Mark Zuckerberg accused of ‘copying’ Elon Musk as Meta ditches fact-checkers for community notes

In yet even moreElon Musk news (yes, we’re sick of him too), Facebook co-founder and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has been hit with claims he’s “trying to out-Musk” the Twitter/X owner by doing away with fact-checkers and replacing them with a community notes feature.

Over on Twitter/X, Community Notes allow anonymous individuals to ‘add context’ to posts on the platform which “may be misleading”, with other users able to vote on whether the note should be displayed to users more broadly.

Musk has long praised the feature, once describing it as “the best source of truth on the internet by far”.

And now Zuckerberg is looking into the tool’s potential, confirming on Tuesday that Meta will replace its fact-checkers with a Community Notes system – beginning in the US in the first instance.

In a video shared to his social media platforms, the billionaire said it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram”.

He explained: “After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the US.”

This was just one of a number of decisions announced by the tech entrepreneur, with others including simplifying Meta’s content policies; “bringing back civic [local, non-political] content” and moving its trust, safety and content moderation teams from California to Texas where “there’s less concern about the bias of our teams”.

Zuckerberg also said that the company’s content filters would be refined to focus more on illegal content and “high severity violations”, leaving it to users to report “lower severity violations” before the platform steps in.

He continued: “By dialling them back, we’re going to dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms. We’re also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content.

“The reality is that this is a trade-off; it means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.

And to top it off, in a move which also won’t help dismiss accusations he’s trying to be like Musk (given the Twitter/X owner is a close ally of Donald Trump and is set to be a part of his next administration), Zuckerberg said Meta will be working with incoming US president to “push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.

He even took aim at Biden’s government – despite all the talk about avoiding claims of bias – by stating it has been “difficult over the past four years” when “the US government has pushed for censorship”.

“By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.

“The bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it’s time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people a voice,” he said.

Meta’s decision on fact-checkers reflects comments and recommendations made previously by its independent Oversight Board, which in a ruling relating to an altered video of US president Joe Biden in February 2024 said it was “concerned” about the company’s demotion of content rated ‘false’ or ‘altered’ by third-party fact-checkers without informing the users or providing a way for them to appeal the decision.

“Demoting content has significant negative impacts on freedom of expression. Meta should examine these policies to ensure that they clearly define why and when content is demoted, and provide users with access to an effective remedy,” it said.

It also wrote: “Fact-checking, however, is dependent on the capacity of third-party fact-checkers, which is likely to be asymmetrical across languages and markets, and has no guarantee of genuine expertise or objectivity.”

Unsurprisingly, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has expressed her delight at Meta’s decision, branding it a “smart move” by Zuckerberg:

Then there’s those who have joked about the parallels between Musk and Zuck on the issue:

Others, meanwhile, have commented on Zuckerberg’s willingness to work with Trump and the wider political context:

Yet for all the similarities and rivalry between the two tech leaders, they still haven’t gotten around to having a cage fight.

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