Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, replacing it with a community-driven system similar to Elon Musk’s X platform, drawing immediate praise from the tech billionaire.
“This is cool,” Musk posted on X in response to Meta’s announcement of the major content moderation shift.
The change marks a significant departure from Meta’s seven-year-old fact-checking system, which relied on approximately 80 independent organizations globally to verify content on Facebook and Instagram. Instead, Meta will adopt a model where users can add contextual notes to potentially misleading posts, mirroring the approach used on X.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, acknowledged that the company’s content moderation had “gone too far,” resulting in excessive censorship and mistaken content removals. In December 2024 alone, Meta estimates 10-20% of content takedowns may have been errors.
The move comes as Meta appears to be aligning itself with the incoming Trump administration, having recently appointed longtime Republican Kaplan to head global policy and added Trump ally Dana White to its board of directors. Trump’s FCC nominee Brendan Carr celebrated the announcement, suggesting support for reduced content moderation.
The changes will be gradually implemented in the US over several months. Users can now sign up to become contributors to the Community Notes program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta emphasized that the new system will require agreement between users with diverse perspectives to prevent biased ratings.
The company clarified that these changes will not be implemented in the European Union for now, as it reviews its content moderation obligations in that region.
