Is California too liberal to moderate Facebook? Meta moves moderation team to Texas
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META SHUTS DOWN ITS FACT-CHECKING, WILL MOVE ITS MODERATION TEAM OUT OF CALIFORNIA
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will no longer fact check posts on its platforms, switching to a “community notes” program similar to what is done on the platform X.
Users of that platform post corrections or clarifications as a note appended to the original post, which other users can then vote up or down.
The social media giant, whose founder billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to make nice with the incoming Donald Trump presidential administration, isn’t stopping there.
It’s also shipping its “trust and safety” moderation team out of its liberal Bay Area headquarters and sending it to conservative Texas, as well as other unspecified states.
In an Instagram post, Zuckerberg said this move “will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.”
“Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been. So, we’re going to continue to focus these systems on tackling illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams,” Meta executive Joel Kaplan wrote in a post Tuesday. “For less severe policy violations, we’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take any action.”
This comes on the heels of Meta’s decision to add Trump friend and UFC President Dana White to the company’s board of directors, yet another tie to the incoming administration.
While the move was hailed by those on the right as a blow against censorship, including The Blaze, Newsmax and Breitbart, critics on the left slammed the decision.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, posted on Bluesky that “Meta is now X. Zuck is now Elon (Musk).”
“Zuck says online hate & disinformation are ‘free speech’ because that’s the ‘cultural tipping point’ we’re at,” Wiener wrote.
The decision also was criticizes in a statement by Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer, who said Zuckerberg’s “playbook is as clear as day.”
“Protect Meta’s bottom line and cozy up to political leaders while leaving users to fend for themselves. This should be a wake-up call for all parents to monitor their feeds and the feeds of their children closely, and to assess whether Meta products are an appropriate environment for their children,” Steyer said.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Six years ago, I was sworn in as Governor of California, and from day one, I have been dedicated to delivering results for all Californians. Let me be clear — I will keep fighting to safeguard our state’s values and interests in the years ahead.”
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom, via Bluesky.
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