O n Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media behemoth will end its third party fact-checking program in the U.S. and instead adopt a crowd-sourced “community notes” program. The inspiration for such a decision? Elon Musk’s X.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said the social media company is ending its fact-checking program and replacing it with a community-driven system similar to that of Elon Musk's X.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg says "community notes" will now moderate content. That already happens on Elon Musk's X. Here's how they work — and don't.

It’s also the latest indication that Zuckerberg is trying to buddy up to incoming president Donald Trump, and is in that respect becoming more like Trump’s current right-hand man in tech: Elon Musk.

The news came after Mark Zuckerberg’s company faced critics who said “fact-checkers” suppressed free speech and censored information.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the company would be scrapping its fact-checking program, moving its moderation teams to Texas, and making Facebook more like Elon Musk’s X. Zuckerberg’s video was criticized by a lot of pundits as a shameless capitulation to the incoming Trump Administration.

Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that Facebook will roll back its fact-checking program. Newsweek's live blog is closed.

Meta announced its new policy, stating that getting varied voices on the platform brings out the good, the bad, and the ugly in free speech; nonetheless, the restrictions on topics hitherto banned are now being lifted, “allowing more speech.”

Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, co-leader Alice Weidel gave an interview with Elon Musk on Thursday live on X. She discussed everything from “woke mind virus” censorship to how stumped she was on the conflict in the Middle East. Her most eyebrow-raising assertion though was that Hitler was a Communist.

He has leveraged his political ambiguity to strengthen Meta, with consequences for the future of Silicon Valley and for the truth.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced sweeping changes to the company's content moderation strategy, signaling a shift toward a more MAGA-friendly approach. It's a marked change from when the CEO banned President-elect Donald Trump from his platforms four years ago.