Meta’s Seismic Shift

The year is just a week old and already things are getting shaken up. Meta Platforms’ announcement on Tuesday that it was eliminating its fact-checking program in favor of an X-like community notes feature is a seismic event for social media. No longer will Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, try to pretend it has a monopoly on truth. Instead, Meta will leave it to members of the public to fact-check each other. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram video explaining the policy is worth watching.)

The implications are far-reaching. For one thing, it augurs a confrontation between Meta and the European Commission, given that European regulators are fervent advocates of content moderation (and have new powers to enforce their policies, thanks to Europe’s new Digital Services Act). Donald Trump, of course, is happy to take on Europe when he feels U.S. interests are at stake. Zuckerberg made clear in his Instagram post that Meta will work with Trump on pushing back on foreign governments that pressure the company “to censor.”