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Meta said on Tuesday that it was ending its longstanding fact-checking program, a policy instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps, in a stark sign of how the company was repositioning itself for the Trump presidency and throwing its weight behind unfettered speech online.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, said it would now allow more speech, rely on its users to correct inaccurate and false posts, and take a more personalized approach to political content. It described the changes with the language of regret, saying it had strayed too far from its values over the previous decade.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said in a video announcing the changes that the company’s fact-checking system had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
Mr. Zuckerberg conceded that there would be more “bad stuff” on the platforms as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.
Ever since Donald J. Trump’s victory in November, few big companies have worked as overtly to curry favor with the president-elect, who, during his first administration, accused social media platforms of censoring conservative voices. In a series of announcements during this presidential transition period, Meta has sharply shifted its strategy in response to what Mr. Zuckerberg called a “cultural tipping point” from the election.
Mr. Zuckerberg dined with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, and Meta later donated $1 million to support Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Last week, Meta elevated Joel Kaplan, the highest-ranking Meta executive closest to the Republican Party, to the company’s most senior policy role. And on Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg said Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and an ally of Mr. Trump’s, would join Meta’s board.
Mr. Trump said that he had watched Mr. Kaplan’s Fox interview and found it “impressive” and that Meta had “come a long way.” Mr. Trump also said Meta’s change was “probably” a result of the threats he had made against the company and Mr. Zuckerberg.
The influence of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who leads X, SpaceX, and Tesla, also loomed large over Meta’s shift. Since buying X in 2022, Mr. Musk has thrown out the platform’s restrictions on online speech and has turned to a program called Community Notes, which depends on X’s users to police false and misleading content. Mr. Musk, who has become a key adviser to Mr. Trump, also moved X to Texas and out of California, where it had been based, and has criticized California’s policies.
On Tuesday, Meta said it would also turn to a Community Notes program after seeing “this approach work on X.” In addition, Mr. Zuckerberg said his company would run its U.S. trust and safety and content moderation operations from Texas instead of California “to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.
Mr. Kaplan pushed back against the idea that anyone was influencing Mr. Zuckerberg’s decisions. “There’s no question that the things that happen at Meta are coming from Mark,” he said. But, he added, “I think Elon’s played an incredibly important role in moving the debate and getting people refocused on free expression.”
Misinformation researchers said Meta’s decision to end fact-checking was deeply concerning. Nicole Gill, a founder and the executive director of the digital watchdog organization Accountable Tech, said Mr. Zuckerberg was “reopening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation and conspiracy theories that caused Jan. 6 — and that continue to spur real-world violence.”
In 2021, Facebook shut down Mr. Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol for inciting violence, later reinstating him. Multiple studies have since shown that interventions like Facebook’s fact-checks were effective at reducing belief in falsehoods and reducing how often such content was shared.
But Meta’s move elated conservative allies of Mr. Trump, many of whom have disliked Meta’s practice of adding disclaimers or warnings to questionable or false posts. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said in a post on X that Meta “finally admits to censoring speech” and called the change “a huge win for free speech.”
Other Republicans were skeptical. Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said in a post on X that Meta’s change was “a ploy to avoid being regulated.”
Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcements were met by praise and horror. For some employees, Mr. Zuckerberg was finally being his “authentic self,” uninhibited by “woke” critics, three current and former employees said.
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