of a return to normalcy. You could say that even Instagram was maybe one of the few that felt a little less politically driven. And I heard an interview actually with one of the heads of Instagram who said like, one of the reasons that you can’t link out So it did not become a news platform. Right. And I think that’s maybe what we’re seeing, which is get back to why you want to be on Facebook, why you want to be on Instagram. Now, Facebook, they’re saying, no, we are actually going to amp up political discussion, if you will. We’re going to amp up some of those more controversial topics that we at one point deemed to be for inclusion and now realized that the American people are not one sided on.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and to Lynn’s point, she is, I would say, justifiably skeptical. Absolutely. As probably most people watching, including ourselves, you want to see the proof once it gets there. But I would also say, when you’re seeing like McDonald’s announcing just yesterday they’re ending some of their DEI practices, you’ve seen the University of Michigan saying that they’re rolling back some of those DEI things, a lot of corporations are saying, You know, we’ve kind of heard. And I would say some of these corporations are not as ideologically driven by politics as we give them credit for. I think, and I would argue, and probably rightly so to some degree, that these corporations, especially the giant ones, they are guided by profit. Right. And when they think that the world, and maybe because of what legacy media is telling them the world wants, they’re like, how are we going to make more money? We’re going to go do all these DEI things. Yes, is it a lot of money for us? They spend money on these programs that honestly don’t make them a dollar, but they think that makes them more palatable or more attractive for the consumer.
SPEAKER 09 :
Or for the advertiser. Exactly. And we saw that happen at a company like Disney where it went so far where an audience finally started revolting. And you had a group of people inside Disney say, we cannot keep politicizing every piece of content we put out. And when you see it, you can feel it. Because it was never done… with gentle hands. It was always done with something that just felt so out of place or something that felt so forced that the creatives involved didn’t feel like they even had anything to do it. It felt like they were just pushed to do it. I think that’s what we’ve seen across the board. Maybe there are some changes. Look, again, I think you can be skeptical. I’m skeptical on Facebook because why? I don’t know. Let’s say six or seven years ago, we had somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 people watching our show each and every day on Facebook. As we’re broadcasting right now, we got thousands on YouTube, thousands on Rumble. How many do we have right now as we talk about this content on Facebook?
SPEAKER 1 :
240.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so you can’t tell me that that hasn’t changed. We have 4 million plus people on this page. And 240 are what’s watching. So I want to make a challenge to our friends at Facebook and say, how about you lift some of those filters? How about you start notifying people once again that this show is broadcasting live? How about you start doing what you used to do, which was spread the word and let us have a actual forum for discussion? we’ll see if we get there phone lines again are open at 1-800-684-3110 we’ve been fighting this for years and we have successfully won over and over again against social media platforms that have tried to censor us we have won every single time and now we’ve seen facebook say we give up we’re changing things mark zuckerberg clearly trying to make some inroads with trump putting in someone like dana white Again, the head of the UFC, who you’ve seen speak at the Republican National Convention, you’ve seen speak over the years, you’ve seen him welcome President Trump to UFC events to thunderous applause. Maybe, again, he was doing that when it was not popular to be doing it. And now he’s on the board of directors of Meta. That is a big deal and a huge win for conservatives. I mean, this is not a non-controversial figure. This is maybe one of the more controversial media figures just due to the business that he’s in. UFC, Power Slap, now involved in the WWE because of TKO. This is someone involved in violent sport, but is a sound conservative.
SPEAKER 10 :
And Logan, I think to that point as well, that’s even bigger to me than just the announcement of getting rid of the fact checkers and going to the community notes, because that also shows they are putting people in leadership. There’s a former Republican lobbyist as well as Dana White. Those are two individuals that will help shape policy. And so that to me is the bigger news in this that they are trying to change and seek a new path forward as opposed to just saying, okay, here’s some community notes. Everyone should be happy now. I think that is a signal of big change at Meta.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yep, and I’ve heard there’s some even bigger announcements coming. Stay tuned. We got more coming up. We’re going to take your calls on the next segment. 1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to Sekulow. I also want to say a welcome to our new friends on Salem News Channel. If you’re watching us on Salem News Channel, make sure you give us a call. Tell us. We’d love to hear from you because we have been on the network for the last year, but we are now live. So if you’re watching this right now on Salem News Channel, unless it’s a later on, way later rerun, we are live noon to 1 p.m. Eastern Time, I wanted to say. Hello to all you. Great lineup of other hosts on there, so I hope you enjoy it. Take a look at what they’re doing at Salem News Channel. Let’s go ahead and take some phone calls. Let’s go to Ronnie, who’s calling in South Carolina, who’s listening on the radio. Ronnie, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 06 :
Good afternoon. It’s not morning anymore. Go ahead. So, a question about Facebook. Do you guys have any inkling here? I was thrown in Facebook jail so many times because of fact checkers. quote-unquote fact checkers, and now my friends do not see my post, and if they do, it’s a couple of days old. I’m not, anything I post on their marketplace, nobody sees it, and I’m really curious if any of that’s going to be affected once these budget changes come in.
SPEAKER 09 :
Maybe so. One thing we can actually talk about and share is that they will be moving their content policy team from California to Texas. Now, we have seen the moves to Texas from a lot of these platforms. We’ve seen X start to do it. We’ve seen a lot of the others start to move their way to Texas, a lot of times to Austin, which can be a little more liberal leaning. But I assume what you’ll have is a good group of people who will probably be leaving Texas
SPEAKER 10 :
the platform because they don’t want to move and they simply don’t want to move to Texas and that could shift a lot of these policies well and Mark Zuckerberg did say in that announcement about the the content-based review team going to Texas he says as we work to promote free expression I think will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams So what you can also, I think, infer from that, I’m not putting words in his mouth, but that if they move it from the most liberal part of California, Northern California, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, then you move it to Texas, that they’re not expecting, I assume, I’m not, once again, not putting words in their mouth, that Not everyone is going to want to leave Silicon Valley in San Francisco area to move to Texas, wherever that may be in Texas. And by saying there should be less concern about bias of our teams, that they’re looking for talent. That are less biased, that maybe come from those areas of the country.
SPEAKER 09 :
Maybe they’re trying to find people that will go into the office again, too.
SPEAKER 10 :
Exactly. Well, I mean, that’s probably also a part of it as well. But I think this entire thing from the leadership being having board members that we know are of like mind. That is a huge deal.
SPEAKER 09 :
I can’t reiterate that enough. In a platform that large, in a company as large as Meta, the board controls a lot. They can do a lot. They can get a lot done. And you have someone who is as outspoken as Dana White, and you said another Republican lobbyist that’s getting involved and now on the board as well. Those are big moves. And look, I know it’s easy to just go, oh, don’t trust them. And I’m not saying you should. But I think that this is an opportunity, maybe an opportunity to get back a bit where we came from. Let’s go ahead and take another call. Let’s go to Charles, who’s calling in Georgia on line two. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello. I just wanted to express my opinion that I think the only thing that is really going to ensure that Facebook and Google and big corporations like that that have gotten control over information, which they have in the past used it to censorship, uh collusion with fbi all kinds of things to um to limit free speech for political purposes they’ve demonstrated that they’ve done that they’re capable of it and i think it’s what we’re seeing now is just a ploy all it is is to uh like if you can’t beat them join them and then if the democrats get back in control again and all that uh wokeism comes back and all that stuff Zuckerberg will be a chameleon and join right up with him again.
SPEAKER 10 :
Charles, I would say I want to jump in here because, I mean, I hear your points. Sure. And that’s why I keep pointing back to the board members because it’s a publicly traded company. The board members have a lot of power by saying, hey, these moves you’re making, company, aren’t in the best interest of the shareholders. Because what’s the point of doing things in interest of the shareholders? To raise the stock price. At the end of the day, that’s how the corporate America, these big corporations… The board of directors gets to look it down and have oversight and say, what you’re doing is going to decrease the value of this company to the people that own stock of it. And if they’re going to revert back and try to push things that one are draining resources, really expensive and don’t produce any profit and lose actual users of the platform, people like Dana White, who has built very large companies based off the principles that we hold dear as well is another person that’s conservative as well. I think they will have a lot of power to try to keep that in check. Yes, obviously, you can’t control a publicly traded company from the outside, but you can with your pocketbook, with your users, and I do think that we are a big part of the reason this is a shift, not the administration. That we, the American people that are conservatives and believe in American conservative values… are a big part of the reason they are making this change.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, and I think you have someone like Mark Zuckerberg. Obviously, you have Dana White coming in. He’s a big Brazilian jiu-jitsu guy, I think. Zuckerberg, he’s involved in MMA. He’s challenged Elon Musk to a fight. We’ve had all that happen. Remember, that happened just a few years ago. How quickly things change. You also have Tim Cook yesterday pledging a million dollars personally Personally, not the Apple usual. An additional million dollars of his own money to the Trump inauguration events committee. And that is a little bit traditional, but if you read the comments that came out of Tim Cook, and we know that Tim Cook, the head of Apple, by the way, He’s been down at Mar-a-Lago as well, Auburn grad. He’s been down at Mar-a-Lago with Elon, with people like Zuckerberg. So yes, are they kissing up to what’s happening there? Maybe so. I mean, yes, definitely. Yes, but maybe that is because they also see how the American people are reacting and maybe you’ll have companies that actually respond. I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I’m just saying that it’s at least a… A good spot. So let’s go ahead and take another… Should we play another clip from Zuckerberg? This is a little bit longer, so we’ll hold that for the next half hour. Yeah, hey, if you’re watching online, you’ll get the full hour. If you’re listening on the radio, some of you don’t, make sure you watch us live, aclj.org. YouTube, Rumble, yes, on Facebook. We are there. We’re also on X. Find us, just search for ACLJ or Secula. We’re broadcasting live now. You can also sign our petition to help us continue our battle against online censorship and social media censorship. Sign our petition at ACLJ.org slash sign. This is a huge win as they’re getting rid of fact checkers, something that has been a bit of a bane of our existence for the last seven, eight years. So excited to hopefully have some positive movement In that, again, you can go to ACLJ.org. We’ll be taking your calls coming up in the next segments as well at 1-800-684-3110. Let’s quickly go to Charlotte, who’s calling in Georgia online. For Charlotte, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, Kevin and I are just saying hi and thank you guys for the wonderful work that you’re doing. And we are praying for you every day. You’re in the front lines for us. They’re even on the phones. So we just, Kevin and I are just in prayer for the ACLJ and Jay and the entire crew. Thank you. Your safety, as well as the wonderful front lines you’ve been for Trump. and the entire conservative voice of which we are a part.
SPEAKER 09 :
Charlotte, I appreciate you calling. I appreciate your prayers. I don’t mean to cut you off at all. We’re just ahead to a break. But I want to thank everyone who does that, who not only supports the work of the ACLJ, whether that’s by signing petitions or donating financially, but just pray for us. Continue to keep us in your prayers. Like she said, pray for our safety. For us, for our families, for our team, whether that’s here in the office or when we’re traveling around the world. I was at the European Center for Law and Justice, our European office. I was just there two weeks ago or less than two weeks ago. There’s so much amazing work happening. There’s so many people. You hear our names, sure. There are hundreds of people working full-time here at the ACLJ, and we can’t do that without you. Let’s go to ACLJ.org. Phone lines are open. 1-800-684-3110. Second half hour coming right up in less than a minute.
SPEAKER 02 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekula.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome to Sekula. We are going to take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. Again, we’re covering the news. There have been major shakeup at Meta. Of course, Meta, home of Facebook, home of Instagram, of Threads, and a lot of other platforms. The Metaverse. The big shakeups, you’ll have the removal, and this is the big one, the removal of all fact-checkers, and they’re going to be moving to a community notes-style platform. Of course, you’ve seen that on X be implemented over the last year, and it’s been a big win. You even had Mark Zuckerberg specifically saying, we’re going to base it on the system that X has created and make it maybe even more complex. So that’s coming. Plus, you have new board members, including Republican National Convention speaker, head of the UFC, the ultimate fighting, And, of course, you know him from speaking at the, not the inauguration, but speaking at the, like I said, the RNC. Or maybe you saw him on campaign stops. Or maybe you saw him leading President Trump out to thunderous applause, you know, with the likes of Mario Lopez and Theo Vaughn. And, of course, our colleague Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Johnson. And who is that? That is Dana White, who we’ve seen over and over again. Again, not picking a very non-controversial figure, picking a pretty controversial guy who happens to be one of the most brilliant sports businessmen in history who took the UFC from such a niche sport, something that only a lot of us watched. It was pretty hardcore back in the early days, to then now moving to maybe the most popular action sport that’s happening now. air combat sport that happens uh we watch it every month it’s a big deal he big republican big conservative joining the board of directors at meta uh these are big moves that are happening and we can’t understate them and i think we should play a clip uh from mark zuckerberg which one you want to play well yeah let’s go ahead and play bite six uh this is him talking about the censorship issue and it has some really key points that are fascinating to me and we’ll explain it on the other side
SPEAKER 01 :
Finally, we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it. It’ll take time to get this right. And these are complex systems. They’re never going to be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove. But the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice.
SPEAKER 09 :
Amazing statement, if you will, from Mark Zuckerberg. You may think he’s lying and whatever you want to think you can think. But this sounds like someone who would have been censored on Facebook over the last four years. Right. Or the last eight years, even at this point. This sounds like someone that would have been hit with, you’re spreading false news that other governments are trying to take down your post. Or even our own government.
SPEAKER 10 :
He says over the past four years, the U.S. government has pushed for censorship. If you had have said that on Facebook, there is a chance that one of their fact checkers would have labeled that false or misinformation.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, he admitted that. He admitted that they were getting a lot of pressure. uh from the biden administration and even the biden uh when they were running for election uh from spreading you know information about the laptop and all of that he’s admitted to all of that saying look they they did bow down a bit to the pressure because when the fbi comes to knockin You get a little nervous when you’re one of these big companies. But you know what? I’m going to take this as a win. You may not, but I’m going to take it as a win. Sure, I’d like to see more people watching us on Facebook. Maybe that means more people are going to come back to that platform. We’ll see. I’m going to take some more calls. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll hear more even from Mark Zuckerberg coming up. As they also announced, they’ll be moving most of their group members involved with Community Notes and all of this, to Texas, away from California, to become specifically less biased. We’ll be right back. to Sekulow. I want to jump right into your phone calls. Give me a call too. We got three lines open so you can get on the air. 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110. This has been a big victory for us. And yes, I’m taking a little bit of a victory lap right now as we have been continually in, especially over the last few years, it’s gotten a little bit better the last year or so. We have been constantly in a struggle with meta, with Facebook and as they have taken down posts or they’ve put strikes or they’ve put fake news kind of labels on it, even to the point where they would notify millions of people. We don’t get notifications for this show very much anymore on Facebook, but there was a time where whenever they decided to slap a partially true, partially false, totally false label on it, they would notify everyone who saw it. or who engaged or who shared it. And of course, what they didn’t do was then notify people when that strike was removed and when their system went through and they did a double check and said, hey, we were wrong, which happened every single time. So I’m taking a victory lap. That is going away. The fact checkers groups, and I hope they all go completely out of business, go away because remember they were a third party. Third party fact checkers, goodbye. Hello community notes actually done by the people. So I really like that. Let’s go ahead and take some phone calls. Rebecca’s calling in New Hampshire. Line three, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. I was thinking too that perhaps Facebook and the other ones should consider that our privacy is worth something to us and that they should allow us to decide what they get to have and what they don’t. I think Europe does that. And I think that’s an important thing, too, because otherwise they still have a lot of information that either can get stolen by other countries or used improperly at their choice.
SPEAKER 09 :
I think this is an interesting conversation. She battles sort of the TikTok situation, which is if you remove TikTok, are you actually causing more issues because of the potential censorship you are allowing? Or are you feeding into the algorithm? Now, do I use TikTok? No, not regularly. because of some of those concerns. But I have the choice to do it. I think you have that sort of same issue here, Will, with Facebook, which is, yeah, to create a privacy policy that’s stricter, sure. And look, we’ve all had it happen. I’m talking about Dairy Queen and all of a sudden I’m getting an ad for Dairy Queen. We’ve had all those situations happen in real time in real life. So maybe there should be some of those, but it gets a little gray and it gets a little concerning.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. And one, that is every social media platform’s business model is the data that they get from you for offering you a free service as well as ads. So, yes, Rebecca, that is a very robust discussion that should happen about individuals’ privacy, but also what they give up when they agree to use a platform. And so that I think having conservative minded people on the board is very helpful for those discussions going forward as well. So those are things, though, that weren’t necessarily brought up by this announcement. And so we can’t speak too far to what they’re thinking about that. But I understand that is a concern of a lot of people. And Logan, you brought up TikTok. You saw Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank fame. Obviously, he does a lot of media appearances on Fox News now. He’s a conservative. He’s in talks to purchase the assets of TikTok here in America. which is a part of that deal where if they didn’t sell the company by X date, I think it was January 19th, but that’s on hold from a court, but then it would transfer over. And he’s saying, though, we need to have the Trump administration help negotiate this deal out, but that he’s looking to purchase that and to try to almost take TikTok over in America so it wouldn’t necessarily go away, but that connection to China would be severed and some of those privacy concerns would go away.
SPEAKER 09 :
there as well that could be interesting you know you put sort of a more trusted face i guess you’d say mr wonderful uh involved in running uh something like tiktok maybe that can win more people over and it continues the platform there are millions of americans and millions worldwide who their businesses are reliant on tiktok So that is always the concern when you’re dealing with that. You’re going to start limiting people’s ways to make money or you have built an entire business on these platforms and then you’re kicked off. Now, of course, YouTube has done that. Of course, Facebook has done that where they have kicked off prominent figures or they’ve throttled prominent figures who did build their whole career on social media. But I’m talking about someone that, you know, sells candles. You know, I’m not talking about someone who’s a political commentator, a mom and pop shop that built up on selling a croissant that is legendary in Houston, you know, something like that. Those are the ones that I get a little concerned about in terms of the people still having a voice.
SPEAKER 10 :
This is another interesting thing. Our team has been looking through at some of the historic things that we had happen. And once again, we did mention that those got, we were able to defeat them and get those strikes against our account taken away. But even in his statement, Mark Zuckerberg mentions that we’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. We actually had a broadcast yesterday back in 2022, February 9th, so almost three years ago, that we were talking about our lawsuit that we were bringing. It was a FOIA lawsuit. We had FOIA’d the administration. They didn’t comply within the statutory limitations. And so we filed a FOIA lawsuit. We were then flagged for false information on an immigration topic. But in there, they said it was also related to false information about Hillary Clinton. which had nothing to do with anything on the broadcast that day. I don’t even think she was mentioned on the broadcast that day. It was very directed about the ACLJ work, filing a lawsuit based off our FOIA request. It was all internally created story. And they were fact checking us telling what we were in real time doing. And we got a content strike on that. And that’s, once again, the flaw that even Zuckerberg is pointing out here with the third party fact checking and how much power they had to silence your content. If they didn’t like it, even if the topic, because it was about immigration, a very contested time, and even if the excuse was wrong, that specific voice, The ACLJ talking to you was shadow banned, delisted, moved down, whatever you want to call it, through that process of the fact checker.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I’ve seen – I have to say, this last election season, we saw a lot less of that. Right. We saw a lot – I’m not sure if we had one flag on our account. No one told me if we did because – You could tell they were already moving in this direction. So when those topics come up that are specifically mentioned and we’re addressing them, as half the country agrees with, that’s something that at least we brought up. Hey, no sweet baby rays this time. You know what? That was maybe the most disappointing thing. Where was the barbecue sauce? Yeah, if you don’t remember, back when I think we introduced Meta four years ago. looming in the background out of focus was a bottle of sweet baby ray barbecue sauce which i think he’s a big fan of uh just a solitary bottle on the shelf yeah and uh i’ve always thought you know he should put that if you’re watching mark every should be an easter egg yeah every time hide a bottle of sweet baby rays we are gonna be taking your calls coming up in the next segment it’ll be our last segment of the day 1-800-684-3110 let’s go ahead and take a call paula it’s in florida you’re on the air
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, this is Paula. Thank you. Just wanted to give a shout out saying just give the public some time to even believe what Zuckerberg is saying. And because we have We’ve been hearing the opposite for so many years, and we didn’t even believe that at the time that they were saying it. Just for instance, yesterday, I was watching the news, and here they’re still blaming Trump for the insurrection on January the 6th. I mean, who do you believe?
SPEAKER 09 :
Who do you believe? And so you… What we want, Paula, is that conversation to be able to happen, is for you to be able to say what you feel about that and for other people to say the opposite. And then somewhere in the middle, maybe people will have a discussion. You’ll actually be able to talk these things out, not just turn into one side. And maybe that’s what can happen on these social media platforms. Once again, no guarantees. As you said, we got to build time, got to let it trust, build some trust up. Mark Zuckerberg has been headed this direction. And I will say, think about all the people. who have come on board to the more America first, I guess you’d say, conservative movement, the Trump movement, the MAGA movement, very unlikely people have come on board. You could say that from our own colleague, Tulsi Gabbard. You could say that from RFK Jr. You could say that from Elon Musk. You could say from a Russell Brand. A lot of people, hearts and minds have changed over the last four years, over the last six years, over the last two years. So if I sound more hopeful, And maybe you think, because you’re like, I can’t trust Mark Zuckerberg. We have seen it now time and time again. We’ve seen a lot of these leading voices in tech and entertainment start to take that risky swing. And it’s really not risky, and that’s what they know. They know it is not risky to the actual consumer. It’s only risky to the advertisers, and it’s only risky to the mainstream media. And that’s when he starts saying terms like legacy media. You know what they mean.
SPEAKER 10 :
And it was almost two years ago that we brought Tulsi Gabbard on this show. In a very similar situation where she had left the Democrat Party, has not joined the Republican Party. I don’t even think she had left the Democrat Party yet. Right. Yeah. I think she had just become an independent.
SPEAKER 09 :
Maybe that’s what it was.
SPEAKER 10 :
Just become an independent. But even that, it took time for her to build trust within the conservative base. And our audience. Exactly. And so I think you can also look at that, why we have hope, because we’ve seen what can happen.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah. The first comment, though, said, you guys are being naive. Maybe so. Maybe? Maybe so. Maybe we’re looking for a hopeful 2025. We’re going to take your calls coming up. If you disagree or agree or have other things to say, 1-800-684-3110. Last call to get your comments in. And sign the petition at aclj.org. Slash sign. We’ll be right back. To Sekulow. Again, we’re going to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110, talking about the news coming out of Meta. But also, we’re going to shift a little bit here, Will, because we would like to never hear the name Jack Smith again. And I thought the last time we did this show, we said that was going to be it. It was done. It was over. But there is some big news, and as President Trump has just said, some great news, it was his quote, coming out of the potential release of a Jack Smith report. I’ll put that in quotes.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. So there are some interesting developments here because based off of the federal law, this is 28 Code of Federal Regulations 600.8 paragraph C. At the conclusion of the special counsel’s work, he or she shall provide the attorney general with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the special counsel. Then in 600.9, the Attorney General may determine that public release of these reports would be in the public interest to the extent that release would comply with the applicable legal restrictions. Now, President Trump’s attorneys have been filing in court trying to get to make sure that this doesn’t get released. They say it’s inappropriate, they don’t want Merrick Garland to release this, that they think that it is not in the public interest, he’s wrapped up the cases, and also it goes to the point where the judge in Florida said the special counsel was not properly appointed, so therefore… He should not have the opportunity to release something if he was not constitutionally appointed. But then, we were going to talk about this on the show, but then there was a move by Judge Cannon in Florida that issued an order today preventing the DOJ from releasing the report while the legal battle plays out. The DOJ decided to continue to fight that case only on the aspect of of that they think that special counsels are constitutional and that he was constitutionally appointed. They’ve wrapped up the other side of it, but that appeal, when she threw the case out based off of an unconstitutional appointment, they have kept alive. She told the DOJ that they cannot… release this while that appeals process goes forward. And she said in her order that this rule remains in effect until three days after the resolution by the 11th circuit of the emergency emotion, unless the 11th circuit otherwise orders. So she’s also saying that the 11th circuit, if they decide to keep special counsel on, get rid of him, whatever, they also have the authority to decide whether or not the department of justice can release this. So as of right now, That report isn’t being released before he takes office, it appears. And it’s a very interesting move because, once again, the special counsel’s wrapped up all these cases, Logan. They’re no longer trying to prosecute, and rightly so. But that special counsel report, remember, we had to listen through the Mueller report and all the spin that the media takes out of it. And they take the juiciest nuggets that they think they can spin on air and they get everyone to get on air and talk about how bad of a person he is and he should be in prison. And even then, when they had Bob Mueller before Congress and what a disaster that was, it just gives fodder. for the left to try and discredit and tear down and take the news away from the actual work of the incoming administration, which is trying to get America back on track. And that’s the last thing we need as a country right now is just a new Jack Smith dossier dropped right as President Trump takes office so that they can just feast on that for as long as they want and not get down to the people’s work.
SPEAKER 09 :
So just to quickly summarize, the breaking news item, the reason President Trump is saying this is great news moving forward is that it is currently being blocked from release. And the thought process is because it was so politically motivated.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, the thought process here from Judge Cannon is that one, her order said that this individual, Jack Smith, was not constitutionally appointed. That is being appealed in the 11th Circuit in Florida. And so therefore, she’s saying if they overturn it or whatever, they can decide their own when they get there. But as of right now, because it’s still in legal limbo, that it should not be released. Now, there could be a challenge on that order to the 11th Circuit. There could be a lot of things that play out depending on how badly Merrick Garland wants to smear President Trump on his way out the door because his term as Attorney General is coming quickly to an end. We’re only 13 days from inauguration and we can’t get there soon enough.
SPEAKER 09 :
And it is crazy, only 13 days away. It somewhat feels like that President Biden had disappeared, that Kamala Harris had disappeared, and he already had a sort of Trump presidency. Sadly, with the terrorist attacks and things that have happened over the last few weeks, it’s just put another spotlight back on the Biden administration and some of the failures that they’ve had and sort of the bumbling issues that have come up, whether in terms of the statements or the comments. And that’s been sort of a bit sad to watch because i felt like we were moving in a direction where we almost had put this chapter behind us already and now uh whether it’s giving george soros uh the medal of freedom or uh the situation that happened in new orleans or even what happened in uh las vegas which again feels like disappeared from the news uh it’s sort of shining that light back on. And even having Kamala Harris yesterday certifying the election, which we didn’t bring up, the election got certified in 35 minutes. I think it said one of the quickest ever. And you had that statement, that video from Kamala Harris being like, I trust the American people. And of course, that was after years of slander.
SPEAKER 10 :
And a little bit tongue-in-cheek here, but you got to give the Democrats credit for one thing yesterday. Democrats have been objecting to the certification of Republican president-elects for, I think, all the way back to the 50s. And there has been a Democrat that objects to the certification of a Republican. So that is their M.O. That is their game plan. They love to object to the certification. Playing the hits. But they, for the first time maybe ever… they were able to convince their entire party, hey, let’s not make a scene. Let’s not do this because then they’ll be able to say, look, you’re just like January 6th. Let’s not do that. And they were able to somehow corral the most unruly members of their party into not objecting and get through it quickly i know kamala harris is relieved because you could tell it did not look like she wanted to be much longer up there than she had to be but they did it they got through without an objection or someone trying to decertify the election and you know what that also tells me for the first time since the 50s the democrats truly believe that donald trump was rightfully elected he is our next president that’s the 50s uh i’m pretty sure you just said that donald trump is the president you mean the republican the republican no the democrats believe that for the first time this republican nominee yes is the first person that they believe has been elected duly and they don’t need to object to the certification
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s great. It was very short, and it went off without any issues. I’m going to encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ as we head into the end of the show. There’s a great way you can do it. You can sign our petition. You can get involved at ACLJ.org. Become an ACLJ champion if you can, too. That’s someone that gives on a monthly recurring basis. If you give a small donation, that’s fine. $10, $20, whatever it is. To become a champion, you just set that monthly membership. At whatever price you feel comfortable. I think the minimum is $5 just because of processing fees. You can do that right now. Become an ACLJ champion. I see a lot of people saying they’d sign the petition if Tom from MySpace would now become the head of Facebook. I don’t know why that’s happening in our comments. Maybe he’d be another board member. But I like it. I do like that’s happening right now. Thank you again for watching and for listening to our show. Thanks again to our new viewers on the Salem News Channel. We have a lot of new stuff coming out this year. I’m so excited for 2025, but we can’t do it without you. So if you can make a donation, I’m going to encourage you to do that right now because that’s how this show happens. Not big corporate sponsors, not even big donors, a lot of them. A lot of them are individual people like you that are the backbone of this organization. Talk to you tomorrow.
