Meta will get rid of fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram.
The company will instead rely on its users to report false stories and misleading information through a “Communities Notes” system like the one used on X/Twitter, it said.
It will also allow people to share more kinds of political content, such as posting on inflammatory topics. And it said that it would no longer proactively look for policy violations on those topics, and instead wait until users report them.
The changes would allow for more “free expression” on Facebook and Instagram, the company claimed.
It argued that its attempts to crack down on misleading stories on social media was “well-intentioned” but had “gone too far”, and it claimed that people were being falsely banned from posting as a result.
Meta also said that it expected to take down far fewer political posts than it has in the past. It would tweak its systems so that they would not proactively spot political posts, and so that those posts are less likely to be demoted on news feeds.
Since 2021, Meta has been working to reduce the amount of political content that appears in users’ feeds, pointing to feedback from users about wanting to see less of it. Now Meta has called that a “pretty blunt approach”, and said that it would start pushing that content back onto Facebook and Instagram.
It will start treating that political content like any other content in the feed, it said. As such, if users like or view political posts, then they will be more likely to see more of them as they scroll, it said.
Some of the changes will take a “few weeks” to be fully implemented, Meta said.
The change was announced by Joel Kaplan, who is taking over from Nick Clegg as the company’s chief global affairs officer. Mr Kaplan is a prominent Republican and former advisor to George W Bush, and some commentators have suggested that his appointment is an attempt to make Meta more amenable to the incoming Trump administration.
