Meta has announced a “significant” reduction in its content moderation policies and the end of its third-party fact-checking program. For now, only in the United States.

“ We’re getting rid of fact checkers and replacing them with community notes that look like X, starting in the U.S.,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a social media post.

The Instagram and Facebook boss further explained the reasons for the change in a video: " Fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created . What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to silence opinions and exclude people with different ideas , it has gone too far." Zuckerberg admitted, however, that the "compromise" in Meta's new policy could mean more harmful content will appear on the platform.

Many media are linking this change as a hand extended by Zuckerberg to Donald Trump, who favors absolute freedom of expression over the fight against hate and disinformation. So much so that the change is immediately applauded by the president-elect ("Meta has come a long way") and Elon Musk ("Cool").

It is no coincidence that the CEO of Meta, in his renewed battle for freedom of expression alongside The Donald, also attacked the Old Continent. " We will work with President Trump to push back against governments around the world that are attacking American companies and pushing for greater censorship ," he declared, accusing Europe of having "an ever-increasing number of laws that institutionalize censorship and make it more difficult to achieve any innovation there." Zuckerberg also pointed the finger at the Biden administration, which he said "pushed for censorship by going against us and other US companies."

Since 2016, Meta has had a fact-checking program based on independent third-party organizations that assessed seemingly false or misleading posts and labeled them as inaccurate if necessary, offering users more information. Now they will rely on the system of 'community notes', introduced by Musk after the purchase of X: it involves people with different points of view who agree on notes that add context or clarification to controversial posts . A system that has not prevented the spread of misinformation and hate on X.

(Unioneonline/L)

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