Will Meta’s Plan to End Fact Checking Work Politically?

DealBook|Mark Zuckerberg and the Art of Reading the Room

Following the political winds

Meta’s bombshell announcement on Tuesday that it would end its fact-checking program was widely read as a major shift in policy meant to please President-elect Donald Trump and other conservatives.

In reality, the move was probably less radical than it initially seemed. But the turn still serves as a reminder that many corporate leaders see their highest priority as reading the room — one that Trump now dominates.

Mark Zuckerberg has been moving in this direction for some time. In relation to the 2016 election, the Meta chief, who has a history of tacking where political winds blow, followed other tech companies in partnering with fact-checking groups to police content on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Since then, however, the tech mogul has fumed as Meta was criticized for both failing to do enough — and for removing too many user posts.

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes, including a move to X-style user-policing known as Community Notes. (Katie Harbath, a former communications executive at Meta, told The Times, “This is an evolved return to his political origins.”)

The changes aren’t necessarily as big as they first appeared. Politico noted that Meta had been paring back its moderation efforts in recent years. And while Zuckerberg promoted plans to move such workers to Texas to “eliminate bias,” many such workers are already based there.

Zuckerberg isn’t alone: Tech companies haven’t ever wanted to be in the business of moderating user content. Last summer, YouTube began testing a version of Community Notes, though it was described as more of a supplemental feature.