By Katie Paul, Supantha Mukherjee, Deborah Mary Sophia

(Reuters) -Social media company Meta Platforms on Tuesday scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity, bowing to criticism from conservatives as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office for a second time.

The move is Meta’s biggest overhaul of its approach to managing political content on its services in recent memory and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signaling a desire to mend fences with the incoming administration.

The changes will affect Facebook, Instagram and Threads, three of the world’s biggest social media platforms with more than 3 billion users globally.

Last week, Meta elevated Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as global affairs head and on Monday announced it had elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, to its board.

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in a video. 

He acknowledged the role of the recent U.S. elections in his thinking, saying they “feel like a cultural tipping point, towards once again prioritizing speech.”

When asked about the changes at a press conference, Trump welcomed them. “They have come a long way – Meta. The man (Zuckerberg) was very impressive,” he said.

Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was responding to his threats, which have included a pledge to imprison the CEO, Trump said “probably.”

In place of a formal fact-checking program to address dubious claims posted on Meta’s platforms, Zuckerberg instead plans to implement a system of “community notes” similar to that used on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X.

Meta also will stop proactively scanning for hate speech and other types of rule-breaking, reviewing such posts only in response to user reports, Zuckerberg said. It will focus its automated systems on removing “high-severity violations” like terrorism, child exploitation, scams and drugs.

The company will move teams overseeing the writing and review of content policies out of California to Texas and other U.S. locations, he added.

Meta has been working on the shift away from fact-checking for more than a year, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.

It has not shared relocation plans with employees, however, prompting confused posts on the app Blind, which provides a space for employees to share information anonymously.

Most of Meta’s U.S. content moderation is already performed outside California, another source told Reuters.

Kaplan, who appeared on the “Fox & Friends” program on Tuesday morning to address the changes, offered Meta employees only a summary of his public statements in a post on the company’s internal forum Workplace, which was seen by Reuters.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on planning for the changes or say which specific teams would be leaving California. The spokesperson also declined to cite examples of mistakes or bias on the part of fact-checkers.

CAUGHT BY SURPRISE

The demise of the fact-checking program, started in 2016, caught partner organizations by surprise. 

“We’ve learned the news as everyone has today. It’s a hard hit for the fact-checking community and journalism. We’re assessing the situation,” AFP said in a statement provided to Reuters.

The head of the International Fact-Checking Network, Angie Drobnic Holan, challenged Zuckerberg’s characterization of its members as biased or censorious.

“Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracies,” she said in a statement.

Kristin Roberts, Gannett Media’s chief content officer, said “truth and facts serve everyone — not the right or the left — and that’s what we will continue to deliver.”

Other partners did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while Reuters declined to comment. Meta’s independent Oversight Board welcomed the move.

Zuckerberg in recent months has expressed regret over certain content moderation actions on topics including COVID-19. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, in a departure from its past practice. 

“This is a major step back for content moderation at a time when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever,” said Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience.

“This move seems more about political appeasement than smart policy.”

For now, Meta is planning the changes only for the U.S. market, with no immediate plans to end its fact-checking program in places like the European Union which take a more active approach to regulation of tech companies, a spokesperson said.

Musk’s X is already under European Commission investigation over issues including the “Community Notes” system.

The Commission began its probe in December 2023, several months after X launched the feature. A Commission spokesperson said it had taken note of Meta’s announcement and was continuing to monitor the company’s compliance in the EU.

The EU’s Digital Services Act, which came into force in 2023, requires very large online platforms like X and Facebook to tackle illegal content and risks to public security.

Any firm found in breach faces a fine worth up to 6% of its global revenue. 

Meta said it would start phasing in Community Notes in the U.S. over the next couple of months and improve the model over the year. 

(Reporting by Katie Paul in New York, Deborah Sophia and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru, and Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, additional reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Tasim Zahid, Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis)

---