Facebook Follows X Down Path to Becoming Right-Wing 'Cesspool' by Ending Fact-Checking Efforts

In a move that some viewed as a means of currying favor with the incoming Trump administration, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a video Tuesday that the company is moving to end its third party fact-checking program.

Instead, the company will use a community notes approach, inspired by the Elon Musk's platform X—where Musk's misleading claims about the 2024 presidential election racked up billions of views.

Zuckerberg's announcement was accompanied by a post authored by Meta's new, "Trump-friendly" chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, who described the change as "more speech and fewer mistakes." Kaplan also went on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning to discuss the update.

"Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail,' and we are often too slow to respond when they do," wrote Kaplan in his post. Kaplan and Zuckerberg also noted that Meta plans to phase back in more civic content, as in posts about elections, politics, or social issues.

Real Facebook Oversight Board (RFOB), a group established to counter the perceived failures of Meta's own oversight board, blasted the move, saying, "'censorship' is a manufactured crisis, political pandering to signal that Meta's platforms are open for business to far-right propaganda."

"Twitter's shift from fact checking has turned the platform into a cesspool; Zuck is joining them in a race to the bottom," the group wrote Tuesday.

The move generated other negative reactions.

"Meta went to Fox News to announce it's ending its third-party fact checking program. Zuck isn't just kissing the ring, he's slobbering all over it," wrote media reporter Oliver Darcy on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, Kara Swisher, a tech journalist, wrote "toxic floods of lies on social media platforms like Facebook have destroyed trust not fact checkers. Let me reiterate: Mark Zuckerberg has never cared about that and never will."

Co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, Lisa Gilbert, weighed in, saying that "misinformation will flow more freely with this policy change, as we cannot assume that corrections will be made when false information proliferates. The American people deserve accurate information about our elections, health risks, the environment, and much more. We condemn this irresponsible move and the harm it will likely contribute to our discourse."

"Meta's new promise to scale back fact checking isn't surprising—Zuckerberg is one of many billionaires who are cozying up to dangerous demagogues like Trump and pushing initiatives that favor their bottom lines at the expense of everything and everyone else," wrote Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights for the organization Free Press in a Tuesday statement.

Meta, which is angling for the U.S. government to use its AI and is facing an federal antitrust trial this spring, has made other bids to enter Trump's good graces and thaw once frosty relations (Meta temporarily booted Trump from its platforms following his comments regarding the January 6 insurrection). Meta donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund recently and Zuckerberg flew down to Trump's Mar-A-Lago Club to meet with him this past fall.