Facebook and Instagram are ditching fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes system inspired by X: 'Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased,' Zuckerberg says

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said the election of Donald Trump represents a "cultural tipping point" and so it's time to make some changes.

ConanOBrien

Jan 8, 2025 - 04:31

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Facebook and Instagram are ditching fact-checkers in favor of a Community Notes system inspired by X: 'Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased,' Zuckerberg says

Mark Zuckerberg says social media platforms Facebook and Instagram are going to "get back to our roots" by removing fact checkers and replacing them with a "Community Notes" system modelled after the one used by Elon Musk's X.

Facebook has implemented a variety of "complex systems" over the years to address the spread of harmful material online, Zuckerberg said in a video message, but those systems sometimes make mistakes—and it's now reached a point where "it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship." He also believes the recent election of Donald Trump as president of the US represents "a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing free speech," which he said has been under fire in recent years from governments and "legacy media."

"We're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes, similar to X, starting in the US," Zuckerberg said. "After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the US."

Facebook and Instagram will also simplify their content policies to "get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse," and that have "increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas." Enforcement policies will be changed to focus on "illegal and high-severity violations," while "lower-severity violations" will require complaints before any action is taken. Zuckerberg acknowledged that the change means Facebook and Instagram will "catch less bad stuff," but said reducing the number of improper takedowns is a greater priority.

I don't think anyone would claim that Facebook's content moderation policies have been particularly great (or even effective) until now, but following in the footsteps of X is an unexpected choice. The platform originally known as Twitter has descended into near-complete chaos and uselessness since Elon Musk's takeover, which among other things saw the elimination of content moderators and its Trust and Safety team.

The net result of that farcical commitment to free speech, as PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens put it so eloquently, is that using the platform has "become dank and ichorous, like wading through the sheer, concentrated sludge of all the worst comment sections on the internet. Scam after scam after scam after AI video after crypto pump-and-dump. A pure, unmitigated firehose of slop, not suitable for human life."

Bizarrely, Meta's trust and safety and content moderation teams will be moved out of California and into Texas, where Zuckerberg said there will be "less concern about the bias of our teams." That too may be inspired by X, which moved its own headquarters from California to Texas in September 2024 and a month later changed its terms of service to direct disputes to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas—a "favored destination for conservative activists and business groups," according to The Guardian—even though X itself is actually headquartered in the Western District.

Musk reacted to Zuckerberg's with a brief message posted to X: "This is cool." X CEO Linda Yaccarino also expressed support for the change, writing, "Fact-checking and moderation doesn't belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It's a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many. And as we've seen on X since Community Notes debuted, it's profoundly successful while keeping freedom of speech sacred."