Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) has announced that it will end its fact-checking program in the United States, marking a major setback in the social network's content moderation policy, according to specialists.
“We will get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to social networks.
According to Mr. Zuckerberg, “auditors have been too politically oriented and have done more to reduce trust than to improve it, particularly in the United States.”
Meta's announcement comes as Republicans and the owner of rival social network X, Elon Musk, have repeatedly complained about fact-checking programs, which they liken to censorship.
“The recent elections seem to be a cultural tipping point giving, once again, priority to freedom of expression,” said the boss of Meta.
At the same time, the group should review and “simplify” its rules concerning content on all of its platforms and “put an end to a certain number of limits concerning subjects, such as immigration and gender, which do not are more in the dominant discourses.
“This is a major setback in content moderation policy, at a time when disinformation and dangerous content are changing more quickly than ever,” the co-founder of the Resilience Center of the information (CIR), Russ Burley, in a press release.
“Efforts to protect freedom of expression are essential, but stepping back on fact-checking without a credible alternative opens the door to a flood of even more dangerous content,” he insisted.
“It’s cool,” Elon Musk, for his part, simply commented on his social network attempt to +restore+ freedom of expression”, and which continues with the sentence: “Mark Zuckerberg says that content moderators are +politically biased+ while promising a system similar to that of X.”
The announcement comes as Mr. Zuckerberg has increased his gestures towards President-elect Donald Trump, notably through a donation of one million dollars for the fund financing the inauguration ceremonies of the mandate, scheduled for January 20.
The Republican candidate had been particularly critical of Meta and his boss in recent years, accusing the company of bias and supporting progressive speeches.
Donald Trump was suspended from Facebook after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but his account was reactivated in early 2023.
-More political content –
Mark Zuckerberg had dinner in November with Mr. Trump at the latter's Mar-a-Lago (Florida) residence, in a gesture seen as a desire to calm relations with the future American president.
In another gesture aimed at the conservatives, Meta appointed a loyalist of Mr. Trump, Joel Kaplan, at the head of his public affairs, replacing the former British deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who resigned.
“Too much harmless content has been censored, too many people have been unfairly locked in 'Facebook prison',” Kaplan said in a statement, insisting that the current approach had gone “too far.”
Another gesture of appeasement on the part of Meta, the appointment of the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Dana White, also close to Donald Trump, to the Meta board of directors.
Among future developments, Meta is expected to move its “trust and security” team from California, generally more progressive, to Texas, a more conservative state.
“This will help us build the confidence to get the job done with less concern about bias among our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
A movement which also goes with the desire to reverse its decision, in 2021, to reduce political content on its platforms.
The company now wants to take a more personalized approach, giving users greater control over how much political content they want to see on Facebook, Instagram or Threads.
AFP participates in more than 26 languages in a fact-checking program developed by Facebook, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their “fact-checks” on its platform, on WhatsApp and on Instagram.
