On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg slammed the company’s information moderation policies in a charge to accept free speech and improve oversight. He dropped a revelation. The shake-up signals the end of Meta’s long-standing fact-checking program, replaced by a community-driven system modeled after X’s ( formerly Twitter’s ) Community Notes.
In a movie news, Zuckerberg said,” We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our plans, and restoring completely expression on our websites”. The changes, which may affect Facebook, Instagram, and Strands, are set to move out in the US first.
Election season move
The catalyst for change, according to Zuckerberg, was the shifting social environment and growing condemnation of moderation policies. “The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech,” he said, adding that governments and legacy media had been pushing for “more and more censorship.”
The news comes amid preparation for President-elect Donald Trump’s opening. Moving its confidence and security team to Texas and appointing Democratic Joel Kaplan to direct its policy staff are two recent changes that indicate Meta’s is moving toward a more conservative-friendly approach.
Conclusion of fact-checking
Meta’s recent system, launched in 2016, relied on third-party fact-checkers like PolitiFact and FactCheck. org to recognize and tag misinformation. Zuckerberg criticized the system, claiming that it was prone to errors and had contributed to an extremely complex tolerance approach.
The new program may depend on user-generated type to flag false information while narrowing Meta’s automatic moderation focus to “high-severity violations” like terrorism and child exploitation. Zuckerberg acknowledged the trade-off:” We’re going to get less terrible things, but we’ll reduce the number of honest person’s articles and accounts we unknowingly take down”.
A pragmatic pivot
The overhaul reflects a wider trend in technology, as businesses deal with political unrest over moderation decisions. Republicans have long claimed Meta’s fact-checking system favors Democrats —allegations Meta has denied. The new system appears to be trying to dispel that criticism while adopting a conservative model that has gained popularity.
Notably, Zuckerberg joined other tech leaders in contributing$ 1 million to his inaugural fund in a recent interview and praised Trump.
What’s next?
The shift raises questions about how effective community-driven moderation can be at combating misinformation. X’s Community Notes, the system Meta is emulating, has been a mixed bag of fact-checking, trolling, and viral commentary.
Critics warn that eliminating professional fact-checkers could open the door to false information, but Zuckerberg is betting on simplicity and free expression to gain users ‘ trust. Whether that gamble succeeds is still to be seen.
