WASHINGTON: Social media giant Meta announced on Tuesday a significant rollback of its content moderation policies, including the termination of its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States.

“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US,” Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on social media.

Zuckerberg said, “Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”

Currently, Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organisations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.

Meta’s announcement repeated many of the complaints made by Republ­i­cans and X-owner Elon Musk about fact-checking programmes that many conservatives see as ‘censorship’.

The 40-year-old tycoon said, “Recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritising speech.”

The shift came as Zuckerberg has been making efforts to reconcile with US President-elect Donald Trump, including donating one million dollars to his inauguration fund.

Zuckerberg also said Meta sites, including Facebook and Instagram, would “simplify” their 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”.

Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Champ­i­o­nship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.

As part of the overhaul, Meta said it will relocate its trust and safety teams from California, where liberal views are commonplace, to more conservative Texas.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2025