The tech billionaire, who owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has fallen into line with Elon Musk by announcing plans to scrap independent fact-checking in favour of lighter touch content moderation.
Announcing the plans, Zuckerberg said: “We are going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world who are going after American companies and pushing to censor more.
The changes will be implemented in the US at first before potentially being rolled out more widely across the globe.
The move represents a further escalation in hostilities by Silicon Valley against the UK and Europe and comes in the wake of ongoing attacks from Musk on Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Government, that has seen the X owner accuse the Prime Minister of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” in regards to the child grooming scandal.
A Labour MP told The i Paper, that the Zuckerberg decision coming so soon after the attacks from Musk, showed that the incoming Trump administration viewed US tech firms as key geopolitical entities.
“They believe that European regulation is one thing that might do that and therefore they don’t want it,” the backbencher warned.
MPs and campaigners also raised fears that the decision would make social media less safe for users and lead to more misinformation being spread online.
Science, Innovation and Technology Committee Chair, Chi Onwurah MP, said: “Meta’s decision to get rid of its fact-checking programme could mean more misinformation circulating online. Free speech is an essential human and democratic right which platforms must protect, as well as tackling false content that could harm users.”
What Zuckerberg said and what it might mean
The tech billionaire has outlined six changes to the way Facebook and Instagram are moderated:
“We’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X.”Zuckerberg claimed that fact checkers “have become too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created”. Instead moderation will be carried out by other users. This is ultimately a less rigorous approach and comes as the UK is poised to usher in tougher rules under the Online Safety Act requiring social media platforms to remove illegal content and material deemed harmful to children. “We’re going to simplify our content polices and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender.”Zuckerberg added that this “has been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas”. Joel Kaplan, who has replaced Nick Clegg as head of global affairs, said that it was “not right” that things could be said on the floor of the US Congress but not on Meta platforms. It will raise concerns, however, that it will lead to more disinformation and toxic debate. “We’re changing how we enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms.”Facebook and Instagram users often claim that innocent posts are removed due to moderation misunderstanding content. However, Zuckerberg admits that changing the filters to catch only “illegal and high severity” violations means “we will catch much less bad stuff”. “We’re bringing back civic content.”Zuckerberg claims to have reduced political content in the past as it made users stressed but now, in a “new era”, it’s wanted again so will be fed back into “Facebook, Instagram and Threads”. Threads, in particular has been noted for its non-political content. While Facebook has often been used for people to express political view points or to debate issues, there will be concerns that along with less stringent moderation disinformation and toxic discussions could become more prevalent. “We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California and our US based content review is going to be based in Texas.”Zuckerberg added that “as we work to promote free expression I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”. The possible implication is that moderators in California are too liberal. “Finally, we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world who are going after American companies and pushing to censor more. “Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.”This will be the most problematic issue for the UK which under both the Tories and Labour has been attempting to regulate social media, particularly over concerns about it’s impact on the mental health of young people.“We are urgently clarifying the scope of these measures, including whether this will apply to suicide, self-harm and depressive content. These moves could have dire consequences for many children and young adults,” Russell added.
A community notes system is likely to please the president-elect, who criticised Meta’s fact-checking feature for penalising conservative voices.
Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, also left the social media giant last week, where he had been president of global affairs.
Kaplan said Meta would also begin loosening some of its rules around content moderation, saying it wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement”.
Asked whether there were concerns that policies espoused by American social media companies like Meta and X, owned by Elon Musk, could become a point of conflict with Donald Trump’s administration, a Number 10 spokesman said: “I’m not going to get ahead of the incoming US administration.
He added the UK’s online safety provisions coming in March are “among the strongest in the world” and the Government expects them to be “robustly” enforced by regulator Ofcom.
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