Meta to end fact-checking program, moving content moderators out of California




January 7, 2025 -- Social media giant Meta announced a series of changes to its content moderation policies including the elimination of its fact-checking program, in what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was an effort to embrace free speech.

“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video.

“More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”


The changes mark a major move for the parent company of Instagram and Facebook and follow a series of other changes the company has made in recent weeks as President-elect Trump heads into his second term later this month.

“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,” he said. “So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”

Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation team from California to Texas, where there is “less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.

The changes are yet another indication Meta is attempting to court Trump, who has become a close ally of Musk in recent months.

Meta dished out a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund last month, while Zuckerberg met with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Zuckerberg on Tuesday pledged to work with Trump to “push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”

“The only way we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the U.S. government, and that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years, when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship by going after us and other American companies,” he said.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly named global policy chief, said the platform saw this approach “work on X,” and emphasized that the social media network gives users the power to decide the context other users should be seeing.

Kaplan, a prominent Republican lobbyist, was named to replace Nick Clegg as the company’s chief global affairs officer last week while the company announced this week that Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) CEO and President Dana White, another Trump ally, will join the company’s board of directors.

As on X, Meta’s Community Notes will require agreement between users “with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings,” Kaplan said.

The feature will be phased in the U.S. first over the next couple of months and will be improved over the course of the year, according to Kaplan.

Zuckerberg, in a letter to the committee, said Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Meta to “censor” content in 2021 and vowed to push back should something similar happen again.

In addition to the elimination of the fact-checking program, Zuckerberg announced Meta will also alter its content policies regarding some divisive issues such as immigration and gender.

“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,” he said. “So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”

Meta will also move its trust and safety and content moderation team from California to Texas, where there is “less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.

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