Meta, formerly Facebook, announced significant changes to its content moderation policies, including ending its US fact-checking program and moving moderation teams from California to Texas. These changes, driven by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, aim to prioritize free expression and align with the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.
Social media giant Meta on January 7, 2025, slashed its content moderation policies, including ending its US fact-checking program, in a major shift that conforms with the priorities of incoming president Donald Trump .Corporations are reactionary creatures. It’s true that some CEOs are industry leaders who revolutionize the world, but most of them are caretakers, stewards who read cultural tea leaves and adjust their business accordingly.
To hear Zuckerberg tell it, the past four years have been a nightmare of government censorship and it’s time to stop. To that end, the social media company is replacing fact-checking with an X-style community notes system, simplifying its content policies, changing the way it enforces those policies, removing restraints on political content, and moving the moderation teams from California to Texas.
We still won’t know what the rules are, but we can be sure they’ll be more “Texas” and less “California.” Meta has signaled in other ways in recent days that it’s shifting with the political headwinds. On Monday it appointedto its board of directors, including UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime ally of incoming president Donald Trump. Last week, MetaKaplan is a Republican operative and former advisor to George W. Bush. Kaplan, with less than a week on the job, appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning to deliver Zuckerberg’s new policy testimonial to Facebook’s older user base.
Both Zuckerberg and Kaplan were clear that all this was happening because of Trump. “There’s no question that there’s been a change over the last four years. We saw a lot of societal and political pressure all in the direction of more content moderation, more censorship,” Kaplan said. “And we’ve got a real opportunity now. We’ve got a new administration with a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression. And that makes a difference.
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