by Shirleen Guerra
Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the U.S. and replacing it with a system similar to the one used by the X platform.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, announced the policy overhaul and assured the platform would work with the incoming administration and return to the company’s foundational values and roots.
‘We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,’ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an announcement.
Facebook has been criticized for combating misinformation and receiving scrutiny over its handling of false content, particularly regarding elections and political figures like President-elect Donald Trump.
Facebook, which was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and a group of Harvard classmates, had initially started as a networking platform used by college students before evolving into a global media giant with more than 2.9 billion monthly users.
The fact-checking program was introduced in 2016 in an effort for the platform to address the spread of misinformation following criticism over the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Facebook’s ability to curb the spread of false information that could potentially influence voter behavior.
The issues only escalated during the 2020 election and the pandemic, when Trump, a frequent social media user, became the focal point in the debate over fact-checking.
Facebook suspended Trump’s account after the January 6 Capital riot, citing the risk of inciting violence.
“We started building social media to give people a voice,” Zuckerberg said. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
Meta reiterated in the announcement that it would shift its focus to improving artificial intelligence tools to detect any harmful content and misinformation while reiterating its stance on a platform for free expression rather than an arbitrage of truth.
“The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world,” said Zuckerberg, detailing how governments in Europe, Latin America, and China have enforced restrictive speech laws.
When addressing the trade-offs from switching, Zuckerberg stated, “This means 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.”
The CEO said the platform would move the company’s trust and safety and content moderation teams from California and the U.S.-based content review to Texas. Zuckerberg said he thinks this will help build trust if the platform does this work in places “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”
This move comes when social media companies face increased pressure to balance free speech while limiting harmful content, marking a significant shift in content moderation. Still, the decision is receiving backlash.
“Americans deserve to know the truth, and Meta’s move to end its third-party fact-checking opens the door to endless political lies and disinformation,” said Common Cause Media and Democracy Program Director Ishan Mehta. “Social media has become a vital part of our political dialogue, and to remove all guardrails of truth and accountability is recklessly irresponsible. X, under Elon Musk, went down this road, and the impact has been disastrous – with huge spikes in disinformation and hate speech.”
Mehta stated that the announcement seems “in line with a charm campaign launched by CEO Mark Zuckerberg to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump,” continuing that this followed an in-person meeting with Trump, a million-dollar donation, and a “conservative overhaul” of the company’s government relations department.
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Shirleen Guerra is a staff reporter for The Center Square. Shirleen attended Odessa College where she completed an apprenticeship through The Odessa American where she previously freelanced.
