Meta on Tuesday announced a series of changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end its long-standing fact-checking program, a policy instituted to limit the spread of misinformation on its social media apps.
Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns facebook, instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes or corrections to posts that may contain false or misleading information.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, <a target="_blank" class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1525382954801931″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>he said in a video statement that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States, is similar to the one used by x, called Community Notes.
“It's time to get back to our roots around free speech,” Zuckerberg said. Of the company's current fact-checking system, he added that it had “reached a point where there are too many errors and too much censorship.”
Zuckerberg noted that “the recent election also seems like a cultural turning point toward once again prioritizing speech.”
Elon Musk has taken to Community Notes to point out misleading posts on x. Since taking control of the social network, Musk has also increasingly positioned x as the platform behind Trump's new presidency.
The move is likely to please the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump and his conservative allies, many of whom have not liked Meta's practice of adding disclaimers or warnings to questionable or false posts. Trump has long criticized Zuckerberg, alleging that the fact-checking feature unfairly treated posts from conservative users.
Since Trump won a second term in November, Meta has moved quickly to try to repair the strained relations he and his company have with conservatives.
In late November, Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where he also met with his chosen secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Meta donated $1 million to support Trump's inauguration in December. Last week, Zuckerberg elevated Joel Kaplan, a longtime conservative and the highest-ranking Meta executive closest to the Republican Party, to the company's top political job. And on Monday, Zuckerberg announced that Dana White, leader of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Trump ally, would join Meta's board of directors.
Meta executives recently notified Trump officials about the policy change, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity. The fact-checking announcement coincided with an appearance by Kaplan on “Fox & Friends.” He told hosts of the morning show popular with conservatives that there was “too much political bias” in the fact-checking program and that the changes would result in “a lot less over-enforcement” of content.
The change ends a practice the company began eight years ago, in the weeks after Trump's election in 2016. At the time, facebook was under fire for the uncontrolled spread of misinformation spread across its network, including posts by foreign governments. seeking to sow discord among the American public.
As a result of enormous public pressure, Zuckerberg turned to outside organizations such as The Associated Press, ABC News and the fact-checking site Snopes, along with other global organizations vetted by the International Fact-Checking Network, to examine potentially false or false information. false. misleading posts on facebook and instagram and determine whether they need to be noted or removed.
Among the changes, Zuckerberg said, will be “removing restrictions on issues like immigration and gender that are out of touch with dominant discourse.” It also said trust, safety and content moderation teams would move from California and that US content review would move to Texas. That would “help eliminate concerns that biased employees are censoring content too much.” he added. .
