In one fell swoop, Meta enters its ‘post-truth’ era

In one fell swoop, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has reshaped the company’s approach to the truth, removing its “politically biased” fact-checkers and cementing Silicon Valley’s radical facelift as it cosies up to US President-elect Donald Trump.

As Zuckerberg (or Zuck, as he’s often referred to) announced overnight in talking points that often directly echoed Trump, Meta will “return to our roots around free expression” and “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” by removing its fact-checkers and lifting restrictions on divisive topics like “immigration and gender”.

Some might be surprised to learn that the company had fact-checkers in the first place.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced Meta will stop using independent fact-checking organisations to moderate content on the company’s platforms.Credit: AP

About 3 billion people globally use Meta’s products, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Its fact-checking efforts, in fact, date back nearly a decade, to the 2016 US presidential election, in which Russia spread misinformation on Facebook and other platforms.

In response to those efforts, Facebook created what has been seen as somewhat of a gold standard for how tech platforms handle misinformation: relying on more than 90 third-party organisations globally, including in Australia, who helped fact-check content in more than 60 languages about topics including COVID-19 and climate change.

“We don’t think a private company like Meta should be deciding what’s true or false, which is exactly why we have a global network of fact-checking partners who independently review and rate potential misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” Meta said in a post about the program at the time.

What Zuck is promising might sound appealing to some: a return of the internet to its roots, which was designed to allow for free speech.

It no longer thinks that.

Those third-party fact-checkers have proven to be “too politically biased” and have destroyed “more trust than they’ve created”, particularly in the United States, according to Zuckerberg.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech.”

Zuckerberg says gender and immigration are topics where comments will be less restricted.Credit: Instagram

The company will shift to relying on user-led community notes like those on X, formerly known as Twitter. That process involves users themselves providing context or fact-checking posts, rather than anyone official.

In another move ripped from the Elon Musk playbook, Meta is also shifting its moderation team from California to Texas, in changes Zuckerberg admitted would catch “less bad stuff” on his platforms.

There are signs that the move didn’t involve a lot of advance planning. It wasn’t telegraphed to the company’s fact-checkers, some of whom had been there for a decade.

Lead Stories fact-checker Maarten Schenk told Forbes the first he learned of Meta’s plan to scrap its partnership with independent journalists was through a press release. “We were not notified in advance so it was just, boom this is ending,” he said.

Existing fact-checking deals with international newsrooms and charities, including in Australia, are expected to run until the end of the year.

It comes as Silicon Valley jostles to curry favour with Trump, partly in the hopes that it can win a lighter touch from regulators.

Last week, Meta tapped Bush-era Republican Joel Kaplan to serve as its global head of policy, replacing former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

Then, just this week, the company named Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White – a long-time Trump supporter – to its board of directors. Meta has also donated to Trump’s inauguration fund, a first for the company.

Silicon Valley is jostling to curry favour with Donald Trump, partly in hope it can win a lighter touch from regulators. Credit: AP

What Zuck is promising might sound appealing to some: a return of the internet to its roots, which was designed to allow for free speech and open debate. That’s a naive outlook, however, that doesn’t reflect what the internet is in 2025.

In 1995 – and even in 2004 when Facebook was invented – the internet was a much simpler place: it was a place for Flash games, cheesy animations, recipes, Hotmail and message boards.

Social media has made the internet a much more complex – and arguably worse – place, littered with toxicity, privacy intrusions, child pornography, fake news and abuse.

For Zuckerberg to enact changes that will catch “less bad stuff” on his platforms is a big step in the wrong direction, particularly when so much momentum has gathered globally about tweaking social media for the better.

In Australia, the proposed social media age ban has been contentious but at a minimum, it’s stirred a productive conversation about the pros and cons of social media, particularly as it relates to the mental health of young people.

Social media is already a dumpster fire at the best of times. To make it a Wilder West of misinformation will make it an even less appealing place than it has become. And for Meta to make that move to please the political whims of Trump should be viewed as an abdication of the serious responsibility that comes with operating a platform used by 3 billion people.

For Zuckerberg to highlight gender and immigration as topics that will be less restricted should be worrying, particularly for minority groups who might be directly affected by hateful posts, like immigrants or LGBTQ people.

Calling women “household objects” will now be permissible under Meta’s new guidelines, as will calling transgender people “freaks”.

Facebook – and social media more broadly – is now firmly in its “post-truth” era. And its billions of users will likely be worse off.

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