Zuckerberg’s surprising announcement: “Time to return to our roots on freedom of expression”

Mark Zuckerberg continues to build bridges with Donald Trump. Just a few days ago, Meta said goodbye to Nick Clegg as head of global affairs for the company, choosing as his successor Joel Kaplanan executive linked to the Republicans. Now, just weeks before Trump returns to the Oval Office, the Menlo Park company announces that Dana White, John Elkann y Charlie Songhurst They will become part of the company’s board of directors.

Dana Whitebest known for being the president and CEO of the UFC (global mixed martial arts organization), has publicly supported Donald Trump in the past, and his addition to Meta’s board of directors appears to be part of Zuckerberg’s efforts to repair his relationship with the next president of the United States.

Zuckerberg highlighted that “Dana, John and Charlie will bring a wealth of experience and perspective that will help us address the enormous opportunities ahead with AI, wearables and the future of human connection.”

In addition, the founder of Facebook has announced new developments in the operation of content moderation on platforms such as Instagram, Threads and Facebook. To reveal the changes to which these social networks will be subjected, Zuckerberg published a video where he highlights “It’s time to return to our roots around free expression”.

The publication alleges that they will opt to replace ‘fact checkers’ with ‘Community Notes’, as already happens in the social networkled by Elon Musk. Through this decision, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram would be simplifying their policies and would focus on reducing errors when censoring content.

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Mark Zuckerberg and the next step of Meta

The company highlighted that Meta platforms They are designed to be places where people can express themselves freely.. “In recent years we have developed increasingly complex systems to manage content on our platforms, partly in response to social and political pressure to moderate content,” but although these efforts have been well-intentioned, in many cases they end up “hindering the free expression we set out to allow.”

In this way, the company announces the end of the third-party data verification program and gives way to ‘Community Notes’ in the United States. From Meta they highlight that this approach has worked in X, where the community is “empowered to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people from a wide range of perspectives decide what kind of context is useful for other users to see.”

In the coming months, Meta Community Notes will arrive in the United States, maintaining constant improvement throughout the year. “As we transition, we will remove our fact-checking control, stop demoting verified content, and instead of overlaying full-screen interstitial warnings, which you must click before you can view the post, we will use a tag much less intrusive that indicates that there is additional information for those who wish to see it.