The Internet’s Future Is Looking Bleaker by the Day
WiredThis is proving to be a monumental week on the tech and politics beat. On Tuesday, Meta announced that it would be ending its third-party fact-checking program and cutting down its rules barring hate speech in a move clearly targeted at appeasing one person—incoming president Donald Trump. Reel-ing Into a Second Trump Administration There’s a reason why mean-spirited TikTok users write “post this on IG Reels” in comment sections on the platform. As you’ve likely already heard, Meta announced on Tuesday that it would be ending its third-party fact-checking program, replacing it with X-style Community Notes, and “restoring free expression” to its platforms. To accomplish the latter part, the company will relocate its trust and safety operation from California to Texas, purportedly to avoid liberal bias and focus its moderation filters on illegal content like terrorism and child sexual abuse material rather than what it calls “lower-severity violations.” All of this comes with an update to Meta’s Community Guidelines, including its Hateful Conduct policy, that essentially allows users to make blatantly homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and racist posts without consequences, as my colleague Kate Knibbs reported this week.