Meta is ending its fact-checking program ahead of Donald Trump's new term, the company will stop using third-party fact-checking specialists on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram and will instead rely on users adding notes to posts. This is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies, notes The New York Times.
The new content moderation rules will effectively end the fact-checking program created to combat the spread of misinformation on its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta will rely on users who will add notes to posts containing false or misleading information.
As NYT writes, this move is a clear sign that the company is restructuring for Trump's presidency just weeks before it begins.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in his video that the new protocol, which will be implemented in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the protocol used in X, called Community Notes. «It's time to return to our roots related to free speech», said Zuckerberg, adding that the company's current fact-checking system «has reached the point where there are too many errors and too much censorship».
«We are removing a number of restrictions on topics such as immigration, gender identity, and gender, which are subjects of frequent political discussions and debates», added Zuckerberg.
At the same time, Zuckerberg acknowledged that as a result of the changes, more «bad things» will appear on the platform. «The reality is that this is a trade-off,» he said. «It means we will catch fewer bad materials, but we will also reduce the number of posts and accounts of innocent people that we accidentally delete».
The fact-checking announcement coincided with a speech by Joel Kaplan, the newly appointed head of Meta for global policy, on the show Fox & Friends, a favorite show of President-elect Donald Trump. Kaplan told the hosts of the morning show, popular among conservatives, that there is «too much political bias» in the fact-checking program.
Donald Trump has long criticized Zuckerberg, claiming that the fact-checking feature unfairly targets the posts of conservative users.
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