Mr. Trump has long railed against Mr. Zuckerberg, claiming the fact-checking feature treated posts by conservative users unfairly.
[Another solution would be to stop lying so much.]
The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”
Here’s what to know:
- A trade-off: Mr. Zuckerberg conceded that there would be more “bad stuff” on the platform as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
- Advance notice: Meta executives recently gave a heads-up to Trump officials about the change in policy, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity. The fact-checking announcement coincided with an appearance by Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, on “Fox & Friends,” a favorite show of President-elect Donald J. Trump. Mr. Kaplan told the hosts of the morning show popular with conservatives that there was “too much political bias” in the fact-checking program.
- Currying favor: Ever since Mr. Trump’s victory in November, few big companies have worked as overtly to curry favor with the president-elect. In a series of announcements during the presidential transition period, Meta has sharply shifted its strategy in response to what Mr. Zuckerberg called a “cultural tipping point” marked by the election.
- Inspired by X: Mr. Zuckerberg seems to be taking a page from Mr. Trump’s favorite tech mogul, Elon Musk. Mr. Musk has relied on Community Notes to flag misleading posts on X. Since taking over the social network, Mr. Musk, a major Trump donor, has increasingly positioned X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency.
- Conservatives cheer: Meta’s move on Tuesday morning elated conservative allies of Mr. Trump, many of whom have disliked Meta’s practice of adding disclaimers or warnings to questionable or false posts. Mr. Trump has long railed against Mr. Zuckerberg, claiming the fact-checking feature treated posts by conservative users unfairly.
- Eased restrictions: Among the changes announced on Tuesday are the removal of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity that Mr. Zuckerberg said were “out of touch with mainstream discourse.” The company’s trust and safety and content moderation teams will be moved away from California, with the U.S. content review shifting to Texas, in a move that would “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” Mr. Zuckerberg added.
[Because Texans have a higher tolerance for bullshit?]
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a videothat the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
Connect the Dots 101 
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