Will Christians soon have more freedom on Facebook?

The man behind Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, has admitted that the social media platform has shown bias and engaged in too much censorship, and announced a series of measures to improve the free expression of ideas on his platforms.

Facebook has repeatedly been accused of bias against Christians and conservatives, and instead promoting ideas that are progressive and liberal. Bear Grylls, the well-known TV survival expert who is also a Christian, commented on the news: “A brave and culturally important realignment.”

As head of Meta, Zuckerberg is a powerful force in the modern means of receiving and sending information, as the company runs Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads. The announcement has been widely seen as a concession to the incoming Trump administration, which happens to include X owner Elon Musk.

In a post on Instagram, Zuckerberg said he believed in the importance of free expression, and that Facebook will in future remove fewer posts, and only those more serious or illegal.

“It’s time to get back to our roots on free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said. He asserted that the reason content was moderated on his social media was to remove harmful content such as that about terrorism and child exploitation – but that the systems had sometimes made mistakes.

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Zuckerberg said that they would stop using fact checkers, and instead use the “community notes” system pioneered by X, where anyone can make comments on the truthfulness of a post. “The fact checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed trust, especially in the US,” Zuckerberg said. He added that he would remove rules on “topics like immigration and gender” that are “out of touch with mainstream discourse”.

“What started as a movement to be more inclusive, has increasingly become a movement to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” he said. “I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”

Liberal outlet The Guardian knew what it thought about the changes: the news was an “extinction-level event” for social media, according to writer Chris Stokel-Walker. He perceived deep meaning in firing California-based fact checkers and a new team of content moderators in Texas. “All that was missing from the video was Zuckerberg wearing a Maga hat and toting a shotgun,” he fumed.

There are other signs that Facebook is making a political U-turn. Recently Nick Clegg, the firmly liberal former deputy prime minister, left his political role at Meta, and has been replaced by Joe Kaplan, said to be much more right wing. Zuckerberg’s address even criticised the Biden administration for encouraging censorship in the US. Previously, Facebook has alleged that government officials pressured the company to restrict posts on Covid-19 and a scandal related to the laptop of Hunter Biden, the US president’s son.

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But Christians will be particularly interested to discover what effect the changes have on how their faith is treated, following a litany of restrictions placed on Christian beliefs. Extraordinarily, Facebook went as far as to repeatedly remove a very inoffensive quote by St Augustine due to supposedly violating its community rules. After Facebook created a rainbow flag reaction emoji, a Christian request to have a similar mechanism for the Crucifix was rejected. A mum had her account frozen after posting a Bible verse about homosexuality and sin. The same happened to well-known evangelist Franklin Graham after commenting on the much-debated topic of gender and bathrooms. A group of religious organisations said in 2017 that Facebook was applying its rules unfairly against their views. Reformed pastor James White said that he had been censored for Christian views on marriage. Christian actor Dennis Quaid said that Facebook was censoring attempts to promote his recent film Reagan. Pastor Greg Locke said he was banned for 24 hours and had his video about transgenderism removed.

Other Christians highlighted the admission of bias. Griffin Gulledge, who describes himself as a pastor on X, said: “This is an earthquake for any Christian ministry active on Facebook. Yes, your pages have been downgraded in the algorithm due to censorship for years. This whole video is an admission. And now, a promise to change. We’ll see. Let’s hope.”

Andrew T. Walker, managing editor of WORLD Opinions and associate professor of Christian ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that Facebook’s rowing back on censorship on gender validated the bravery of people like JK Rowling and ordinary Christians who have spoken out against the extremes of transgender ideology: “Keep standing up for the truth. We have no idea how the flux of history from one generation to the next will receive and reconsider ancient truths. There is no “right side of history” in this age, as progressives like to speak of. The right side of truth is all there is, and it requires a witness for its advance.”

Heather Tomlinson is a freelance Christian writer. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com/ or via X (twitter) @heathertomli