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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will reduce the amount of censorship on its social media websites, Facebook and Instagram. In addition, it is replacing its fact-checkers with a community notes system similar to X (formerly Twitter).
“We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement. We are getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, said in a blog post on the Meta website.
Affect on Communities
Following the announcement of these changes, people were quick to express their concerns about how harmful they would be to the LGBTQ+ community and people of different ethnicities. These changes would increase outward negativity towards these groups with little to no repercussions. Meta also removed the transgender and nonbinary chat themes in the built-in messenger on Instagram and Facebook.
“We are going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted to his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Political Content
Meta is looking to incorporate a personalized approach to political content. They previously reduced the amount of political content a user would see in 2021 after receiving feedback. They will start treating political content like any other content a user would see. Political content will be recommended more to users who view and like posts relating to it.
“These changes are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression that Mark Zuckerberg set out in his Georgetown speech. That means being vigilant about the impact our policies and systems are having on people’s ability to make their voices heard, and having the humility to change our approach when we know we’re getting things wrong,” Kaplan said in the blog post.
