Just over a month after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort—and a day after Trump’s longtime friend, UFC CEO Dana White, joined Facebook’s board—Zuckerberg announced a sweeping overhaul of the social media platform’s moderation policies. The changes include nuking the controversial fact-checking censorship program and adopting a system similar to Elon Musk’s Community Notes on X, signaling a pivot toward free speech as Trump 2.0 will usher in an era of revitalization of Western values.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook early Tuesday morning.
He said, “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the US.”
Zuck went on to point the finger at the real problem:
“After 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically-biased…”
Meta released a subsequent press release detailing the changes in content moderation policies regarding political topics. He pointed to the presidential election as a significant influencer to the company’s decision and railed against “governments and legacy media” for allegedly pushing “to censor more and more.”
Meta explained its decision to end third-party fact-checking, citing concerns over political bias and emphasizing that X’s Community Notes model represents the best approach to future content moderation:
When we launched our independent fact checking program in 2016, we were very clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth. We made what we thought was the best and most reasonable choice at the time, which was to hand that responsibility over to independent fact checking organizations. The intention of the program was to have these independent experts give people more information about the things they see online, particularly viral hoaxes, so they were able to judge for themselves what they saw and read.
That’s not the way things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how. Over time we ended up with too much content being fact checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. Our system then attached real consequences in the form of intrusive labels and reduced distribution. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.
We are now changing this approach. We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.
- Once the program is up and running, Meta won’t write Community Notes or decide which ones show up. They are written and rated by contributing users.
- Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings.
- We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information.
We plan to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact checked content and, instead of overlaying full screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it.
Another significant change is that Meta will relocate its trust and safety teams, responsible for drafting content policies and reviewing content, from the far-left state of California to Texas and other locations.
Also, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, joined Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” to discuss the social media platform’s monumental changes.
“This is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression. As Mark says in that video, what we’re doing is we’re getting back to our roots and free expression,” Kaplan said.
He said, “It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform.”
Musk’s X Community Notes system is emerging as the “gold standard” in social media content moderation. This marks a shift away from radical leftist billionaires, legacy MSM, and federal agencies that fund or support nonprofit fact checkers, which often function as censorship weapons against political enemies of the left.
About one year ago: WSJ EIC Emma Tucker complained how MSM was no longer the “gatekeeper” in the news cycle.
Former presidential climate envoy John Kerry…
And Hillary Clinton called for anyone spreading “misinformation” to be criminally charged.
Axios CEO Jim VandeHei was livid about X becoming ‘the new media’ …
Also, Tyler O’Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal, recently showed one of the best flow charts of how the “Democratic Party Big Gov’t Machine” works with its network of shady billionaire-funded foundations capturing federal agencies to heavily influence the administrative state on issues like censorship of their political enemies.
Zuckerberg also stated that Meta will work with the incoming Trump administration to promote Western values, such as free speech, on a global scale. However, he did not elaborate on the specifics of this plan. This all seems like an olive branch move with Trump and Musk to avoid “life in prison” and endless investigations over the 2020 election interference.
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