In case you missed it, Meta – the company that owns four of the biggest social media platforms in the world – is planning on ditching their fact-checking program and instead replacing it with a community-driven system similar to that of Elon Musk’s X.
This news was announced recently in video by tech mogul and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, stating that “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”
“We’re going to 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.”
Meta’s new guidelines, written by Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, state “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words such as ‘weird’.”
Are Meta’s new guidelines a win for free speech or a return to the internet dark ages? (Photo by Getty Images)
This new system, inspired by X, will instead rely on community notes to provide information, and will start rolling out in the next two months.
Big news for estranged uncles obsessed with conspiracy theories everywhere.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see,” Kaplan stated.
These new guidelines will see sweeping changes to Meta’s stance on hate speech, including allowing users to accuse members of the LGBTQ+ community of being “mentally ill”.
Reactions about the news have varied, with some criticising Meta’s move while others calling it a win for free speech.
“We left the Information Age for the Disinformation Age,” one Reddit user writes.
“They know going into Trump 2025 there’s no point bothering with fact checking, no one cares about reality or facts anymore.”
Conversely, some have taken to celebrate the new censorship change: “I like Twitter’s community notes. Maybe this could be positive change, we’ll see,” said a different Reddit user.
“Yay! 100 per cent on Zuckerberg’s side on this one,” wrote another.
This news came swiftly after it was revealed that Meta donated a whopping $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and that Zuckerberg himself dined with the President-elect at Mar-a-Lago in November.
This proves that the once-tense relationship has now evolved into something a whole lot warmer.
Besties! (Photo by Getty)
In 2021, following the Capitol Riots, Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts “indefinitely” (it lasted two years) and led to Zuckerberg describing the January 6 event as “shocking”.
Mark Zuckerberg’s statement following January 6 riots. (Source: Facebook)
“The last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on January 8.
“His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world,” Zuckerberg wrote in a statement.
While the rest of the internet braces itself for Meta’s sweeping new changes, clearly these two billionaires are happy to let bygones be bygones.
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