Meta is discontinuing its fact-checking system.
On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan announced that the tech giant would transition to a community notes model — similar to the system on Elon Musk’s X — to “restore free expression,” according to a news release.
“Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely,” said Kaplan in the release. “That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad, and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.”
Kaplan noted that societal and political pressure to moderate content has pushed the company to develop increasingly complex systems to manage content across its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, in recent years.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” he added.
Zuckerberg also believes the programs have become “too politically biased” and “destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said, CNBC reported. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech, so we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
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Meta shared that its community notes feature, expected to roll out in the U.S. in the coming months, will be written and rated by contributing users to provide more context to posts across its platforms.
The company plans to simplify its content policies by removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender and implementing an approach to prioritize addressing illegal and high-severity violations.
Meta is also relocating its trust and safety and content moderation teams from California — a historically Democratic state — to Texas, which leans Republican. CNBC reported that the move is part of Meta’s efforts to smooth things with President-elect Donald Trump before his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, which, in a rarity, coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In 2021, Meta suspended Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts after concluding that his actions following the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill could potentially incite further violence.
Trump regained access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2023 but faced restrictions and potential penalties if he violated the company’s community guidelines. Meta eventually removed the restrictions in July, four months before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Although Trump referred to Meta as an “enemy of the people” during a March 2024 interview with CNBC, Zuckerberg and other prominent technology executives joined the President-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, FL, following his victory in November 2024. Meta confirmed a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund in December.
According to CNBC, Zuckerberg said on Tuesday, “We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
