Social media giant Meta on Tuesday announced a series of changes to its content moderation policies, including the elimination of its fact-checking program, in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was an effort to embrace free speech.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning.
“More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
The changes mark a major move for the parent company of Instagram and Facebook and follows a series of other changes the company has made in recent weeks as President-elect Trump heads into his second term later this month.
Meta’s yearslong fact-checking program enlisted the help of third-party fact-checkers that moderated posts in more than 60 languages. The company stated the practice eventually became too restrictive of posts over the years.
“We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new global policy chief, said in a statement Tuesday.
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