Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and owner of Meta, has announced that Facebook, the company’s oldest platform, will discontinue its longstanding fact-checking system.
Zuckerberg also revealed sweeping changes to Meta’s content moderation policies, describing the recent U.S. presidential election as a “cultural turning point.” The company plans to revise its policies on political content and reverse prior changes that reduced the presence of political topics in users’ feeds.
The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram—two of the world’s largest social media platforms, each with billions of users—as well as Threads. According to NBC, Zuckerberg cited the influence of the last election on the company’s decision and criticized government authorities and corporate media for exerting pressure to censor diverse opinions and viewpoints.
In addition, Zuckerberg promised that Facebook and Instagram would return to their roots by minimizing errors, simplifying company policies, and restoring freedom of speech across Meta platforms.