Ditching
of Facebook factcheckers a ‘major step back’ for public discourse, critics say
Mark
Zuckerberg’s decision regarding Meta platforms condemned as ‘a full bending of
the knee’ to Donald Trump
Robert Booth
UK technology editor
Tue 7 Jan
2025 19.26 GMT
Mark
Zuckerberg’s decision to ditch factcheckers on Facebook and “prioritise free
speech” weeks before Donald Trump returns to power was condemned on Tuesday as
a “major step back” for public discourse.
The Meta
founder announced multiple changes to his platforms including Facebook and
Instagram in an attempt to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship”.
In a
statement on Tuesday he said that, starting in the US, independent factcheckers
would be replaced in the US by a system of “community notes” similar to that
used on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, which relies on users to add
caveats and context to contentious posts.
Content
moderation teams would also be moved from California to Texas “where there is
less concern about the bias of our teams”, said Zuckerberg in a five-minute
video statement that Nina Jankowicz, a former US government official tasked
with fighting disinformation, described as “a full bending of the knee to
Trump”.
Changes to
the way Meta filtered content would also mean “we’re going to catch less bad
stuff” while still taking seriously “a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there,
drugs, terrorism, child exploitation”, Zuckerberg said.
He said
factcheckers were “too politically biased” – an allegation strongly denied by
factchecking organisations – and said Meta would “get rid of a bunch of
restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch
with mainstream discourse”.
The
40-year-old billionaire said the shift was in response to the US presidential
elections, which he labelled “a cultural tipping point towards, once again,
prioritising speech”.
Trump and
Zuckerberg have had a rollercoaster relationship, with Trump threatening to
jail the tech boss if he interfered in the election and then a November
rapprochement with dinner at Mar-a-Lago and Zuckerberg donating $1m.
Trump said
on Tuesday that the changes were “probably” in response to his warnings and
added: “I think they’ve come a long way, Meta, Facebook.”
Last week it
was announced that the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was stepping
down as Meta’s president of global affairs to be replaced by the prominent
Republican Joel Kaplan. Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate
Fighting Championship and a prominent Trump supporter, was also appointed to
the Meta board as the tech company prepares for Trump’s second term, which is
set to have a major influence over technology companies through investment,
subsidies and regulation, particularly of artificial intelligence.
But
campaigners against harms caused via social media to women, children and ethnic
minorities, as well as scientists, reacted to the news with dismay.
Global
Witness, a human rights group, said: “Zuckerberg’s announcement is a blatant
attempt to cozy up to the incoming Trump administration – with harmful
implications. These changes will make it more dangerous for women, LGBT+
people, people of colour, scientists and activists to speak out online, where
they already face disproportionate harassment and attacks.”
The Centre
for Information Resilience, an organisation whose activities include tracking
online hate speech and disinformation based on people’s gender ethnicity and
sexuality, warned it was a “major step back for content moderation at a time
when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever”.
Ian Russell,
the father of Molly Russell, 14, who took her life after viewing thousands of
images promoting suicide and self-harm on social media, including Instagram,
said the moves “could have dire consequences for many children and young
adults”.
He said he
was “dismayed that the company intends to stop proactive moderation of many
forms of harmful content and to only act if and when a user complaint is
received”.
Meta said
content about suicide, self-injury and eating disorders would still be
considered “high-severity violations” and it “will continue to use our
automated systems to scan for that high-severity content”.
The UK TV
host Piers Morgan reflected a seam of support for Meta’s move when he welcomed
it as “a complete U-turn on all woke censorship & cancel culture bullsh*t”.
The
co-chairs of Meta’s oversight board, including the former prime minister of
Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, said in a statement: “We look forward to
working with Meta in the coming weeks to understand the changes in greater
detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as
possible.”
They added:
“It is essential that decisions on content are taken with maximum input from
voices outside of Meta, including of the people who use its platforms every
day.”
In London a
spokesperson for the prime minister, Keir Starmer, declined to be drawn on
Zuckerberg’s remarks but stressed the UK had its own protections in the new
Online Safety Act.
“Our
relationship with the US across a number of areas is a very important one,”
they said, adding: “Our online safety provisions coming in March are among the
strongest on offer.”
Angie
Drobnic Holan, the director of the International Fact-Checking Network which
certified the factcheckers used by Meta, denied factcheckers had been biased
and said: “That attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to
exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.”
Chris
Morris, the chief executive of the UK factchecking organisation Full Fact,
which has been funded by Meta to check Facebook content, called the
announcement “a backwards step that risks a chilling effect around the world”.
He said his organisation’s factcheckers assessed claims “from all political
stripes with equal rigour, and hold those in power to account through our
commitment to truth”.
“Locking
factcheckers out of the conversation won’t help society to turn the tide on
rapidly rising misinformation,” he said.
Zuckerberg
said removing some restrictions on content on topics such as gender and
immigration would “make sure that people can share their beliefs and
experiences on our platforms” and said the focus of filters that scanned posts
for policy violations would be shifted to only tackling illegal and
high-severity violations.
“By dialling
them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our
platforms,” he said. “We’re also going to tune our content filters to require
much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is
a tradeoff. It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce
innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
He said Meta
would “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world
that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
He cited
Europe as a place with “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising
censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative” and said:
“Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to
quietly take things down.”
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