In a move hailed by some as a major win for open dialogue online, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday unveiled a slate of sweeping revisions to the way content is moderated on his company’s platforms.
The announcement arrives less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to assume office, with members of his incoming team pledging to prioritize efforts to address censorship concerns.
These changes will extend to Facebook and Instagram, two of the globe’s most heavily used social networks.
Zuckerberg highlighted three key points: ending a third-party fact-checking program introduced post-2016 that was criticized for silencing conservative views and transitioning to a Community Notes model; lifting curbs on certain subjects found in mainstream discussion while concentrating enforcement on illegal or severe violations; and expanding personalization settings to let users who want more political coverage see it in their feeds.
“We’re gonna 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.”
Zuckerberg pointed to Trump’s win at the ballot box as a “cultural tipping point.” “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward, once again, prioritizing speech,” he said. “So we’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Zuckerberg’s declaration comes roughly two months after Commissioner Brendan Carr—currently the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission and Trump’s designated chair—insisted that tech giants come clean about their alleged censorship of conservative content during the Biden administration.
Carr contended that these fact-check initiatives effectively pose as objective guardians of truth while actually serving “to defund, demonetize, and otherwise put out of business news outlets” that differ from mainstream media narratives. He singled out left-leaning watchdog NewsGuard, describing it as existing to “censor free speech and conservative news outlets.”
NewsGuard was established in 2018 by Steven Brill, who has reportedly spent decades as a donor, advocate, and activist for the Democratic Party.
Right-leaning observers have expressed confusion about the role of NewsGuard, which the Media Research Center labels a left-leaning entity used by dominant social media and ad companies to determine who is eligible for web traffic and ad revenue.
{Matzav.com}