Meta is changing its content moderation policies, eliminating third-party fact checking in lieu of a “community notes” model that will be phased in over the coming months, starting in the U.S. The changes were outlined by Joel Kaplan, the company’s new chief global affairs officer, who was promoted following the recent resignation of Nick Clegg, who managed Meta’s public image since 2018 and set up its oversight board. Kaplan says the policy shift “will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.”

“The moves are significant in part because they precede a new presidential administration in the U.S. taking charge later this month,” reports TechCrunch, writing that incoming President Donald Trump “and his supporters have signaled their interpretation of free speech to be significantly more focused on encouraging a much wider set of opinions.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among other businesses, “has been in the crosshairs of their criticism throughout the past few years, not least because at one point one of the people it banned from its platforms in the name of content moderation was Trump himself,” TechCrunch explains.

“Trump and other Republicans have lambasted Zuckerberg and Meta for what they view as censorship of right-wing voices,” CNN writes.

“Fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video post discussing the new policies.

Zuckerberg also “acknowledged a ‘tradeoff’ in the new policy, noting more harmful content will appear on the platform as a result of the content moderation changes,” CNN says.

The Guardian calls Clegg — former deputy prime minister of Britain — “a centrist” and says his exit “signals a new political era at Meta.” Kaplan, who The New York Times describes as “a longtime Republican lobbyist for Meta,” was part of the George W. Bush administration from 2006 to 2009 and joined Meta in 2011 (when it was still called Facebook).

The community notes model is used by companies including Elon Musk’s X and Google’s YouTube. “Meta also plans to adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations,” which it says have resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been,” CNN reports.

Related:
Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, Joins Meta’s Board, The New York Times, 1/6/25
Mark Zuckerberg’s Political Evolution, from Apologies to No More Apologies, The New York Times, 1/7/25