Meta announces end to its fact-checking program in the US

Social media giant Meta on Tuesday, January 7, slashed its content moderation policies, including ending its US fact-checking program, in a major shift that conforms with the priorities of incoming president Donald Trump.

“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers (that) have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. Instead, Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, “would use community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US,” he added.

Meta’s surprise announcement echoed long-standing complaints made by Trump’s Republican Party and X owner Elon Musk about fact-checking that many conservatives see as censorship. They argue that fact-checking programs disproportionately target right-wing voices, which has led to proposed laws in states like Florida and Texas to limit content moderation. “This is cool,” Musk posted on his X platform after the announcement.

Zuckerberg said that “recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech” over moderation. The shift came as the 40-year-old tycoon has been making efforts to reconcile with Trump since his election in November, including donating $1 million to his inauguration fund.

At a press conference hours later, Trump praised the changes. “I think they’ve come a long way, Meta,” Trump said. When asked if he believed Zuckerberg made the changes in response to threats the incoming president has made, Trump responded: “Probably, yeah.”

Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him. The Republican was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.

Zuckerberg dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November in a sign of strengthening ties.

Ending ‘Facebook jail’

In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Joel Kaplan, a former Republican official, to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.

“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’” Kaplan said in a statement, insisting that the company’s approach to content moderation had “gone too far.”

In his moves towards Republicans, Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.

As part of the overhaul, Meta said it will relocate its trust and safety teams from liberal California to more conservative Texas. “That will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg also took a shot at the European Union “that has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.” This made reference to new laws in Europe that require Meta and other major platforms to maintain content moderation standards or risk hefty fines.

Zuckerberg said that Meta would “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more.”

Additionally, Meta announced it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content across its platforms.

Instead, the company will adopt a more personalized approach, allowing users greater control over the amount of political content they see on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.