Meta to get rid of social media fact checkers to promote so-called ‘free speech’
Founder of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg. (Getty)
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a video call on Tuesday (7 January) that the brand will ditch fact checkers in order to prioritise “free speech,” following the re-election of Donald Trump.
In recent years, the phrase “free speech” has increasingly become an alt-right rallying cry, with many divisive figures claiming “freedom of speech” gives them a right to spew hateful rhetoric and fascist viewpoints.
Facebook, Instagram and Threads will all dump their fact checkers, with Mark Zuckerberg claiming they had become “too politically biased. They will be replaced by community notes, similar to the ones on social media competitor X, which is owned by fervent Trump ally Elon Musk.
Community notes on X rely on users to add context to certain posts to combat misinformation ā not always successfully. In October 2024, The Washington Post published a wide-ranging and detailed report which suggests that Community Notes had largely failed to address misinformation in the app.
Content moderation staff, Zuckerberg said, will also be moved from California to Texas to combat the “bias of our teams.”
Mark Zuckerberg went on to say: “We’re going back to our roots, and (will) focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth but the fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created.ā
The decision was made after watching the approach on X, he added, which “[helped to] empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading.” The change would allow Meta to “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, which are out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
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