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Facebook owner Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program and instead flagging misinformation by its users as the social media giant prepares for Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.
The $1.59tn company said on Tuesday it would “allow more speech by lifting restrictions on certain topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-profile violations” and “take a more personal approach to political content”.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Meta CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a video post.
President-elect Donald Trump criticized Zuckerberg during last year’s US presidential campaign. They suggested he would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he interfered in the 2024 vote.
But the Facebook founder has tried to rebuild his relationship with Trump, including visiting him at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home following his November victory.
On Monday, Metta moved to forge further ties with the incoming US presidential administration by appointing UFC founder and prominent Donald Trump supporter Dana White to its board of directors.
Zuckerberg said the complexity of the content moderation system, which expanded following Trump’s December 2016 election victory, introduced “a lot of bugs and a lot of censorship.”
Starting in the US, Meta will move to a “community notes” model similar to that employed by Elon Musk X, which allows users to add context to controversial or misleading posts. Meta itself does not write community notes.
Zuckerberg added that by changing the meta-systems, the automated filters will “dramatically reduce” the amount of content removed from the platform. This includes lifting restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender.
He acknowledged that the changes meant Meta “contains less bad stuff,” but argued that it was beneficial to reduce the number of “innocent people’s” posts being taken down by the business.
The changes bring Zuckerberg closer to Zuckerberg, who in 2022 reduced content moderation after buying the then-social media platform Twitter.
“Just like they do on X, community notes seek consensus among people with different viewpoints to help prevent biased rankings,” Meta said in a blog post.
Prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who announced last week that Meta will take over from Sir Nick Clegg as president of international affairs, told Fox News on Tuesday that third-party fact-checkers were “heavily biased.”
Commenting on Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, Kaplan added: “We have a real opportunity now, with a new administration and a new president coming in who are big advocates for free speech.” difference”
