Meta is following X's playbook on fact-checking. What it means for you

Social media giant Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, above, is ending its U.S. fact-checking program, a major shift that conforms with the priorities of President-elect Donald Trump. Facebook parent company Meta Platforms said Tuesday that it’s ending a third-party fact-checking program in the United States, a controversial move that will change how the social media giant combats misinformation. “We don’t think a private company like Meta should be deciding what’s true or false, which is exactly why we have a global network of fact-checking partners who independently review and rate potential misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp,” Meta said in a post about the program. Meta said it’s also lifting restrictions around content about certain hot-button political topics including gender identity and immigration — a decision that LGBTQ+ media advocacy group GLAAD said would make it easier to target LGBTQ+ people, women, immigrants and other marginalized groups for harassment and abuse online. Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press, said in a statement that content moderation “has never been a tool to repress free speech.” “Meta’s new promise to scale back fact checking isn’t surprising — Zuckerberg is one of many billionaires who are cozying up to dangerous demagogues like Trump and pushing initiatives that favor their bottom lines at the expense of everything and everyone else,” she said in a statement.