Ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, social media platform Meta has said it is going to stop using fact-checkers.
Meta said that this move is to “restore free expression” and rely on Facebook and Instagram users to add notes or corrections to posts, which is similar to the system that exists in Elon Musk-owned social media platform X.
Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on social media, said: “We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US.”
Zuckerberg said that the company is also making some changes to its content moderation policies regarding political topics.
These changes will affect billions of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users.
In a video shared on Facebook, Zuckerberg said: “We have reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech, 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.”
“The third-party fact-checkers have been ‘too politically biased’ and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S,” he added.
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking programme, in which Meta pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organisations globally on its platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Tech billionaire Musk’s social media platform X has relied on community notes to flag misleading posts on its platform.
Trump had railed against Zuckerberg during the elections, claiming the fact-checking feature treated posts by conservative users unfairly.
Meta’s move is likely to please Trump and his allies as they disliked the company’s practice.
