Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the United States, relaxing its policy of vetting Facebook and Instagram content, Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced.

“We will get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the United States,” Zuckerberg announced in a message on social media.

The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the world’s largest social media platforms, with billions of users each, as well as Threads.

“We will return to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video.

“More specifically, initially, we will get rid of fact checks and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US,” he said.

“We built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with them is that they make mistakes,” Zuckerberg said.

“Even if they accidentally censor only 1% of posts, that’s millions of people, and we’ve reached a point where there are now too many errors and too much censorship,” he said, among other things.

At the same time, he said the company would remove certain content policies around hot-button issues such as immigration and gender violence and refocus its automated vetting systems on what he called “high severity violations.”

“The reality is that this is a compromise. We may detect less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of posts and accounts of innocent people that we accidentally take down,” the Meta founder added.

Meta and social media companies, in general, have modified their policies in recent months, in part because of the politicization of content control decisions and programs and what seems to be the collapse of the woke culture.

“The recent election also seems to have been a cultural turning point toward prioritizing free speech,” he said.

After all, Republicans have long criticized Meta’s system of checking posts and fact-checking in general as “unfair and favorable to Democrats”.

What is fact-checking

Fact-checking is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of disputed reports and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after publication. Internal fact checking is done by the publisher to prevent the publication of inaccurate content.

Research shows that fact checking can indeed correct false news that affects citizens, as well as discourage politicians from spreading misleading claims but has been also used for the censorship of rival ideological views and policies.

Zuckerberg’s announcement comes as CEOs and business leaders across the board are seeking favor with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Meta, along with other tech companies, donated $1 million for Donald Trump’s inauguration. In fact, before the election, Zuckerberg praised Trump in an interview, but did not “openly” support him.

It’s worth noting that Facebook will move its trust, security and content management team from California to Texas.

The X platform’s Community Notes system, which CEO Elon Musk used to replace the company’s previous policies around misinformation, has been praised by the users thus far.