Key points
- Meta, last week, elevated Republican Joel Kaplan as global affairs head
- On Monday announced it had elected Dana White, a friend of Trump, to its board.
- Zuckerberg says company made “too many mistakes”
- Adopts community notes model for content moderation
- Meta moving safety teams to Texas from California
ISLAMABAD: Bowing to conservative criticism and President-elect Donald Trump getting ready to assume office for a second term, social media company Meta on Tuesday eliminated its US fact-checking programme and loosened restrictions on conversations about subjects such as immigration, according to Reuters.
The company said it would allow its users to add context or debunk claims in notes that appear next to specific posts, a process pioneered by Elon Musk’s X. Meta will also change its rules more broadly, lifting restrictions on hot-button topics and focusing enforcement on illegal or high-severity violations, according to Washington Post.
“Too many mistakes”
In a video accompanying a Meta blog post, Zuckerberg cited errors made by the company’s fact-checking team and alluded to the presidential election victory of Donald Trump, who has often raged against fact-checking as an impediment to free speech.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said, according to Washington Post. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
According to Reuters, the move is Meta’s biggest overhaul of its approach to managing political content on its services in recent memory and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signaling a desire to mend fences with the incoming administration.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.” – CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The changes will affect Facebook, Instagram and Threads, three of the world’s biggest social media platforms with more than three billion users globally.
Last week, Meta elevated Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as global affairs head and on Monday announced it had elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, to its board.
“Probably”, says Donald Trump
When asked about the changes at a press conference, Trump welcomed them. “They have come a long way – Meta. The man (Zuckerberg) was very impressive,” he said.
Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was responding to his threats, which have included a pledge to imprison the CEO, Trump said “probably.”
In place of a formal fact-checking program to address dubious claims posted on Meta’s platforms, Zuckerberg instead plans to implement a system of “community notes” similar to that used on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X.
Meta also will stop proactively scanning for hate speech and other types of rule-breaking, reviewing such posts only in response to user reports, Zuckerberg said. It will focus its automated systems on removing “high-severity violations” like terrorism, child exploitation, scams and drugs.
The company will move teams overseeing the writing and review of content policies out of California to Texas and other US locations, he added.
Meta has been working on the shift away from fact-checking for more than a year, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
“It’s a hard hit”
The demise of the fact-checking program, started in 2016, caught partner organizations by surprise.
“We’ve learned the news as everyone has today. It’s a hard hit for the fact-checking community and journalism. We’re assessing the situation,” AFP said in a statement provided to Reuters.
The head of the International Fact-Checking Network, Angie Drobnic Holan, challenged Zuckerberg’s characterization of its members as biased or censorious.
“Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracies,” she said in a statement.
Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, in a departure from its past practice.
“This is a major step back for content moderation at a time when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever,” said Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience.
“Appeasement not smart”
“This move seems more about political appeasement than smart policy.”
For now, Meta is planning the changes only for the US market, with no immediate plans to end its fact-checking program in places like the European Union which take a more active approach to regulation of tech companies, a spokesperson said.
Musk’s X is already under European Commission investigation over issues including the “Community Notes” system.
