In a series of significant changes that will drastically change the way posts, videos and other content are moderated on the Internet, Meta will adjust its content review policies on Facebook and Instagram, eliminating fact-checking and replacing it with user-friendly “community notes,” similar to those on Elon Musk’s X platform, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday.
The changes come just before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump harshly criticized Zuckerberg and Meta for what he sees as censorship of right-wing voices, he writes CNN.
“Fact checkers are too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the new policy. “What started as a movement for greater inclusivity is increasingly being used to exclude opinions and people with different ideas, and that has gone too far.”
Zuckerberg, however, admitted that the new policy carries certain compromises, noting that more harmful content will appear on the platform as a result of changes in moderation.
Meta’s newly appointed head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News on Tuesday that Meta’s partnerships with independent fact-checkers “were well-intentioned at first, but the political bias in the selection of what to check and how to check became too much.”
Change of ideological direction in Meta
The announcement comes amid Meta’s broader ideological shift to the right, as Zuckerberg seeks to improve relations with Trump before he takes office later this month. Just a day earlier, Meta announced that Trump ally and UFC executive Dana White would be named to the company’s board, along with two other new directors. Meta also announced a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund and Zuckerberg’s intention to actively participate in technology policy discussions.
Kaplan, a prominent Republican who took over the company’s policy leadership role last week, acknowledged that the decision was directly related to the change in administration.
“It’s undeniable that a lot has changed in the last four years. We’ve experienced tremendous social and political pressure toward greater moderation and censorship, and now we have an opportunity. A new administration and a new president who are big defenders of free expression are making a difference,” Kaplan said. .
Return to user notes
These changes represent a radical shift in the way Meta treats false and misleading claims on its platforms. In 2016, the company launched an independent fact-checking program after allegations that it failed to stop foreign actors from spreading misinformation and sowing discord among Americans through its platforms.
But Zuckerberg is now following the lead of Elon Musk, who after taking over platform X (formerly Twitter) in 2022 scrapped fact-checking teams and introduced user-generated annotations as the only way to correct false claims.
Meta will also adjust its automated systems that check for policy violations, which it claims have “censored too much content for no reason.” The systems will now focus only on illegal and “highly serious” offences, such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and money fraud. Other concerns will have to be self-reported by users.
Less censorship, but also more risk
Zuckerberg said Facebook’s complex content moderation systems often mistakenly removed too much content that didn’t violate the rules. “We’ve gotten to the point where we have too many bugs and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said. “What started as a movement for inclusivity is now being used to exclude different ideas, and that’s gone too far.”
However, he admitted that the new policy will also bring new problems. “The reality is that this is a trade-off. It means we’ll catch less bad content, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent posts and accounts we mistakenly remove.”
Meta also lifts restrictions on certain topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and reduces restrictions on the amount of political content users see in their feeds.
As part of the changes, Meta will move its trust and security teams responsible for content policies from California to Texas and other locations in the US. “I think it will help us build trust and do this work in places where there’s less concern about our teams being biased,” Zuckerberg said.
(Vijesti.ba)
