Meta plans to remove factcheckers and suggest more political content on its platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, will “dramatically reduce censorship” on its platforms. This includes removing factcheckers and replacing them with a community-driven system, similar to the one used by X (formerly Twitter), where users can add context to controversial posts.

Zuckerberg criticized Meta’s factcheckers, saying they were too politically biased and damaged trust more than they helped. He also mentioned that Meta would move its content moderation teams from California to Texas to avoid political bias, though he acknowledged that this change would lead to “catching less bad stuff.”

Meta, which has over 3 billion users, will also lift restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, arguing that these rules were out of touch with mainstream opinions. Zuckerberg expressed concerns about rising censorship laws in places like Europe and Latin America, which he said make it harder to innovate and could lead to unfair takedowns of content.

Zuckerberg framed this move as a return to his 2019 argument for free speech, particularly after the 2024 US election, which he sees as a turning point. He stressed the need to balance free speech with safety, recognizing that while there’s harmful content (like drugs or terrorism), over-moderation has been a problem.

The company’s new approach will focus on removing only the most severe illegal content, while relying more on users to report issues that are less harmful. The idea is to reduce unnecessary censorship and improve the system’s accuracy, even if it means some harmful content might slip through.

Meta’s oversight board, which includes figures like Helle Thorning-Schmidt, has said they are keen to understand the changes and work with Meta to ensure the new approach is effective and respects free speech. They also acknowledged the leadership change, with Joel Kaplan taking over from Nick Clegg as head of global affairs.

In response, the UK government emphasized that Meta would still need to follow laws requiring the removal of harmful content, especially in relation to child safety and misinformation.