Social media giant Meta announced a series of changes to its content moderation policies on Tuesday, including the elimination of its fact-checking program, in what Mark Zuckerberg said was an effort to embrace free speech.
“We’re going back to our roots and focusing on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression to our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with X-like community notes, starting in the US.
The changes mark a major move for the parent company of Instagram and Facebook and follow a series of other changes the company has made in recent weeks as President-elect Trump heads into his second term later this month.
Zuckerberg cited the recent election as a driving force in the company's decision, blaming government policies and traditional media as one of the factors why Facebook and Instagram censored more.
Through the Fact Check program, Facebook hired third parties in 60 languages around the world, including Albanian. Under this program, third parties served as judges on posts or news that was distributed on the platform and then signaled to Facebook whether the news was false or not. In the US, there were accusations that the program was used politically to censor news related to Donald Trump.