CV NEWS FEED // Billionaire Meta Platforms Inc. (“Meta”) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will replace their “fact-checks” with a community notes system in an effort to “restore free expression.”
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said in a five-minute video message Tuesday.
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes,” he indicated. He admitted later in the video that Meta’s fact-checkers “have been too politically biased.”
Meta’s new system will be “similar” to the popular user-driven service employed by his company’s major competitor, X (formerly Twitter), Zuckerberg said.
He also specified that Meta platforms will remove restrictions on discussions regarding “gender” and other controversial political topics.
“I started building social media to give people a voice,” the tech mogul said during the video. “I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today.”
“But a lot has happened over the last several years,” he continued. “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political. But there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there: drugs, terrorism, child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.”
“So, we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content,” he pointed out, referring to Meta’s widely scrutinized “fact-checking” system. “But the problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
The Meta CEO implied that the decisive November 2024 election of President-elect Donald Trump served as a “cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech.”
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg went on to say. “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the U.S.”
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Zuckerberg also highlighted that Meta will “simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas,” he admitted. “And it’s gone too far.”
Zuckerberg also said Meta will “dial back” its content filters to focus on “tackling illegal and high-severity violations” and “reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts” that are “accidentally” removed.
In addition, he announced that Meta’s “Trust and Safety and Content Moderation teams” will be moved from California to Texas. “As we work to promote free expression,” Zuckerberg said, “I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”
“Finally,” he added, “we are going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”
“So, we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he summarized.
X owner Elon Musk expressed approval of Zuckerberg’s announcement, simply writing on X: “This is cool.”
This is cool pic.twitter.com/kUkrvu6YKY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2025
Leading anti-“woke” activist Robby Starbuck wrote in an X post: “Elon’s courage with X is contagious.”
“This is the boldest move Zuckerberg has ever made,” added Starbuck, whose activism has resulted in a host of companies abandoning their far-left policies in recent months.
“It’s going to take time to see that this is a real dedication to change and not a stunt to get into Trump’s good graces (maybe in an attempt to get TikTok sold to them?),” Starbuck wrote, “but assuming this is real, it’s a huge deal. I’ve given Zuck a lot of criticism especially since my accounts on IG/FB have both been censored but if he’s serious then I give him credit because the leftists at Meta corporate are going to be throwing major tantrums over this.”
Mark Zuckerberg just announced that both FB and Meta will fire fact checkers and use a new community notes system like X instead.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) January 7, 2025
He admits fact checkers are too politically biased and that he needs Trump’s help to stop other countries from censoring content.
Elon’s courage… pic.twitter.com/DPO0sohQfS
Podcaster and political commentator Saagar Enjeti wrote on X that Zuckerberg’s video address “tonally” amounted to “one of the biggest indications of ‘elections have consequences’ I have ever seen.”
Here is the full video from Mark Zuckerberg announcing the end of censorship and misinformation policies.
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) January 7, 2025
I highly recommend you watch all of it as tonally it is one of the biggest indications of "elections have consequences" I have ever seen pic.twitter.com/aYpkxrTqWe
Advancing American Freedom (AAF) President Tim Chapman praised the tech billionaire’s initiative, writing on X: “Great move by @Meta.”
“The post-2016 censorship era on most social media was an Orwellian nightmare,” Chapman, a Catholic, added.