Some MAGA-esque changes are coming to Facebook's parent company.
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, will get rid of the fact checkers they introduced into 2016 to usher in a more Elon Musk "X" style approach, adding a user-generated "community notes," a tool that allows users to add context to posts that may be misleading, said Meta's chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg.
The changes, which mark a complete 180-change in how Meta approaches misinformation, will apply to both Instagram and Facebook, reported CNN.
This comes as Meta announced that Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and close ally to president-elect Donald Trump, will join Meta's board along with John Elkann, the leader of investment firm Exor and Charlie Songhurst, a former Microsoft executive.
In a Facebook video announcing the new guideline, Zuckerberg said "fact checkers" have "destroyed more trust than they've created."
The CEO said the "tradeoff" will be that more harmful content will appear on the platform.
"Community notes" on Elon Musk's platform, X, is a feature that helps contributors determine if they want to view a post based on a rating system. If enough users from different perspectives rate a note as helpful, it will be publicly displayed on the published post.
The changes at Meta appear to reflect the nation's right-wing ideological shift led by president-elect Donald Trump, that focuses on less content moderation and censorship. The company added a Republican member to its board of directors and top policy role last week, said CNN.
Joel Kaplan, Meta's newly appointed Chief of Global Affairs, said the changes to its moderation policies are directly related to the Trump administration.
Meta's partnerships with third-party fact checkers were "well intentioned" but "there's just been too much political bias" in what content moderators "choose to fact check and how," Kaplan said in a Fox interview.
Zuckerberg continues to improve his relationship with Trump, already meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago to contribute $1 million towards his inaugural fund and letting Trump know that he wants an "active role" in tech policy discussions.
"Now we've got a new administration, and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression, and that makes a difference," Zuckerberg said.
Meta isn't the only company that's working to improve its relationship with the Trump administration.
The CEOs of Amazon, OpenAI, Ford, General Motors, and Toyota North America have all pledged $1 million donations to Trump's inaugural fund.
