Earlier this month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent five minutes explaining to over 3 billion users that everything was about to change. In ending Meta’s fact-checking program, he ensured that civil society organizations and governments would immediately scramble and miss the subsequent list of reforms that received less attention but are no less significant. Zuckerberg methodically relayed plans to “simplify” policies, roll back content moderation, and “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world” that he accused of “censorship.” Predicated on what he claims as Meta’s “roots” of “free expression,” a fundamentally debatable statement, the announcement set the scene for politically charged debate over whose expression is favored and why. All are changes that will inevitably affect art and expression on Meta platforms, but the question is: How?
Among the swirling array of opinions in the wake of Meta’s announcement, few have taken into account the unique position that many artists find themselves in, particularly those who have struggled against stringent policies and uneven, punitive content moderation. Projects like the Vienna Strips account on OnlyFans and the project Don’t Delete Art, of which I am the editor-at-large, have long pointed out Meta’s “arbitrary and needlessly aggressive gatekeeping,” which has consistently impacted the livelihoods of artists and the public’s access to art online. Until Zuckerberg’s announcement, artists and marginalized communities had faced amped-up restrictions, account removals, and violations that journalists and free expression groups have recently addressed.
On the one hand, Meta’s admission of “over-enforcing our rules” and “subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions” is a welcome acknowledgment of the censorship and restriction that inhibited many artists on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. In a concurrent blog post, Meta blamed over-enforcement on complicated policies and flawed automation and laid out a new system relying on user reports for most violations, limiting automated systems to solely detect “illegal and high-severity violations.” This could cut down significantly on what the blog referred to as “demotions,” which artists may know as “down-ranking” or “shadowbanning,” that cause visibility issues, restrictions, and self-censorship.
While these changes may appear to address some concerns about censorship, artists and Meta users as a whole are right to be skeptical. Along with paring back content moderation, Meta is making policy changes that have raised serious concerns among groups like the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), who see the simplification of policies about immigrants, women, and what the company called “transgenderism” in the name of “mainstream discourse” as revealing its true goal: to open the floodgates for more hate speech directed at marginalized groups across platforms.
“Troublingly, Meta’s new policies permit slurs and insults against marginalized groups, while actually forbidding those groups from using the same language against others,” NCAC Director Lee Rowland told Hyperallergic in an email. “That’s not just a content moderation policy — it’s one that picks winners and losers in a culture war, and silences vulnerable voices.” This, along with other recent shifts at Meta — shuttering their already flawed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, removing tampons from men’s bathrooms, and seeking “masculine energy” — reinforces the belief that the policy changes are what Rowland called “a proxy for politics, not principle.”
For all their supposed reforms for “free expression,” Woodhull Freedom Foundation President and CEO Ricci Levy told Hyperallergic that Meta runs the risk of “becoming unsafe spaces filled with unchecked hate speech and harassment” and “pushing vulnerable communities off these important platforms and normalizing discriminatory attitudes.” Despite scaled-back moderation — and also because of it — it’s doubtful that artists who already face obstacles could thrive in an environment such as this.
Notably, these monumental decisions were made without consulting civil society organizations, which had been general practice at Meta. This signals a stark break with steps toward collaboration and transparency over recent years, instead labeling regulations that require such input and standards as “censorship,” such as the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
“Characterising this legislation as ‘censorship’ is both concerning and puzzling,” said Barbora Bukovská, senior director for Law and Policy at the British human rights organization Article 19, in an email to Hyperallergic.
“The DSA enhances transparency and user recourse regarding content moderation, aligning with human rights principles,” she continued. “The DSA does not dictate what can or cannot be said online; rather, it sets standards for how platforms should manage harmful content while respecting lawful expression […] Calling this ‘censorship’ totally misrepresents the intent and impact of EU laws.”
For artists on Meta platforms, the future is unclear. Less punitive moderation remains a heartening development, but it is unknown whether guidelines that affect artists’ visibility will change and whether or not subjects like nudity will be considered “high-severity violations.”
Lia Holland, communications director at digital advocacy nonprofit Fight For The Future, captured the justified distrust many artists feel, telling Hyperallergic, “We have to remember that Meta’s previous content moderation system was also deeply broken, and recognize that whatever they do next will inevitably fail us.”
Regardless, artists are among the wave of users who have already begun to emigrate to other platforms, where user choice and decentralization offer what seems closer to free expression than Meta’s top-down systems. Looking ahead to a future in which artists can truly be free without strings attached, Holland added, “We are very close to having the technology to accomplish this, and with moves like Meta is making, we’re going to increasingly have the will.”
