Robby Soave at Reason examines the intervention of the fact checkers at Meta into a recent political debate. Let’s stipulate that the question of whether we are in a recession or not is complicated, and reasonable people can take either side of this issue. Of course, the First Amendment protects expression on both sides of this issue; the Biden administration could not simply censor criticisms of its views about recessions. It is equally true that Facebook, on its own or at the behest of its fact checkers, may suppress on its platforms all criticism of the Biden administration’s views about recessions. Such suppression of speech is legally valid in the United States, and legal validity is part of the legitimacy of content moderation.

But it is not the whole legitimacy story especially for a company like Meta that says voice is its “paramount value.” As a matter of fact, Meta itself says “the program isn’t meant to interfere with individual expression, opinions and debate, clearly satirical or humorous content, or business disputes.” The debate about a recession would appear to fall within “individual expression, opinions and debate.” Why did fact checkers get to pass judgment on this content? And why did Meta take down the content at their behest? Did it threaten “imminent physical harm” to someone? Or just political harm to the Biden administration? A reasonable person might wonder.

Meta has a First Amendment right to editorial judgment on its platform. But pushing that right to its limit by seemingly intervening to favor one side in a normal political debate calls the legitimacy of Meta’s content moderation into question. The company was right the first time: the United States does not need an “arbiter of truth” to oversee its political debates. As Judge Learned Hand observed, “It would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.”