Meta’s Bold Move: Dismantling Fact-Checking as Trump Prepares for a Comeback

On Tuesday, Meta announced it was discontinuing its long-established fact-checking initiative, a policy designed to limit the dissemination of misinformation across its social media platforms, illustrating a significant shift in how the organization was aligning itself for the Trump administration while supporting unrestricted speech online.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, indicated that it would now promote greater freedom of speech, depend on its users to rectify inaccurate and false postings, and adopt a more tailored method for handling political content. It articulated these adjustments with a tone of regret, admitting it had deviated too far from its principles in the last decade.

“It’s time to revert to our foundational principles surrounding free expression,” Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, mentioned in a video announcing the updates. He remarked that the company’s fact-checking structure had “arrived at a juncture where there are simply too many errors and excessive censorship.”

Mr. Zuckerberg acknowledged that this choice would lead to an increase in “negative content” on the platforms. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he stated. “It signifies that we will be able to identify fewer harmful content, but we will also lessen the instances of innocent users’ posts and accounts being incorrectly removed.”

Since Donald J. Trump’s election in November, few prominent corporations have overtly sought to gain favor with the president-elect, who accused social media companies of silencing conservative voices during his initial term. Meta has aggressively altered its strategy during this transition period in what Mr. Zuckerberg referred to as a “cultural tipping point” spurred by the election.

Mr. Zuckerberg dined with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, and later, Meta contributed $1 million to support Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg promoted Joel Kaplan, the highest-ranking Meta executive aligned with the Republican Party, to the organization’s top policy position. Additionally, on Monday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a supporter of Mr. Trump, would be joining Meta’s board.

Recently, Meta executives informed Trump officials about the policy shift, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The announcement of the end of fact-checking coincided with Mr. Kaplan’s guest appearance on “Fox & Friends,” a show favored by Mr. Trump, where Mr. Kaplan remarked that there was “excessive political bias” in Meta’s fact-checking initiative.

Mr. Trump stated he found Mr. Kaplan’s Fox interview “impressive” and noted that Meta had “made significant progress.” He also implied that Meta’s revision was “likely” a consequence of the threats he had posed against the organization and Mr. Zuckerberg.

The influence of Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and head of X, SpaceX, and Tesla, has also significantly impacted Meta’s transition. Since acquiring X in 2022, Mr. Musk has lifted the platform’s restrictions on online expression and established a program named Community Notes, which relies on users of X to monitor false and misleading information. Mr. Musk has emerged as an influential advisor to Mr. Trump and has relocated X to Texas from California, where it previously operated, criticizing the state’s policies.

On Tuesday, Meta declared its intention to adopt a Community Notes system after observing “this strategy succeed on X.” Furthermore, Mr. Zuckerberg indicated that his company would manage its U.S. trust and safety and content moderation services from Texas instead of California “to operate in environments where there is less apprehension about our teams’ bias.”

In his Fox appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Kaplan countered the notion that anyone was swaying Mr. Zuckerberg’s choices.

“There’s no doubt that the actions taken at Meta originate from Mark,” Mr. Kaplan remarked. However, he added, “I believe Elon has played a crucial role in shifting the conversation and refocusing attention on free speech.”

Researchers of misinformation expressed deep concern regarding Meta’s decision to cease fact-checking. Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of the digital oversight organization Accountable Tech, stated that Mr. Zuckerberg was “reopening the floodgates to the identical wave of hate, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that provoked January 6 — and that continue to incite real-world violence.”

In 2021, Facebook suspended Mr. Trump’s account following the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol for inciting violence, before eventually reinstating him. Numerous studies have subsequently revealed that actions like Facebook’s fact-checks effectively diminished belief in false narratives and reduced the frequency of such content being disseminated.

However, Meta’s decision thrilled conservative supporters of Mr. Trump, many of whom had disapproved of Meta’s practice of appending disclaimers or alerts to dubious or false postings. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, remarked in a post on X that Meta “finally admits to censoring speech” and described the change as “a tremendous victory for free expression.”

Conversely, other Republicans were doubtful. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, commented in a post on X that Meta’s alteration was “a tactic to evade regulation.”

Internally at Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcements received both commendation and dismay. Some employees felt that Mr. Zuckerberg was finally expressing his “true self,” free from the constraints of “woke” critics, according to three current and former employees.

Others argued that Mr. Zuckerberg was sacrificing current and former employees despite their commitments to content moderation. As disgruntled employees shared their frustrations about the changes on internal communication channels, human resources promptly deleted the entries, citing violations of a company policy on community engagement. This policy was introduced in 2022 to prevent contentious social subjects from permeating the workplace.

The choice to relocate moderation teams from California to Texas to “eliminate bias” particularly caught the interest of employees, according to the sources. The organization has long had personnel addressing moderation issues in Texas, the

individuals remarked. In confidential channels and group discussions, others noted how it was acceptable to critique Meta’s stance on free expression — unless you did so from within the organization.

Meta’s fact-checking approach was established following Mr. Trump’s earlier election victory in 2016. During that period, Facebook faced criticism for the unchecked spread of misinformation throughout its platform, including postings from foreign entities aiming to create discord among the American populace.

In response to significant public demand, Mr. Zuckerberg sought out external entities such as The Associated Press, ABC News, and the fact-checking website Snopes, along with other global organizations approved by the International Fact-Checking Network, to scrutinize potentially false or deceiving posts on Facebook and Instagram and determine whether they should be annotated or removed.

The organization allocated the next eight years pouring billions into resources, numerous personnel, and substantial technological investments to address content monitoring challenges. Mr. Zuckerberg enlisted over a dozen external firms to assist in regulating posts, including a workforce of contractors from companies like Accenture to handle much of the manual review of posts.

Mr. Zuckerberg also emphasized the significance of artificial intelligence in managing many of these challenges, considering that nearly half of the global population regularly shares content on one or more of Meta’s applications.

However, as time passed, Mr. Zuckerberg became exasperated with the lack of acknowledgment the company received for its efforts to mitigate misinformation, two individuals close to the chief executive disclosed. He believed the time and resources Meta had invested in the initiative were yielding diminishing benefits, they indicated.

Mr. Zuckerberg articulated that exasperation during a speech at Georgetown University in 2019, where he stated he did not wish for his social network to become “an arbiter of speech.” He asserted that Facebook was created to empower individuals, and that critics who condemned the company for doing so were setting a perilous precedent.

Mr. Zuckerberg also lamented the pressure that the Biden administration exerted on him to eliminate content related to Covid-19, a sentiment he conveyed publicly in a letter to Congress the previous year. In the correspondence, Mr. Zuckerberg claimed the administration overstepped in its requests to remove content, “including humor and satire.” In retrospect, Meta ought to have resisted the White House’s demands more firmly, he stated.

By 2022, Meta had started to streamline some of its content moderation and policy teams as part of extensive corporate cost-reducing measures. The company continues to enact strategic reductions on an ongoing basis.

Among the adjustments announced on Tuesday was the lifting of restrictions on subjects such as immigration and gender identity that Mr. Zuckerberg stated were “disconnected from mainstream discourse.” Meta indicated it would begin implementing more tailored political content, based on the signals users provided regarding what they were interested in seeing in their feeds.

Mr. Zuckerberg has also undergone personal evolution. In recent years, he has formed a closer relationship with Mr. White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and has immersed himself in the right-leaning realm of professional fighting. He has grown weary of the incessant criticism directed at him and his company and found navigating Mr. Biden’s assertive approach to regulating the tech industry frustrating, two individuals acquainted with his views shared.

Above everything, the incoming Trump administration and its emphasis on free expression enables Meta to finally liberate itself from the never-ending duty of overseeing the billions of posts that traverse its applications.

“We have a new administration coming in that is far from coercing companies to censor and a major advocate for free expression,” Mr. Kaplan remarked on Fox. “It returns us to the principles that Mark established the company upon.”

Kate Conger and Stuart A. Thompson contributed reporting.