Meta shelves fact-checking in policy reversal ahead of Trump administration
Jan 7 (Reuters) - Social media company Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab on Tuesday scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity, bowing to criticism from conservatives as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office for a second time. The move is Meta's biggest overhaul of its approach to managing political content on its services in recent memory and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signaling a desire to mend fences with the incoming administration. The changes will affect Facebook, Instagram and Threads, three of the world's biggest social media platforms with more than 3 billion users globally. Last week, Meta elevated Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as global affairs head and on Monday announced it had elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, to its board. "We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. It's time to get back to our roots around free expression," Zuckerberg said in a video. He acknowledged the role of the recent U.S. elections in his thinking, saying they "feel like a cultural tipping point, towards once again prioritizing speech." When asked about the changes at a press conference, Trump welcomed them. "They have come a long way - Meta. The man (Zuckerberg) was very impressive," he said. Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was responding to his threats, which have included a pledge to imprison the CEO, Trump said "probably." In place of a formal fact-checking program to address dubious claims posted on Meta's platforms, Zuckerberg instead plans to implement a system of "community notes" similar to that used on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X. Meta also will stop proactively scanning for hate speech and other types of rule-breaking, reviewing such posts only in response to user reports, Zuckerberg said. It will focus its automated systems on removing "high-severity violations" like terrorism, child exploitation, scams and drugs. The company will move teams overseeing the writing and review of content policies out of California to Texas and other U.S. locations, he added. Meta has been working on the shift away from fact-checking for more than a year, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters. It has not shared relocation plans with employees, however, prompting confused posts on the app Blind, which provides a space for employees to share information anonymously. Most of Meta's U.S. content moderation is already performed outside California, another source told Reuters. Kaplan, who appeared on the "Fox & Friends" program on Tuesday morning to address the changes, offered Meta employees only a summary of his public statements in a post on the company's internal forum Workplace, which was seen by Reuters. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on planning for the changes or say which specific teams would be leaving California. The spokesperson also declined to cite examples of mistakes or bias on the part of fact-checkers..