Our favorite humanoid simulation Mark Zuckerberg discovered his deep passion for free speech around the same time he started lobbying Emperor Orange to drop that pesky antitrust case against Meta. He celebrated his transformation by releasing a video to announce his commitment to make Facebook the premiere retirement home for Boomer conspiracy theorists.
So it's curious that the free speech warrior is now trying to silence a critic who claims he's a power-hungry chameleon that switches political allegiances like people switch browser tabs.
"If he's such a fan of freedom of speech, why is he trying to silence me?" asked Sarah Wynn-Williams during a recent visit with U.S. Senators. Wynn-Williams is a former global policy director at Meta and author of the best selling book, Careless People, which tracks the Meta chief's journey from Beijing bootlicker to MAGA's favorite cage-fighting free speech warrior – a transformation about as authentic as his human impersonation skills.
"This is a man who wears many different costumes," Wynn-Williams told the senators. "When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child. He was learning Mandarin. He was censoring to his heart's content. Now his new costume is MMA fighting or free speech. We don't know what the next costume's going to be, but it will be something different. It's whatever gets him closest to power."
(Meta spokesperson Andy Stone has declared Wynn-Williams' book "defamatory," which in Silicon Valley speak means "embarrassingly accurate.")
Wynn-Williams revealed that during her tenure, Meta was busy developing censorship tools for the Chinese Communist Party while handing over American user data. But now that she's written a book about it, Zuckerberg's lawyers are working overtime to silence her faster than you can say "democracy dies in deplatforming."
In a rare moment of bipartisan harmony, Democrats and Republicans united to roast Silicon Valley's favorite shape-shifter.
"He's recently tried a reinvention in which he is now a great advocate of free speech, after being an advocate of censorship in China and in this country for years," said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). "Now he's on Joe Rogan and says that he is Mr. Free Speech, he is Mr. MAGA, he's a whole new man."
Wynn-Williams, who knows how to give good soundbite, replied, "Senator Hawley, one thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) savored the irony of Meta's previous pearl-clutching about Chinese dominance. After years of Meta crying that antitrust legislation would "actually destroy us and then China will dominate," turns out they were already "willing to put growth over the US national interest to gain favor with the Chinese Communist Party." Awkward!
When asked about his commitment to free expression, Zuckerberg responded by… just kidding, he didn't show up. He was probably too busy practicing his armbar technique while his attorneys perfect the art of selective censorship.
There you have it, the platform that's rolling out the red carpet for anti-vaxxers is the same one desperately trying to stuff this particular truth back in the box. Funny how "free speech" looks different when it's aimed at your own glass house.
Previously:
• Peak Facebook
