By Antonia Carter
When Mark Zuckerberg’s video announcement ‘More Speech and Fewer Mistakes’ was recently posted on Meta’s website, it represented a major policy shift that for Meta would be removing fact-checking features in the US. The fact-checking would be replaced with community notes which mirrors the social media X where users comment on the validity posts. Meta is a company that owns many popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Whatsapp and all will be applying this fact-checking policy shift to Facebook and Instagram.
The decision made by Meta bears similarities to the changes that Elon Musk made to Twitter, after buying the platform in October 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) for $44 billion. And after acquiring the platform, Musk fired 70% – 80% of Twitter’s workforce and shut down its trust and safety team as a push to restore ‘free speech’ on the platform.
These changes included relaxed policies regarding COVID-19 and hate speech, unbanning formerly banned users, the most famous user being Donald Trump Twitter. Elon Musk’s vision of free speech promoted open discussion but it also led to increased amounts of hate speech.
Some may argue that Meta’s change in policy is beneficial as many unregulated websites, such as Wikileaks, founded by Julian Assange in 2006, aim to call out governments by obtaining classified documents and publishing them for the public viewing. Wikileaks, according to NBC News, ‘was established to obtain and disseminate classified documents and data sets from anonymous sources and leakers’. It has proven successful in highlighting corruption and lies to the public. Another platform that also works on the self-regulated fact checking notion is Wikipedia. The platform allows people to update and publish information on its platform.
However others may argue that Meta’s change in policy is allowing the spread of false information. An example of this is Twitter’s ban on Trump in January 2021 before the United States Capitol Attack which happened on January 6th 2021. According to Twitter, Trump was ‘permanently suspended due to risk of further incitement of violence’, which suggests he stirred up violence. False information can also be seen to influence people’s decision through intentionally misinforming them so they carry out acts that favour a certain outcome that benefits certain groups of people. Arguably, the Brexit campaign was also based on false truths.
In summary, it can be seen that having freedom of speech is generally a good thing however when truth becomes fiction and mistruths are spread then people can be influenced to make decisions that they wouldn’t have made otherwise. With the rise of AI and being able to generate false videos, images and texts it’s difficult to separate truth from fiction in 2025. All of this misinformation can allow people to make their own truths. Going forward, people should remain vigilant about the accuracy and biases of the media they consume. Relying on multiple credible sources to compare information is essential for discerning the truth in a time where misinformation is rampant.