dead Tuesday Announce It will cancel Restore Freedom of Expression's third-party fact-checking program and move to a “community feedback” model, similar to the system in place. Elon MuskX platform.
The company said community feedback will be written and evaluated by contributing users to provide more context to posts across its platforms, and the feature will be rolled out in the United States over the next two months. This announcement represents the latest attempt by Meta to calm relations with the Republican president-elect Donald Trump Before he took office.
“We've gotten to a point where there's a lot of errors and a lot of oversight,” Meta CEO said Mark Zuckerberg he said Tuesday in a video announcement. “The recent election also appears to be a cultural turning point toward once again prioritizing expression, so we will return to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring freedom of expression on our platforms.”
Zuckerberg said third-party fact-checkers were “extremely politically biased” and “destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the United States.”
Meta said it will simplify its content policies by removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender and implementing a new approach to policy enforcement that will focus on illegal and high-risk violations. The company is moving its trust, safety, and content moderation teams from California, a historically Democratic state, to Texas, a historically Republican state.
“We will work with President Trump to push back against governments around the world that go after American companies and push for more oversight,” Zuckerberg said.
Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lena Khan addressed Meta's announcement in an interview Tuesday on CNBC's “Squawk box“, saying: “We must have an economy in which the decisions of a single company or CEO do not have an extraordinary impact on online speech.”
Joel Kaplan, head of global policy at Meta, appeared Tuesday on Fox News Channel's “Fox and Friends” and said that Meta believes the community feedback system on Musk's X platform works “really well.” Musk, who has been a vocal defender of Trump online and has donated millions of dollars to his campaign, has been in close contact with the president-elect since the election.
Last week, dead He said Kaplan will become the company's chief policy officer, succeeding Nick Clegg, who was previously British Deputy Prime Minister Leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats in Britain.
Kaplan, who has held a variety of policy-related positions at Meta since joining the company in 2011 when it was still called Facebook, is well known within the Republican Party. He was deputy White House chief of staff under former President George W. Bush and also served as a law clerk to a former Supreme Court justice. Antonin Scalia.
In December, Kaplan revealed on his Facebook page mail He joined Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Trump during their presidency Last visit On the New York Stock Exchange.
“We want to make it so that, bottom line, if you can say that on TV, or say that on the floor of Congress, then surely you should be able to say it on Facebook and Instagram without fear of censorship,” Kaplan said. Tuesday.
Meta's Oversight Board, which provides an independent check on the company's content moderation, applauded the changes the company made on Tuesday.
“The Oversight Board welcomes the news that Meta will review its approach to fact-checking, with the aim of finding a scalable solution to strengthen trust, freedom of expression and user voice on its platforms,” the board told CNBC in a statement, adding that “in the United States specifically, whether “Right or wrong, Meta’s previous approach was viewed as politically biased by many of its users.”
Prominent Republican lawmakers have previously criticized Meta and other tech companies over allegations of censoring conservative voices on their own platforms. For example, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, Sub shop garden Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs in 2023 as part of an investigation “to understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor expression.”
Zuckerberg has had a tense relationship with Trump over the years, with the president-elect most recently calling Facebook an “enemy of the people” in March. interview With CNBC. Meta imposed a Suspension for two years on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021 shortly after the company determined that the former president's actions following the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., could incite further violence.
In 2023, Trump was able to regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, but he also ran into some Potential restrictions and penalties If it violates the company's community guidelines. Dead in the end Remove restrictions related to Trump's account In July during the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election.
The company has taken additional steps to appease incoming management in recent months. The Meta announced Monday that Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a longtime friend of Trump, will join its board of directors.
Following Trump's presidential victory in November, Zuckerberg joined a number of other top tech executives who… visited The president-elect at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and in December, dead certain Donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund.
