Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checking program?
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The social media giant enters a more partisan political era as its CEO pursues Donald Trump’s approval. Meta is shifting to the right, following the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States. A more partisan era now looms for the social media giant and its corporate leaders, though Mark Zuckerberg himself has few personal politics other than ambition.
On Tuesday morning, Meta disbanded Facebook and Instagram’s third-party factchecking program. The company will also recommend more political content across its social networks. CEO Zuckerberg announced the changes as he attempts to curry favor with Donald Trump’s incoming administration, demonstrating just how far he will go to win the president-elect’s approval.
“Recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” he said in a video posted on Instagram. “Factcheckers have just been too politically biased.”. Notes from everyday users will replace corrections from vetted factchecking partners, similar to Twitter/X’s Community Notes feature. In a post on Threads, Meta’s answer to X, Zuckerberg also vowed to reduce “censorship mistakes”, rhetoric that mirrors US conservatives’ longstanding charges that Facebook and Instagram unfairly penalize conservatives, for which there is little evidence. He lambasted coverage of Trump by “legacy media, which has pushed to censor more and more” and said that his own company’s previous content moderation policies resulted in “too much censorship” and had “gone too far”.
