Zuckerberg follows Musk’s lead: Meta ditches fact-checkers, embraces community notes

Meta

CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped a bombshell on Tuesday, announcing sweeping changes to the company's

content moderation

policies in a bid to embrace

free speech

and simplify oversight. The shake-up signals the end of Meta's long-standing

fact-checking program

, replaced by a

community-driven system

modeled after X’s (formerly Twitter’s) Community Notes.
In a video announcement, Zuckerberg said, “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.” The changes, which will impact Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, are set to roll out in the US first.
Election year shift
Zuckerberg pointed to the shifting political landscape and mounting criticism of moderation policies as the impetus for change. "The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech," he said, adding that governments and legacy media had been pushing for "more and more censorship."

The announcement comes amid preparations for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. Meta’s apparent pivot toward a more conservative-friendly approach includes relocating its trust and safety team to Texas and appointing Republican Joel Kaplan to lead its policy team.
End of fact-checking
Meta’s current system, launched in 2016, relied on third-party fact-checkers like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org to identify and label

misinformation

. Zuckerberg criticized the program, saying it was prone to errors and contributed to an overly complex moderation process.
The new system will rely on user-generated input to flag misleading content while narrowing Meta’s automated moderation focus to "high-severity violations" like terrorism and child exploitation. Zuckerberg acknowledged the trade-off: “We’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts we accidentally take down.”
A pragmatic pivot
The overhaul reflects a broader trend in tech, as companies grapple with political fallout over moderation decisions. Republicans have long claimed Meta’s fact-checking system favors Democrats—allegations Meta has denied. The new system appears aimed at neutralizing that criticism while adopting a model that has gained traction among conservatives.
Notably, Zuckerberg praised Trump in a recent interview and joined other tech leaders in donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.
What’s next?
The shift raises questions about how effective community-driven moderation can be at combating misinformation. X’s Community Notes, the system Meta is emulating, has been a mixed bag of fact-checking, trolling, and viral commentary.
Critics warn that eliminating professional fact-checkers could open the floodgates to misinformation, but Zuckerberg is betting on simplicity and free expression to win users’ trust. Whether that gamble pays off remains to be seen.