Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a video on its website Tuesday (Jan. 7) that Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram.
“Fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg said the video announcing the new policy. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
Zuckerberg cited free speech as well as a shifting political and social landscape as the reason for the major changes to the company’s moderation policies and practices. Meta is following Elon Musk’s X and moving to a Community Notes system, Meta said in a statement on its website.
The Silicon Valley tech company launched as Facebook in 2004 and rebranded as Meta in 2022. Meta owns three of the four biggest social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — and is one of the biggest tech firms worldwide.
“Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression,” Zuckerberg said.
The move by Zuckerberg runs parallel to what Musk did after he bought X in 2022 (then called Twitter). Roughly, the Community Notes system works along a majority rules, whereby if enough users dispute the facts, the post can be amended or notes appended.
Meta’s automated systems that scan for policy violations is also being revamped because the end result was over-censorship, the company said.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do.”
The company will evaluate instances of alleged illegal activities — terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. Concerns will have to be reported by the user community before Meta gets involved, per the video.
