Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday (Jan 7) announced that the company will be making some changes to the moderation policies and practices, citing its aim to embrace free speech. 

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The company will be altering the way posts, videos, and other content are moderated online. It will be getting rid of fact-checkers and will replace them with user-generated "Community notes", which is similar to Elon Musk's X. 

This comes just weeks ahead of Donald Trump takes office. US President-elect Trump and other Republicans have been slamming Meta CEO for what they view as censorship of right-wing voices. 

Also read: Meta denies taking down its AI-powered chatbots from Instagram and Facebook

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“Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg said in a video on Tuesday. 

“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far," he added. 

However, he acknowledged a "tradeoff" in the new policy, noting more harmful content will appear on the platform as a result of the content moderation changes.

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Also read: After Meta, Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund

He further pointed to the election as a major influence on the company's decision and criticised "governments and legacy media" for allegedly pushing "to censor more and more."

"The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech," he said.

Earlier today, Meta’s newly appointed Chief of Global Affairs Joel Kaplan told Fox that the company's partnerships with third-party fact-checkers were “well-intentioned at the outset but there’s just been too much political bias in what they choose to fact check and how.”

Also read: Meta restores global outages after WhatsApp, Instagram go down, ChatGPT goes offline

Seeking better relations with Trump

This comes as Zuckerberg seeks to better relations with Trump before he takes office. 

A day earlier, Meta announced Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to join its board, along with two other new directors. 

Moreover, the company also said that it will donate USD 1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and that Zuckerberg wants to take an “active role” in tech policy discussions.

(With inputs from agencies)