Meta's fact-checking changes put company under political microscope

Meta’s decision to eliminate its fact-checking program marks a sharp reversal for the major social media company, quickly prompting questions over the firm’s direction as President-elect Trump heads back to the Oval Office.  

The move, combined with other content moderation policy changes, was quickly seen by some in the political world as a powerful signal Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg are hoping to court Trump, who has long accused social media companies of censoring certain views.  

Describing the changes as part of the company’s return to its “roots” to “restore” free speech on the platform, Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday its fact-checking system will be replaced by user-generated “community notes” — like those used on X under Elon Musk’s leadership.   

While political observers are mixed on whether the decision was solely driven by Trump, many agree the move shows Zuckerberg is trying to get on the right side of power following his tumultuous relationship with the president-elect.   

“Meta, like all companies, wants to make life as simple for themselves as they possibly can,” said Peter Loge, a former advisor in the Obama administration and current director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. “The President of the United States and others don’t like fact-checking, so Meta will take fact-checking away.”   

“It’s a company saying, ‘We’re getting a lot of flak from a lot of important people,’” he added.  

Trump suggested the changes had something to do with him, telling reporters Tuesday the decision was “probably” in response to his previous threats against Zuckerberg and the company.   

“Honestly, I think they’ve come a long way — Meta, Facebook, I think they’ve come a long way,” he said, adding that he watched a Fox News interview with Meta’s head of policy, Joel Kaplan, and he was “impressive.” 

Speculation about Meta and Zuckerberg’s political maneuvering has swirled for weeks following the CEO’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago late last year and subsequent leadership changes.  

Zuckerberg is among various tech leaders who have met with Trump following his reelection.  

Meta named Kaplan, a prominent Republican lobbyist, to take over for Nick Clegg as the company’s chief global affairs officer. Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO and President Dana White, a Trump ally, will also join the company’s board of directors, the company announced earlier this week.  

Zuckerberg pledged to work with Trump to fight against what he described as a global push for “censorship” on major social media platforms.  

“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 posted Tuesday morning. 

He cited the recent election as a driving force in the company’s decision, slamming “governments and legacy media” as pushing the company to “censor more and more.” 

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” he said.  

Kaplan, appearing Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends,” said Meta’s independent fact-checkers became “too biased.”  

Meta’s third-party fact-checking process was implemented to curb the spread of misinformation after the 2016 presidential election, during which Russia attempted to influence the election through Facebook.  

Meta will move to a community-based program called “Community Notes” which will rely on users to send in notes or corrections to posts that are potentially misleading or need more context. It will be rolled out in the U.S. in the coming months.  

The same approach was implemented by Musk when he bought X, then Twitter, in 2021 and overhauled many of the platform’s content moderation practices.  

Various media experts voiced concerns the policy change will lead to an increase in disinformation on Meta’s platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads.  

“There are no gatekeepers,” Loge said. “If the problem of mis and disinformation is a whole lot of people gathering online, shouting this nonsense and making that nonsense louder, then the solution is not to invite more people to participate in that conversation, which is what community standards ends up doing.”

The scrutiny that can accompany scaled-back content moderation has already played out with X, which is repeatedly accused by tech advocacy groups of being a hotbed of disinformation, unchecked hate speech and bias towards right-leaning content.  

“I am not terribly surprised,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, of Meta’s changes.  

“This is all extremely concerning. … You will find democracy these days tends not to come to a crashing end with some sort of coup d’etat, but rather with the slow erosion of democratic norms and institutions.”  

Appearing to follow in Musk’s footsteps, Zuckerberg also announced Meta will move its trust and safety and content moderation team from California to Texas, where there is “less concern about the bias of our teams,” he said. 

Meta executives hinted at changing their tune on content moderation in the months leading up to Tuesday’s announcement.   

Clegg last month admitted Meta’s error rates can be “too high” and cause harmless content to be taken down by accident, while Zuckerberg in August told the House Judiciary Committee he regrets not being more outspoken about “government pressure” to remove content related to COVID-19.      

In doing so, Zuckerberg said Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Meta to “censor” content in 2021 and vowed to push back should something similar happen again.  

Some observers contended these moves show Meta’s content moderation changes are part of a larger movement for the company unrelated to the president-elect.  

Republican strategist Chris Johnson pushed back on the argument that Meta’s content moderation policies were solely to appease Trump ahead of Inauguration Day.  

“It’s largely just in response to the election,” Johnson told The Hill. “Broadly, there’s this sense among voters, especially voters who might not have a college education or further education, they are very frustrated with the sort of grasp that elites have on our discourse and on consensus politically, very broadly.”   

“Meta is a company trying to make a profit, they are seeing that move among the electorate and they’re responding to that desire for more broadly,” Johnson continued.  

Meanwhile, outgoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan suggested Meta, which is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the agency, could be looking for “sweetheart deals” from the incoming Trump administration.  

“It is true that the FTC has been very successful, including in its ongoing litigations against Amazon and Facebook. And so, it’s only going to be natural that those companies are going to want to come in and see, can they get some type of sweetheart deal,” Khan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”  

“Can they get some type of settlement that’s cheap, that settles for pennies on the dollar and lets them escape from a liability finding in court?” she continued.