Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company will ‘dramatically reduce censorship’ across Facebook, Instagram and Threads by getting rid of independent fact-checkers and replacing them with community notes similar to X.
Starting from the US, the platforms will also recommend more political content to users. In a video post, Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.
Meta says it has “no immediate plans” to get rid of its third-party fact-checkers in the UK or the EU.
Zuckerberg’s vow to prioritize free speech comes days after meeting US president-elect, Donal Trump.
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The tech firm’s content moderation teams will be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”, he said. He admitted that changes to the way Meta filters content would mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff”.
Meta has more than 3 billion users globally. In a wide-ranging statement, Zuckerberg said Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse” and “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
Eugene Brown Agyei contributed to this report.