[German]Facebook founder and Meta CEO Marc Zuckerberg has announced a major change of direction regarding user posts on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. Cooperation with fact-checkers in the USA is to be abolished and the company intends to campaign for this worldwide.
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In the last few days, it had already become known that a person close to the Republicans would become head of politics and replace the British Nick Clegg. Clegg's position will be taken over by Joel Kaplan, a former employee of Republican ex-President George W. Bush. Zuckerberg had also arranged for larger campaign donations for Donald Trump, as the then presidential candidate threatened the Meta boss with retaliation.
The end of fact-checking in the USA
Zuckerberg has now announced that users on the Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms will be able to moderate content themselves. In a video shared on Facebook (see also this YouTube video on the topic), Zuckerberg explains: "It's time to get back to our roots around free expression. We're replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes. Looking forward to this next chapter."
Under the banner of free speech, the cooperation with the fact checker for content moderation will be terminated. Those responsible for this will no longer be based in California, but in Texas.
The recent US presidential election marked a "cultural turning point", Zuckerberg explained. "We will return to our roots, reduce errors, simplify our rules and restore freedom of expression on our platforms." Fact-checkers had been "too politically biased" and had "destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the USA". says Zuckerberg.
Facebook has employed fact-checking teams from various providers in many countries since 2016. Zuckerberg wants to dispense with the fact-checkers and use the community annotation model already introduced by Elon Musk at X on the three platforms. This means that users can comment if they do not consider a post to be credible.
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According to Tagesschau, the content guidelines are to be simplified and a number of restrictions on topics such as migration and gender issues are to be lifted. Zuckerberg believes these are "no longer in line with public opinion". This is effectively a roll backwards and a kowtow to X boss Elon Musk, who is also advising the next US President Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg is therefore going one better and reforming the enforcement of the rules: In future, minor violations will only be checked after user complaints. The algorithms should only intervene if the threshold is higher. Meta also wants to bring political and social issues back into focus. The company is planning to work with the next US President Donald Trump to "take action against governments around the world that attack American companies and push for more censorship" and is also mentioning Europe.
Sounds like a tough challenge, the EU cannot put up with this with the Digital Service Act and Digital Markets Act. German IT magazine heise hat published a comment Meta ohne Moderation – Zuckerberg riskiert das digitale Chaos outlining the future of Meta. The author of this article has been working for 3 years for Meta and sees chaos and the loss of credibility. This could herald the demise of Meta and its subsidiaries Facebook and Instagram. The Guardian has this article with some details.
Until 2024, we only had Russian troll factories – now US troll factories are being added. At this point, I cross three crosses for never having bet on large follower numbers on Facebook and X. I had already lost my page on Facebook in 2024 for violating the community standards after I linked my post on fraud on Facebook there – I wrote about this story in the article Facebook's moderation: Broken by design – how AI and community policy handling kick people.
So Facebook was already broken back then – I was only active there in groups where I could get relevant information for the blog or reach IT administrators. After these "changes in business relationships", it's time to stop actively posting content from my blogs on the Facebook and X platforms. Mastodon and BlueSky are likely to become very important.
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