4 ways your feed is expected to change under Meta's new free speech policy

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is loosening some of its policies in an effort to avoid limiting free speech.
• Meta will remove restrictions on topics like gender, which means users may see more controversial opinions in their feeds.
• The policy shift is expected to change how your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads feeds appear.

Don't be surprised if your Instagram or Facebook feed looks different as Mark Zuckerberg's overhaul of Meta's moderation policies rolls out in the coming weeks.

In addition to replacing its third-party fact-checking system with community notes similar to Elon Musk's X, Meta is also looking to change things up with a return to promoting political content. Other changes include eliminating restrictions on topics like immigration or gender and shifting its enforcement policies on lower-severity violations.

"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes.

So what will Facebook, Instagram, and Threads look like with the changes? Based on Zuckerberg's comments, this is how your feed could appear different.

You'll likely see a wider range of views — including controversial ones

In the next few weeks, you might start to notice more controversial content on your social media feeds.

In an announcement about the new changes, Meta said it "removed millions of pieces of content" daily in December 2024 — and that "one to two out of every 10" of those pieces of content may not have violated Meta's policies.

In an effort to reduce instances of accidentally removing content through its automated moderation tools did not violate a policy, Meta said in a blog post that it will remove restrictions on topics frequently discussed in political conversations and debates, 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," the company said in the announcement.

What does that mean in practice? An update Tuesday to Meta's "Hateful Conduct" policy offers more detail.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

Posts that are 'lower-severity violations' won't be reviewed unless people report them

Meta will also be loosening its guidelines around enforcement of policy violations and raising the bar for content removal.

The company said its automated systems have resulted in "too many mistakes and too much content being censored," as well as demoted content that is predicted to violate its guidelines.

Moving forward, Meta platforms will focus on addressing "illegal and high-severity violations," including terrorism, child sexual exploitation, or drugs.

For "less severe policy violations," the company will rely on users reporting the content before it considers taking action. Meta will also eliminate most demotions and require a "much higher degree of confidence" before content is removed. The company will also raise its standards around removing content by requiring multiple reviewers to remove content.

You'll see more politics and news content

Following what it described as feedback from people not wanting to see political content on their feeds, Facebook announced changes in 2021 to reduce the amount of political content seen, including content about elections or social issues.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company referred to that approach as "pretty blunt" and said it would start recommending political content again on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The political content will take a more "personalized approach," by ranking and showing content based on users' interactions with content, like liking or viewing different posts.

"We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see," the announcement said.

In 2022, Meta said that political content only made up about 3% of posts on Facebook. So the change doesn't necessarily mean your feed will be flooded with political news and content — but it may be an increase from what you've seen in recent years.

You won't see fact-check notes anymore — instead, you'll sometimes see community notes

Part of the shift will be focused on reversing changes that Meta executive Joel Kaplan said the company made to moderate content that resulted in "harmless content" being removed and people "wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail.'"

Meta is now ending its third-party fact-checking program, which was implemented in 2016. Instead, it said it will launch a community notes program over the next couple of months, which will follow rival social network X's approach of allowing contributors to add context to content.

By eliminating its fact-checkers, Meta will no longer demote fact-checked content or include full-screen warnings that users have to click through before viewing a post. Instead, users will see a "much less obtrusive label indicating" and have the option to view additional content, Kaplan said.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment by Business Insider.