Facebook ditches ‘fact-checkers,’ restores free speech ‘roots,’ to work with Trump to fight global censorship

On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that on social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, "fact-checkers" will be removed and replaced with a system of community notes, similar to those on X. The censorship mechanisms on the platform will be changed, he said, because the current set up has suppressed and censored millions of users.

Zuckerberg recently met with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and, in his Instagram video announcing the changes, he said that Trump's win indicated that a new direction was necessary at Facebook.

Zuckerberg announced that he'd be relocating the content moderation team from California to Texas and would work with Trump to fight global censorship. The new changes on the platform are only slated for the United States so far. In recent months, Zuckerberg lambasted government censorship and interference in his platform, vowed to stop giving political donations to Democrats, and changed his political affiliation to Independent.