Meta is making big changes to its moderation policies to “restore free expression” on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, according to a video posted by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The changes include replacing the existing fact-checking methodology with a user-driven Community Notes model and lifting restrictions on topics like immigration and gender to focus more on tackling “illegal and high-severity violations.”
Meta cites bias among fact-checkers as a major reason to opt for the Community Notes model. “Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how,” writes Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly appointed global affairs head, in an announcement post.
In a Threads post, Zuckerberg adds that Meta will move its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California and its US content review to Texas. “This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” he says.
Zuckerberg didn’t cite any data about Texas employees being less biased than California ones. But X owner Elon Musk has also moved his businesses from California to Texas—Tesla in 2021 over COVID restrictions, followed by X and SpaceX this year after California passed a bill intended to help protect the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ students.
According to Kaplan, Community Notes’ performance on X inspired the decision. “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,” he wrote.
Meta won’t write the Notes; it will employ the services of volunteer users “with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings.”
The company is already accepting applications from those who’d like to contribute to the Community Notes, and will roll out the feature in the US “over the next couple of months.”
Meta says it has developed “complex systems” to manage content, resulting in over-enforcement of its policies and censoring of too much trivial content. In order to reverse that, it is getting rid of restrictions on widely discussed topics like immigration, gender identity, and gender. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” Kaplan says.
Meta also says that a vast majority of censorship on the platform stemmed from the mistakes made by its automated systems, which were scanning far too many topics. The company will now redirect its systems toward illegal and high-severity violations, such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams.
A more “personalized approach” to political content is also on the way. Since 2021, Meta has been reducing posts about elections, politics, or social issues based on feedback from some users who didn’t want to view them. Instead of a “blunt approach” for such topics, the company will offer “a more personalized approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can,” Kaplan says.
Fact-checking on Facebook dates back to December 2016. It started after Zuckerberg downplayed the idea of social media impacting elections as a “crazy idea.” Research later found that Facebook was the biggest gateway for fake news in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. In the US, Meta currently has 10 fact-checking partners, including FactCheck.org and USA Today. Flagged content was downranked in feeds.
In 2016, Meta—then Facebook—came under fire for preventing right-wing content — including stories about the CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and more — from appearing in its “trending” news section. Facebook invited conservatives to its headquarters to discuss the issue; two years later, it killed the trending topics section.
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Working With Trump
Kaplan doesn’t mention President-elect Donald Trump, but Zuckerberg pledged to “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world and the best way to defend against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the US government.”
Trump has sparred with Meta over the years. It banned his accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol before allowing him to return in 2023. And in reversing his stance on a TikTok ban last year, Trump said it was because he didn’t want Meta to benefit.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!” Trump posted on his Truth Social network in March 2024.
Their relationship appears to have improved. After Trump’s win, Meta made a $1 million donation to his inaugural fund.
Meta and other tech giants are now trying to avoid antitrust scrutiny or calls to break up their sprawling businesses. In December 2020, during the first Trump administration, the FTC sued Facebook, alleging that it’s “illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,” which includes overpaying for WhatsApp and Instagram to stamp out rivals. That case is ongoing.
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About Jibin Joseph
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