A major setback in its content moderation policy? Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) will end its fact-checking program in the United States, its founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday. A controversial decision, while the latter has recently increased his gestures towards Donald Trump. The president-elect, who is due to enter the White House on January 20, said he “probably” influenced this decision.
Why this decision?
The fact-checking program launched in 2016 by Facebook, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world, previously relied on independent partners to verify reported content. Information deemed false has its visibility reduced, accompanied by a warning, in order to limit misinformation on its platforms.
But it’s over, in the United States at least. Meta told Politico that this would not be the case in the European Union at the moment. According to the group’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, “the 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.
What will fact-checkers be replaced by?
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community ratings, similar toformerly Twitter), starting with the United States,” said the group’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, in a message published on social networks.
On specify that an image was generated by artificial intelligence. They are written by the users themselves, before being put to a vote: if they are approved by a large number of people, then they are displayed. Supposed to be factual, they sometimes seem to reveal ideological biases.
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.
A rapprochement with Donald Trump?
In his video, Mark Zuckerberg indicates that Meta is preparing to “work with President Trump to push back against governments around the world that are attacking American companies and pushing for increased censorship.” This is not the first gesture from the boss of Meta towards President-elect Donald Trump: Zuckerberg had already made 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.
Mark Zuckerberg had dinner in November with Donald 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. During a press conference in these same places this Tuesday, the president-elect explained that he “probably” influenced Meta’s decision.
In another gesture aimed at conservatives, Meta appointed a Donald Trump loyalist, Joel Kaplan, to head its public affairs, replacing the former British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who resigned. “Too much safe content has been censored, too many people have been unfairly locked into Facebook prison ” Joel 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.
What reactions?
Unsurprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement delighted his competitor Elon Musk, who bought Twitter to make it X, and who will have his place in the Trump administration, at the head of the future Department of Government Effectiveness. “It’s cool,” he commented on 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
“This is a smart decision on Zuck’s part and I expect other platforms to follow,” responded X CEO Linda Yaccarino. A decision also welcomed on the social network by Brendan Carr, recently appointed by Donald Trump as head of the American telecoms regulator and who regularly claims to want to “dismantle the censorship cartel” imposed by “Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft”.
But Zuckerberg’s decision also attracts criticism. “This is a major setback in content moderation policy, at a time when disinformation and dangerous content are changing more quickly than ever,” said the co-founder of the Center for Information Resilience. (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.
A more global evolution
Among the upcoming developments, Meta is expected to move its “trust and safety” teams from California, which is 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.
