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| MetaCEO Mark Zuckerberg | Photo: Reuters |
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook's parent company Meta, announced major policy changes. The policy changes will mean more political content will be shown on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Their parent company Meta will now recommend more political content.
The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a video post on Tuesday. In the caption of the video post, he wrote, "It's time to get back to our roots around free expression. We're now using community notes instead of fact-checkers. We're simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing errors."
Meta CEO Zuckerberg recently met with US President-elect Donald Trump at the White House, where he pledged to prioritize free expression.
The issue of giving importance to the publication of political content is starting from the United States. He said that in this case, the use of third parties or institutions that Facebook had authority (fact checkers) was reduced and the use of Community Notes was used. That is, from now on, Meta will give more importance to the opinions of users in this case. Community Notes is a familiar feature of another social media X (formerly Twitter).
X is owned by Elon Musk, the world's richest man and close to Trump. It is up to users to add warnings and context to controversial posts on the platform.
Zuckerberg has questioned the behavior of fact-checkers. He alleged that Meta's fact-checkers have been too politically biased. They have destroyed more trust than they have built.
Zuckerberg said Meta's content editing staff will be moved from California to Texas, where concerns about Meta's bias are less prevalent.
Zuckerberg, however, admitted that Meta will filter less content from now on, which could result in a lot of bad content being published on Meta's platforms.
Meta has more than 3 billion users worldwide. Zuckerberg's statement said that Meta would be freed from restrictions on issues such as immigration and gender. Meta will work with President Trump to increase pressure on governments of countries that are pressuring US institutions for more censorship.
Meta's announcement comes as former US Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg resigned from the company's position as Global Affairs Director and was replaced by prominent US Republican Joel Kaplan.
Zuckerberg added in his five-minute statement, "Governments and their legacies are pushing for more censorship of the media. A lot of it is clearly political. And there are also bad things like drugs, terrorism, and child abuse. We take these issues very seriously. I want to make sure we address them responsibly."