Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he will end “fact-checking” on Meta completes his turn from a man who banned Trump from his platform to a full-on supporter of the newly elected president.
Zuckerberg admitted that Meta and Facebook censored conservative opinions on an industrial scale, but has now vowed to make both sites beacons of free speech.
In the five-minute video message shared on his Facebook profile, the 40-year-old said: “We are going back to our roots and focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms.
“More specifically, we will abolish fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US.”
Like X, the shift will allow users on the sites to post messages that may be misleading and need more context.
The missive appears to be part of an entire court press to change Meta, social media and the Internet itself for the second Trump era.
Zuckerberg threatened governments in Europe, South America and China that Meta would “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments that go after American companies to censor more.”
He claimed that foreign governments have demanded that Facebook be censored or even taken down and that they will work with Trump to stop this.
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he will stop ‘fact checking’ on Meta completes his turn from a man who banned Trump from his platform to a full supporter of the newly elected president
Zuckerberg threatened governments in Europe, South America and China that Meta would ‘work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments that go after American companies to censor more’
These aren’t the only steps Zuckerberg has in store to make his company more Trump-friendly.
Meta said it will move its trust and security teams from liberal California to more conservative Texas, following Elon Musk’s recent moves.
“That will help us build trust to do this work in places where there are fewer concerns about bias from our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
The shift came as the 40-year-old tycoon has made efforts to reconcile with Trump since his election in November, including donating $1 million to his inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg recently donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, which is a complete reversal of previous relations between the two.
The policy change and donation came after Zuckerberg sat down with the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November.
On Monday, Zuckerberg added Dana White to Meta’s board of directors, in a different olive branch from Trump.
Commentators from all sides agreed that this was a seismic shift for the future of social media.
The night before Thanksgiving, President-elect Donald Trump (left) hosted Facebook creator and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right) for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida
Meta said it will move its trust and security teams from liberal California to more conservative Texas, following Elon Musk’s recent moves.
Conservative influencer Benny Johnson called it “huge” and “a truly shocking cultural realignment.”
CNN’s left-wing media critic Brian Stelter announced it would “reshape the entire internet” and said Zuckerberg would give it a “MAGA makeover.”
Since the policy change was shared on Tuesday morning, social media users have reacted to the news with divided opinions.
One person wrote: “Zuckerberg has completely switched teams. It’s a very big problem. He oversees more than 60% of US social media. What caused this?’
Right-wing provocateur Ben Shapiro added: “This is a big change in Facebook’s direction.
“Zuckerberg formulated his views on freedom of speech in Georgetown in 2019, to the consternation and shock of the left; Facebook then proceeded to indulge in mass censorship. The tide has turned. Good for Zuckerberg.”
Trump has been a fierce critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to take revenge on the tech billionaire once he returns to power.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, when asked if he believed the move was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg, Trump replied: “Probably so.”
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump replied: “Probably so” when asked if he believed the measure was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg.
The Republican was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters, although the company restored his account in early 2023.
Meta’s surprise announcement reflected long-standing complaints from Trump’s Republican Party and X owner Musk about fact-checking, which many conservatives view as censorship.
They claim that fact-checking programs target right-wing voices, leading to bills in states like Florida and Texas to limit content moderation.
“This is cool,” Musk posted on his X platform after the announcement.
Zuckerberg, like several other tech leaders, met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida ahead of his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Meta has made several moves in recent days that are likely to please Trump’s team, including appointing former Republican official Joel Kaplan as head of public affairs at the company.
He succeeds Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
Kaplan emphasized in a statement on Tuesday that the company’s approach to content moderation has “gone too far.”
Commentators from all sides agreed that this was a seismic shift for the future of social media
Meta will also “simplify” its own policies to “remove a lot of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest social media sites in the world with billions of users, as well as Threads.
Trump has long been critical of Meta for alleged instances of politically biased censorship against Republicans and conservatives.
Trump once supported a repeal of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which gives social media companies legal immunity for what their users post.
If it were repealed, it would open the door for anyone to sue social media companies like Meta over controversial content on their sites. Lawsuits may also target attempts to moderate such content.
After the January 6 insurrection four years ago, Trump was suspended from Facebook for two years.
He was reinstated to the platform in 2023, months after Trump announced his third run for the White House, and was ultimately successful.
In July 2024, Meta completely removed all suspension fines from Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram, citing the public’s need to hear from the presidential nominees.
Meta has made several moves in recent days that are likely to please Trump’s team, including appointing former Republican official Joel Kaplan as head of public affairs at the company.
On Monday, Zuckerberg added Dana White to Meta’s board of directors in another olive branch alongside Trump
Trump’s latest complaint about Meta came in July, after Facebook admitted it had accidentally censored an image of him with blood streaming down his ear after he was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Facebook just admitted that it wrongly censored Trump’s ‘attempted assassination photo’ and was caught,” Trump wrote on social media at the time.
“The same goes for Google,” he claimed. ‘They made it virtually impossible to find photos or anything about this heinous act. Both are facing major backlash over censorship claims.”
In August last year, Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden administration had demanded that Facebook censor what they called “Covid disinformation.”
He said in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that they will fight back against any attempts at censorship in the future and also admitted that the company had “downgraded” stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
He wrote that the White House “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed significant frustration with our teams when we disagreed.”
He says this pressure “was wrong” and says he regrets “that we weren’t more open about it.”
“We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we would not make today,” he added.