In a positive moment on social media on Tuesday, January 7, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk praised META CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg after he revealed that META properties including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads would leave behind third-party fact-checking and instead embrace an X-style community notes model.
It was to that news that Elon responded on X and seemed to praise Zuckerberg. Posting a picture of a headline claiming, “Facebook dumps fact-checkers in attempt to ‘restore’ free speech” and, as a subtitle, “Mark Zuckerberg says moderators ‘too politically biased’ as he pledges a system similar to X,” Elon said, “This is cool.”
Similarly, current X CEO Linda Yaccarino, responding to news about Zuckerberg’s move that was posted on X by Fox News Channel’s X account, wrote, “COMMUNITY NOTES FTW!!! 
Fact-checking and moderation doesn’t belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It’s a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many.”
Continuing, Yaccarino added that the Community Notes model has proven successful in keeping free speech alive online, saying, “And as we’ve seen on X since @CommunityNotes debuted, it’s profoundly successful while keeping freedom of speech sacred. It’s a smart move by Zuck and something I expect other platforms will follow now that X has shown how powerful it is. Bravo!”
Zuckerberg announced the change to how META does fact-checking in a video posted online. In it, he said, “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.” He continued, “So over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system.”
Further, in that same video, Zuckerberg announced that META would roll back many of its censorship policies regarding controversial subjects, saying that the company would “simplify [its] content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Explaining why shortly afterward, he said, “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas.” He then added, “And it’s gone too far. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”
"*" indicates required fields
That came after Zuckerberg, introducing the matter, noted, “Hey, everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. But a lot has happened over the last several years. There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.”
Further, he noted that META does want to shut down illegal content, saying, “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, Child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video