Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that, starting soon, but in the U.S. first, Facebook will no longer employ independent fact-checkers, a move that will significantly alter the way posts, videos, and other content are moderated on the social media platform.
In a video message on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers and plans to replace them with user-generated “community notes,” similar to Elon Musk’s X, where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users.
“Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg, citing the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election as underlying the decision, said in the video posted alongside a blog post by the company. “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.”
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Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, also commented on the change, which will affect Instagram and Threads as well. “We’ve seen this approach work on X, where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context. People from a wide range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing, and one that’s less prone to bias,” he stated.
This decision comes as Zuckerberg and other tech executives aim to improve relations with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office later this month. Trump and his Republican allies have frequently criticised Meta’s fact-checking policy, labelling it as censorship of right-wing voices.
Meta introduced its fact-checking program on Facebook in 2016 as part of an effort to curb misinformation after being accused of widely spreading false news and updates during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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