JUST IN: Zuckerberg Announces End Of ‘Fact-Checking’ In Seismic Shift Toward Free Speech

In a sign of how desperate Silicon Valley is becoming to get back in the good graces of President-elect Donald Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that Facebook will close its “fact-checking” department later this month, bringing to an end the controversial practice that saw conservatives silenced during much of the pandemic.

Zuckerberg, 40, made the announcement in a video released by the company while Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, appeared on “Fox & Friends” to share additional details. “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg says in the video, a copy of which was obtained by Fox News. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”

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Kaplan told the network’s morning show hosts that the change would bring Facebook back to its “roots” as a platform that promotes free speech. “This is a great opportunity for us to reset the balance in favor of free expression. As Mark says in that video, what we’re doing is we’re getting back to our roots and free expression,” Kaplan said on “Fox & Friends.”

Russian interference in the 2016 election became the impetus for Facebook’s fact-checking program. An investigation by the FBI, which exonerated the Trump campaign, also revealed that actors within the Russian government were filling the platform with artificial accounts or “bots” used to spread disinformation or encourage angry interactions between users in a broad attempt to generate chaos before Election Day. The following year, Zuckerberg appeared before a congressional committee where he apologized for scant internal controls of disinformation and fake accounts, as well as the data breach of third-party Cambridge Analytica, promising to institute a series of reforms that resulted in company arbiters deciding what news or opinions could be shared.

At the time, Facebook faced intense “political pressure” to reform its oversight procedures, Kaplan explained on Fox. “We went to independent, third-party fact-checkers,” Kaplan said. “It has become clear there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because, basically, they get to fact-check whatever they see on the platform.” That process will be “ending completely,” he went on, saying that a “community notes” section similar to the on on X will be implemented instead.

“Instead of going to some so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to something that they’ve read,” Kaplan explained, noting that if a note gets support from “the broadest cross-section of users,” that note can be attached to the content for others to see. “We think that’s a much better approach rather than relying on so-called experts who bring their own biases into the program,” Kaplan said.

Content moderation will also change, especially if company executives believe the current landscape has become “too restrictive” and is “not allowing enough discourse around sensitive topics like immigration, trans issues and gender.”

“We want to make sure that discourse can happen freely on the platform without fear of censorship,” Kaplan told Fox News Digital. “We have the power to change the rules and make them more supportive of free expression. And we’re not just changing the rules, we are actually changing how we enforce the rules.” Automated systems, which Facebook has used in the past, make “too many mistakes” and remove content “that doesn’t even violate our standards,” he added. Certain content about terrorism, human trafficking, and illegal drugs will continue to be moderated.

The onset of a second Trump administration provides Facebook with a “real opportunity” to become a haven for free speech, Kaplan said. “We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression,” Kaplan said, referring to the incoming Trump administration. “It gets us back to the values that Mark founded the company on.”