Yuan Tuesday declare It will eliminate third-party fact-checking programs to “restore free speech” and move to a “community notes” model, similar to the system that exists on Elon Musk’s Platform X.
Community notes will be written and rated by contributing users to provide more context to posts on its platform, the company said, with the feature rolling out in the U.S. in the coming months. The statement marks Mehta’s latest attempt to ease relations with Republican President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration.
“We’ve reached a point where there are too many mistakes and too much censorship,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the film’s announcement on Tuesday. “The recent election also feels like a cultural tipping point where speech is prioritized again, so we’re going back to Our roots, focused on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platform.”
Zuckerberg said third-party fact-checkers are “too politically biased” and “are destroying more trust than they create, especially in the United States.”
Meta said it will simplify its content policies by removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, and implement a new policy enforcement approach that focuses on illegal and serious violations. The company is moving its trust, safety and content moderation teams from California, a historically Democratic state, to Texas, a historically Republican state.
“We will work with President Trump to push back against governments around the world going after U.S. companies and pushing for increased scrutiny,” Zuckerberg said.
Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan addressed Meta’s announcement in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, saying: “Our economy should not be affected by the decisions of a single company or a single executive. Online speech has a huge impact.
Appearing on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, Joel Kaplan, Meta’s director of global policy, said Meta believes the community annotation system on the Musk X platform works “very well.” Musk has been a vocal supporter of Trump online and donated millions of dollars to his campaign, and he has remained in close contact with the president-elect since the election.
Last week, Mehta said Kaplan would become the company’s top policy officer, replacing Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats.
Since joining Meta in 2011 (when the company was still called Facebook), Kaplan has held multiple policy-related positions at Meta and is well-known in the Republican Party. He served as the White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush and also served as a law clerk to former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In December, Kaplan revealed on Facebook postal He, Vice President-elect Vance and Trump recently visited the New York Stock Exchange.
“We want to do that, and the bottom line is, if you can say it on television, you can speak in Congress, you certainly should be able to say it on Facebook and Instagram without fear of censorship,” Kaplan said Tuesday.
Meta’s oversight board, which conducts an independent review of the company’s content moderation, praised the changes on Tuesday.
“The Oversight Board welcomes the news that Meta will revise its fact-checking approach, with the goal of finding a scalable solution that enhances trust, free speech and users on its platform,” the committee told CNBC in a statement. sound.
Prominent Republican lawmakers have previously criticized Meta and other tech companies over accusations of censorship of conservative voices on their respective platforms. For example, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs in 2023 as part of an investigation to “understand how and to what extent the executive branch coercion and collusion with corporations and other intermediaries to censor speech.
Zuckerberg’s relationship with Trump has been rocky for years, with the president-elect describing Facebook as “the enemy of the people” as recently as March in an interview with CNBC. In 2021, Meta imposed a two-year suspension on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts shortly after the company determined that their actions following the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., could incite more violence. .
In 2023, Trump was able to regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, but he also faced some challenges Restrictions and potential penalties If he violates the company’s Community Guidelines. Meta finally lifted restrictions related to Trump’s account in July, ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
After Trump was elected president in November, Zuckerberg, along with several other big tech executives, visited the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. The fund donated US$1 million.
watch: Meta adds Dana White, John Elkann and Charlie Songhurst to its board of directors.
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