In November 2016, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a post responding to intense post-election scrutiny about how Facebook was handling moderation. “The bottom line is: We take misinformation seriously,” he wrote. While it was crucial not to “mistakenly restrict accurate content,” he continued, the company was planning to bolster its “technical systems” and had started reaching out to “respected fact-checking organizations” for help. On January 7, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg wrote another post responding to intense post-election scrutiny about how the platform was handling moderation. “Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies,” he said. “But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”

Well, it’s January 7, 2025, and new-look Zuck is posting again, responding to post-election scrutiny about how the platform handles moderation, only this time with a twist. “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said in a new video:

It's time to get back to our roots around free expression. We're replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes. Looking forward to this next chapter.

The video is ostensibly a set of product announcements about Facebook and Instagram. The company is winding down its third-party fact-checking program, which employs — literally — outside fact-checking and media organizations to assess flagged content, and will rely more on a “more comprehensive community notes system” that is “similar to X.” The company is going to “simplify” its content policies to “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” that are “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.” Meta will be “dialing back” filters that scan for “policy violations” to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on the platform.” The company is going to move its “trust and safety and content moderation” divisions from California to Texas, where there is “less concern about the bias of our teams,” a change that Zuckerberg suggests will “help us build trust.” Finally, Zuckerberg says, Meta is going to “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and........

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