Social media giant Meta on Tuesday slashed its content moderation policies, including ending its US fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram, in a major shift that conforms with the priorities of US president-elect Donald Trump.
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers [that] have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.
Instead, Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram, “would use community notes similar to X, starting in the US,” he added.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Meta’s surprise announcement echoed long-standing complaints made by Trump’s Republican Party and X owner Elon Musk about fact-checking, which many conservatives see as censorship.
They argue that fact-checking programs disproportionately target right-wing voices, which has led to proposed laws in states like Florida and Texas to limit content moderation.
“This is cool,” Musk posted on his X platform after the announcement.
Zuckerberg, in a nod to Trump’s victory, said that “recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech” over moderation.
The shift came as the 40-year-old tycoon has been making efforts to reconcile with Trump since his election in November last year, including donating US$1 million to his inauguration fund.
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to retaliate against the tech billionaire once back in office.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump when asked if he believed the move was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg, responded: “Probably, yeah.”
The Republican was kicked off Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
Zuckerberg, like several other tech leaders, has met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida ahead of his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Meta has made moves over the past few days that are likely to please Trump’s team, such as appointing former Republican official Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company.
He takes over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Championship head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.
Kaplan, in a statement on Tuesday, insisted the company’s approach to content moderation had “gone too far.”
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in Facebook jail,” he said.
As part of the overhaul, Meta said it would relocate its trust and safety teams from liberal California to more conservative Texas.
“That will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg also took a shot at the EU “that has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.”
The remark referred to new laws in Europe that require Meta and other major platforms to maintain content moderation standards or risk hefty fines.
Zuckerberg said that Meta would “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more.”
Additionally, Meta announced it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content across its platforms.
Meta’s move into fact-checking came in the wake of Trump’s shock election in 2016, which critics said was enabled by rampant disinformation on Facebook and interference by foreign actors, including Russia, on the platform.
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