Facebook And MAGA, Winter Virus Season, LA Palisades Fire
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Facebook and Instagram abandoned the use of fact-checkers tasked with keeping falsehoods off the sites.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the change. How does it fit with his other moves as the Trump administration returns to power?
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The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is positioning itself for a new administration.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who once banned President-elect Donald Trump from Facebook for his role in the January 6th attack, now says he favors more free speech. And he's ending a fact-checking feature that was designed to slow down the spread of false information. Meta's move comes as Republicans on their way into power talk of a crackdown on tech companies.
NPR's Bobby Allen is covering this. Bobby, good morning. Hey there, Steve. Okay, so what was Meta doing and what are they going to be doing now?
Well, it used to be that posts that were flagged by enough users underwent a fact-checking process by third-party professional fact-checkers. And when they were done, the post got a label. Now that is over. In its place is what's known as a community note system. This was inspired by how it works on Elon Musk's X. The fact-checking process is crowdsourced to regular users, and when the users reach some kind of consensus, a note is added to the post. That's big change one. Second big change, Steve, restrictions will be lifted on topics like immigration and gender identity. Currently, these protections are in place to curb hate speech. Now they are dismantled. In an Instagram video announcement, Zuckerberg says, Meta's speech policing has become too aggressive.
And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
And to say this is a big reversal is an understatement. After the 2016 presidential election, Zuckerberg himself came up with this fact-checking system. It followed revelations, of course, that Russia exploited Facebook to divide the country and boost the Trump campaign. Now Zuckerberg is abandoning the very fact-checking system that he helped create.
Bobby, when he says he's responding to the recent elections, that's very close to saying that he's adjusting policies for Trump.
He didn't say so explicitly, but yes, Zuckerberg's framing is quite notable. In his video, he said speech is being censored on Meta's platforms. It's an allegation Republicans have made for years and until now, an allegation he has fought against. Now, he is leaving some limits in place. One's
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