GENEVA: The UN rights chief insisted Friday that regulating hate speech and harmful content online “is not censorship”, days after Meta scrapped its fact-checking programme on Facebook and Instagram citing censorship concerns.
“Allowing hate speech and harmful content online has real world consequences. Regulating such content is not censorship,” Volker Turk said on X.
“My Office calls for accountability and governance in the digital space, in line with human rights.”
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday the group would “get rid of fact-checkers” and replace them with community-based posts, starting in the United States, complaining the programme had made “too many mistakes and too much censorship”.
Instead, Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram, “would use community notes similar to X, starting in the US,” he added.
Meta’s surprise announcement echoed long-standing complaints by Trump’s Republican Party and X owner Elon Musk about fact-checking, which many conservatives see as censorship.
Facebook currently pays to use fact checks from around 80 organisations globally on the platform, as well as on WhatsApp and Instagram.
Silenced
Without mentioning Meta or X, Turk elaborated on his comments on LinkedIn, cautioning that social media had the “demonstrated ability to fuel conflict, incite hatred and threaten safety”.
“When at its best, social media is a place where people with divergent views can exchange, if not always agree,” he said.
However, he said, “when we call efforts to create safe online spaces ‘censorship’, we ignore the fact that unregulated space means some people are silenced – in particular those whose voices are often marginalised”.
“At the same time, allowing hatred online limits free expression and may result in real world harms.”
Turk said “freedom of expression thrives when diverse voices can be heard without enabling harm or disinformation”.
Accountability and governance in digital spaces, he said, “safeguards public discourse, builds trust, and protects the dignity of all”.
Asked about whether the UN might re-evaluate its presence on Meta and X, UN spokesman Michele Zaccheo said the organisation was “constantly watching this space and evaluating it”.
