Washington: Social media giant Meta eased its content moderation policies on Tuesday, including ending its US fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram, a major change that falls in line with incoming President Donald Trump’s priorities. is in accordance with.
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers (who) are too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they built,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, said in a post. , especially in America.”
Instead, meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, “will use community notes similar to what X (formerly Twitter) launched in the US,” he said.
Meta’s surprise announcement echoed long-standing complaints by Trump’s Republican Party and X boss Elon Musk about fact-checking, which many conservatives view as censorship.
They argue that fact-checking programs target right-wing voices, which has led to proposed laws in states such as Florida and Texas to limit content moderation.
“It’s good,” Musk posted on his X platform after the announcement.
The change comes as the 40-year-old tycoon has been making efforts to reconcile with Trump since his election in November, including donating a million dollars to his inaugural 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 if returned to office.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, when asked if he thought the move was a response to Zuckerberg’s threats against him, Trump replied: “Potentially, yes.”
The Republican was kicked out of Facebook following the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021, though the company reinstated his account in early 2023.
Angie Drobnik Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said the decision came after “extreme political pressure”.
The move “will harm social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family.”
‘Facebook jail’ ends
Like many other tech leaders, Zuckerberg has also met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida ahead of the inauguration on January 20.
Meta has made several moves in recent days that are likely to please Trump’s team, such as hiring former Republican official Joel Kaplan to head public affairs at the company.
He replaced former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
Zuckerberg also nominated a close Trump ally, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief Dana White, to the Meta board.
Kaplan emphasized in a statement Tuesday that the company’s approach to content moderation “goes too far.”
“Too much harmless content is censored, too many people find themselves unfairly locked in ‘Facebook jail,'” he said.
As part of the overhaul, Meta said it would move its trust and security teams from liberal California to more conservative Texas.
“This will help us build trust to do this work in places where there are less concerns about bias on our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg also took aim at the European Union, “which has a growing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to create anything innovative.”
The comment cited new laws in Europe that require Meta and other major platforms to maintain content moderation standards or risk hefty fines.
Zuckerberg said Meta would “work with President Trump to take action against foreign governments to further censor American companies.”
Additionally, Meta announced that it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content on its platforms.
Community Notes
AFP currently works with Facebook’s fact-checking program in 26 languages, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checking from about 80 organizations globally on its platforms, WhatsApp and Instagram.
In that program, content with a “false” rating is downgraded in the news feed, so fewer people will see it and if someone tries to share that post, they are presented with an article stating That’s why it’s confusing.
Community Notes on X (formerly Twitter) allows users to collaboratively add context to posts in a system that aims to achieve reliable information through consensus rather than top-down moderation.
Meta’s move into fact-checking comes in the wake of Trump’s shock election in 2016, which critics say was made possible by rampant disinformation on Facebook and interference from foreign actors, including Russia, on the platform.
