The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Tuesday a series of significant changes to the company's content moderation policies and practices, citing the shifting political and social landscape and a commitment to free speech. Reports TSN. This was reported by Kontrakty.UA.
This is reported by NBC.
Zuckerberg stated that Meta will discontinue its fact-checking program and replace it with a community-driven system similar to Community Notes, which is used by Elon Musk's platform X. Additionally, the company will modify its moderation policy for political content and eliminate rules that restricted the visibility of political posts in users' feeds.
"We are bringing back civic content. For a while, the community requested to see less politics because it was stressing people out, so we stopped recommending these posts. But now we feel that a new era has begun, and we are starting to receive feedback that people want to see this content again. Therefore, we will gradually start bringing it back to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads while simultaneously working to ensure that communities remain friendly and positive," said Zuckerberg.
The changes will affect the company's three social platforms and billions of their users – Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. American users will be the first to experience these changes.
At the same time, Zuckerberg noted that the U.S. presidential elections influenced the company's decision and criticized "governments and traditional media" for allegedly "pushing for more censorship."
"Recent elections also seem to mark a cultural turning point towards a renewed emphasis on free speech. Therefore, we are going to return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free speech on our platforms," — said Zuckerberg.
He also pointed out that the systems created by the company for moderating its platforms make too many mistakes. Meanwhile, the CEO of Meta promised that the company would continue to aggressively moderate content related to drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation.
"We have built many complex systems for content moderation, but the problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts – that’s millions of people, and we have reached a point where the mistakes and censorship are becoming too much," emphasized Zuckerberg.
According to Zuckerberg, the company is reorienting its automated moderation systems to focus on "serious violations" and will rely on user reports of violations.
"We are also going to adjust our content filters to require much greater confidence before removing content. The reality is that this is a compromise. It means we will catch fewer bad things, but we will also reduce the number of posts and accounts of innocent people that we accidentally remove," explained Zuckerberg.
He also added that Meta will collaborate with the new Trump administration to promote free speech globally. However, Mark Zuckerberg did not specify what measures would be taken to achieve this goal.
It is worth noting that Australia will be the first country in the world to prohibit children under 16 from having social media accounts. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Reddit have one year to implement tools to restrict access for children, after which the law will come into effect.