Patriots for Europe MEPs are calling for the establishment of a committee of inquiry into the “Facebook censorship issue” in the European Parliament, Fidesz MEP Csaba Dömötör announced in a video statement published on his Facebook page.
Csaba Dömötör reminded that a few days ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook and Meta, spoke with shocking openness about how “Facebook’s fact-checkers censored certain content on political grounds under political pressure.” Among those exerting political pressure, Zuckerberg mentioned the outgoing Democratic administration in the United States.
So what many people suspected and so many people experienced has become a fact, but the story does not end here, nor can it, the politician said, adding that this is why a commission of inquiry needs to be set up.
We need to find out exactly what content was censored, on whose behalf, and whether this could constitute interference in the internal political affairs of European countries,
he emphasized.
“In the European Parliament, freedom of expression and fundamental values of the rule of law are often invoked by many. Well, now we will see how seriously they take them,” concluded Csaba Dömötör.
Meta announced last week that it would abandon independent fact checkers on Facebook, reports BBC. Instead, there would be „community notes” like on X (formerly Twitter), meaning that users could comment on the accuracy of the posts. Mark Zuckerberg said that it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression.”
This move comes just days before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and it is no coincidence. According to BBC, Zuckerberg and other executives are trying to improve relations with Trump, who has earlier criticized Meta for its fact-checking policy, saying that it was censoring right-wing voices. Reacting to the announcement of Zuckerberg, Donald Trump said that he was impressed by it, and that meta had “come a long way.”
In 2023, Facebook removed the Ferencváros (9th district in Budapest) Fidesz page. Reacting to the news then, Fidesz MP Andrea Gyurákovics said that “Facebook’s censorship department has already started the 2024 election campaign, the first victim of which is the Ferencváros Fidesz Facebook page…”
Even before that, Facebook shut down yet another national conservative news site’s account, citing some violation of an image usage of a photograph depicting a baby’s pram. The news site, Ma7 was serving the Hungarian minority in Slovakia; its canceling on Facebook meant that its 30,000 followers were not able to access its articles and reports, nor express their opinions in the comment section. Ma7‘s Facebook page now works, but it is heavily restricted.
Via MTI, BBC; Featured photo via Pixabay
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