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
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