Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has announced that it is ending its long-standing fact-checking program, which some commentators claim will please incoming US President Donald Trump, and his conservative allies. 
The topic of ‘free-speech’ has become a political football over the last number of years, and it seemed to heighten when Elon Musk took control of Twitter, which he subsequently rebranded as X.
Donald Trump was infamously banned from Twitter back in January 2021, but was reinstated when Musk assumed control of the social media platform in November 2022.
However, Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program, which was ultimately designed to prevent the spread of misinformation, comes as a huge surprise.
Earlier today, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, announced the changes to their content moderation practices that effectively ends the process of fact-checking.
Analysts believe the decision is seen as a clear repositioning of the company ahead of Trump’s return to power.
In a statement, Meta said that over the last decade it has ‘strayed too far from its values’ over the last decade.
“We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement.
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and will now rely on users to add notes, or corrections to their posts that may contain false, or misleading information.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression. Our company’s current fact-checking system has reached a point where there is just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
Mr. Zuckerberg conceded that there would be more “bad stuff” on the platform as a result of the decision.
“The reality is that this is a trade-off. It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down,” said Zuckerberg.
