Social-media companies decide content moderation is trending down
Live MintSocial-media companies never wanted to aggressively police content on their platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta Platforms will end fact-checking and remove speech restrictions across Facebook and Instagram shows how Donald Trump’s presidential election, and the U.S. political winds that swept him into a second term, have sharply accelerated a move by social-media giants away from refereeing what is said on their platforms. He said Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers and, starting in the U.S., replacing them with a so-called Community Notes system similar to one on Musk’s X platform. Google’s YouTube platform last year also began allowing a limited group of users to add “Notes" to videos in the U.S. similar to those on X. X CEO Linda Yaccarino said Meta’s announcement “couldn’t be more validating" during an onstage interview at the CES conference in Las Vegas.