Meta eliminates fact-checking in latest bow to Trump

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced changes to content moderation on Facebook and Instagram long sought by conservatives. Incoming President Donald Trump said the new approach was ''probably'' due to threats he made against the technology mogul.

The move to replace third-party fact-checking with user-written ''community notes'' similar to those on Trump backer Elon Musk's social platform X is the latest example of a media company moving to accommodate the incoming administration. It comes on the four-year anniversary of Zuckerberg banning Trump from his platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Zuckerberg has been a target of Trump and his allies since he donated $400 million to help local officials run the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic. Those donations became part of a false narrative that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, although there has never been any evidence of widespread fraud or problems that would have changed that result. Nonetheless, Republican-controlled states have banned future donations to local elections offices and Trump himself threatened to imprison Zuckerberg in a book published in September, during the peak of the presidential campaign.

Zuckerberg released a video Tuesday using some of the language that conservatives have long used to criticize his platforms, saying it was time to prioritize ''free expression'' and that fact-checkers had become ''politically biased.'' Zuckerberg said he is moving Meta's content moderation team from California, a blue state, to red state Texas, and lifting restrictions on some immigration and gender discussions. Meta had no immediate comment on how many people might be relocated.

At a press conference hours later, Trump praised the changes.

''I think they've come a long way, Meta,'' Trump said. When asked if he believed Zuckerberg made the changes in response to threats the incoming president has made, Trump responded: ''Probably.''

Meta is among several tech companies apparently working to get in Trump's good graces before he takes office later this month. Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund in December, and Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Zuckerberg this week also appointed a key Trump ally, Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White, to Meta's board. Amazon announced a documentary on incoming first lady Melania Trump. ABC News, which is owned by Disney, last month settled a libel suit filed by Trump with a $15 million payment to Trump's presidential library foundation.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, called the Meta changes part of ''a pattern of powerful people and institutions kowtowing to the president in a way that suggests they're fearful of being targeted.''

Nyhan said that's a grave risk to the country.

''We have in many ways an economy that's the envy of the world and people come here to start businesses because they don't have to be aligned with the governing regime like they do in the rest of the world,'' Nyhan said. ''That's being called into question.''

Except for YouTube, Meta's Facebook is by far the most used social media platform in the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, about 68% of American adults use Facebook, a number that has largely held steady since 2016. Teenagers, however, have fled Facebook over the past decade, with just 32% reporting they used it in a 2024 survey.

Meta began fact checks in December 2016, after Trump was elected to his first term, in response to criticism that ''fake news'' was spreading on its platforms. For years, the tech giant boasted it was working with more than 100 organizations in over 60 languages to combat misinformation.

The Associated Press ended its participation in Meta's fact-checking program a year ago.

Media experts and those who study social media were aghast at Meta's policy shift.

''Mark Zuckerberg's decision to end Meta's fact-checking program not only removes a valuable resource for users, but it also provides an air of legitimacy to a popular disinformation narrative: That fact-checking is politically biased. Fact-checkers provide a valuable service by adding important context to the viral claims that mislead and misinform millions of users on Meta,'' said Dan Evon, lead writer for RumorGuard, the News Literacy Project's digital tool that curates fact checks and teaches people to spot viral misinformation.

Business analysts saw it as an openly political gambit.

''Meta is repositioning the company for the incoming Trump administration,'' said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg. "The move will elate conservatives, who've often criticized Meta for censoring speech, but it will spook many liberals and advertisers, showing just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go to win Trump's approval.''

X's approach to content moderation has led to the loss of some advertisers, but Enberg said Meta's ''massive size and powerhouse ad platform insulate it somewhat from an X-like user and advertiser exodus.'' Even so, she said, any major drop in user engagement could hurt Meta's ad business.

Meta's quasi-independent Oversight Board, which acts as a referee of controversial content decisions, said it welcomes the changes and looks forward to working with the company ''to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.''

On X, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, called Meta's move a ''huge step in the right direction.''

Others in the GOP were skeptical.

''Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,'' Rep. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, wrote on X. ''Can any of us assume Zuckerberg won't return to his old tricks?''

Zuckerberg is not registered with any political party but was once seen as a champion of liberal causes. He invested heavily in supporting an immigration overhaul and defending the rights of those brought to the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the country. His efforts to fact-check content on Facebook made him a longtime target of conservative suspicions. When he made his election donation in 2020 he framed it as a nonpartisan, civic act, but quickly ran afoul of widespread distrust on the right.

Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech and a former director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said the change is ''a choice of politics, not policy,'' and warned: "Depending on how this is applied, the consequences of this decision will be an increase in harassment, hate speech and other harmful behavior across billion-user platforms.''