Social media giant Meta Platforms
What Happened: Meta Platforms CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg shared in a video that the company's social media platforms will soon be following the Community Notes style of content moderation put in place by Elon Musk's X.
"It's time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram," Zuckerberg said in a video.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that he built social media platforms for people and a lot of censorship has happened over the years, which included accidentally censoring people who should not have been.
Meta will work on prioritizing speech, focus on reducing mistakes and restore free expression, Zuckerberg added.
Zuckerberg laid out a multi-point plan, which includes.
- Replace fact checkers with community notes, similar to X
- Simplify content policy topics
- New approach to policy enforcement
- Bringing back civic content
- Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California to Texas
- Protect free expression worldwide
Community notes will be phased into Meta's operations, beginning with the United States.
Zuckerberg said Meta currently has filters that scan for policy violations and shut content down. Under the new plan, filters will scan for the top issues, and the system will rely on users to report lower-level violations.
The Meta CEO said this will dramatically lower the level of censorship on the platforms.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that there would be a trade-off with less bad stuff caught by filters, but less positive stuff would be taken down by accident.
The Meta CEO said Europe has made things difficult for social media and China has censored the company's apps from working in the country.
"We're going to work with President Trump."
Zuckerberg said it is time to simplify the system and get back to Meta's roots.
"We have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it."
Why It's Important: Meta's change comes as the company recently announced that Joel Kaplan, a former Republican White House Deputy Chief of Staff under George W. Bush, will become the company's head of global affairs.
Kaplan replaces Nick Clegg, who was instrumental in deciding on Trump being banned on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
In Tuesday's content moderation announcement, Kaplan revealed that Meta removed millions of pieces of content daily in December. However, he acknowledged that one to two out of every 10 removals may have been mistakes, involving content that should not have been taken down.
Zuckerberg's announcements come as his former tense relationship with Trump has appeared to improve. Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November and recently donated $1 million to his inauguration fund.
Trump previously threatened to put Zuckerberg in jail over his past handling of the president on Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg's announcement also comes after Meta announced three new people added to the company's Board of Directors, including Trump-ally Dana White.
One question will be whether Musk approves copying the Community Notes moderation style. Musk previously took exception to Zuckerberg's launch of Threads, which copied many elements of X. The launch led to calls for a cage fight between the two billionaires.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino celebrated the announcement Tuesday.
"COMMUNITY NOTES FTW! Fact-checking and moderation doesn't belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It's a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many," Yaccarino tweeted.
Yaccarino said this is a "smart move by Zuck" and she believes other platforms will follow X's lead.
META Price Action: Meta stock is down 3.1% to $610.77 on Tuesday versus a 52-week trading range of $352.05 to $638.40. Meta stock is up 74% over the last year.
