Meta on Tuesday announced it will eliminate its third-party fact-checking program to “restore free expression” and move to a “Community Notes” model, similar to the system that exists on Elon Musk‘s platform X.
The company said Community Notes will be written and rated by contributing users to provide more context to posts across its platforms, and the feature will roll out in the U.S. over the next couple of months. The announcement marks Meta’s latest attempt to smooth over relations with Republican President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes, and too much censorship,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday in a video announcement. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech, so we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our polices and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Zuckerberg said the third-party fact-checkers have been “too politically biased” and have “destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
Meta said it will simplify its content policies by removing restrictions on subjects like immigration and gender and implement a new approach to policy enforcement that will focus on illegal and high-severity violations. The company is moving its trust and safety and content moderation teams from California, a historically Democratic state, to Texas, a historically Republican state.
“We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” Zuckerberg said.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan addressed Meta’s announcement in an interview Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” stating, “We should have an economy where the decisions of a single company or a single executive are not having extraordinary impact on speech online.”
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s head of global policy, appeared Tuesday on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” and said Meta thinks the Community Notes system on Musk’s platform X has been working “really well.” Musk, who has been a vocal advocate for Trump online and donated millions of dollars to his campaign, has been in close contact with the president-elect since the election.
Last week, Meta said that Kaplan would become the company’s top policy officer, succeeding Nick Clegg, who was a former British deputy prime minister and a leader of Britain’s centrist Liberal Democrats party.
Kaplan, who has held several policy-related positions at Meta since joining the company in 2011 when it was still named Facebook, is well known within the Republican Party. He was a White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush and also once worked as a law clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In December, Kaplan revealed in a Facebook post that he joined Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump during their recent visit at the New York Stock Exchange.
“We want to make it so that, bottom line, if you can say it on TV, you say it on the floor of Congress, you certainly ought to be able to say it on Facebook and Instagram without fear of censorship,” Kaplan said Tuesday.
Meta’s Oversight Board, which provides an independent check of the company’s content moderation, lauded the company’s changes on Tuesday.
“The Oversight Board welcomes the news that Meta will revise its approach to fact-checking, with the goal of finding a scalable solution to enhance trust, free speech and user voice on its platforms,” the board told CNBC in a statement, adding that “specifically in the United States, rightly or wrongly, Meta’s previous approach has been perceived as politically biased by many of its users.”
Prominent Republican lawmakers have previously criticized Meta and other technology companies for allegations regarding the censorship of conservative voices on their respective platforms. For instance, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs in 2023 as part of a probe to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”
Zuckerberg has had a rocky relationship with Trump over the years, with the president-elect more recently describing Facebook as an “enemy of the people” in a March interview with CNBC. Meta levied a two-year suspension on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021 shortly after the company determined that the former president’s actions following the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., could potentially incite more violence.
In 2023, Trump was able to regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts, but he also faced some restrictions and potential penalties if he were to violate the company’s community guidelines. Meta eventually removed Trump’s account-related restrictions in July during the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
The company has taken additional steps to appease the incoming administration in recent months. On Monday, Meta announced Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a longtime friend of Trump, is joining its board.
Following Trump’s presidential victory in November, Zuckerberg joined a number of other big technology executives who visited the president-elect at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and in December, Meta confirmed a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta shares hit a record high on Monday, underscoring investor interest in the company’s new AI superintelligence group.
The company’s shares reached $747.90 during midday trading, topping Meta’s previous stock market record in February when it began laying off the 5% of its workforce that it deemed “low performers.”
Meta joins Microsoft and Nvidia among tech megacaps that have reached new highs of late, all closing at records Monday. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla remain below their all-time highs reached late last year or early this year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring blitz amid fierce competition with rivals such as OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Earlier in June, Meta said it would hire Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and some of his colleagues as part of a $14.3 billion investment into the executive’s data labeling and annotation startup.
The social media company also hired Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, the chief of Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup with a valuation of $32 billion, CNBC reported on June 19. Meta’s attempts to buy Safe Superintelligence were rebuffed by the startup’s founder and AI expert Ilya Sutskever, the report noted.
Wang and Friedman are the leaders of Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs, tasked with overseeing the company’s artificial intelligence foundation models, projects and research, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The term superintelligence refers to technology that exceeds human capability.
Bloomberg News first reported about the new superintelligence unit.
Meta has also snatched AI researchers from OpenAI. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said during a podcast that Meta was offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, spoke about the social media company’s AI hiring spree during a June 20 interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime,” saying that the talent market is “really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive.”
An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.
Roselle Chen | Reuters
Joby Aviation stock soared about 12% as the flying air taxi maker got closer to launching a service in the United Arab Emirates.
The electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, company said Monday that it delivered its first aircraft to the UAE and has completed piloted flight tests as it readies for a 2026 launch in the region.
“Our flights and operational footprint in Dubai are a monumental step toward weaving air taxi services into the fabric of daily life worldwide,” said founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt in a release. He called the Middle East nation a “launchpad for a global revolution in how we move.”
Joby’s planned launch in the UAE was announced in February 2024 as part of an agreement with Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority. The deal included exclusive rights to conduct air taxi service in Dubai for six years.
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As part of the project, Joby said in November that it began building one vertiport at Dubai International Airport, with three additional locations slated for Palm Jumeirah and Dubai’s downtown and marina. Joby also announced an air taxi agreement with three Abu Dhabi government departments in 2024.
The California-based company has made other expansion moves in the Middle East. Shares jumped earlier this month after Saudi Arabian firm Abdul Latif Jameel announced a roughly $1 billion investment for up to 300 eVTOLs. The firm participated in Joby’s Series C funding round.
Joby shares have surged more than 32% this year, swelling its market capitalization to over $9 billion.
Demand for air taxis, which take off and land similar to helicopters, has gained momentum in recent years. The service faces regulatory and safety hurdles but has been lauded for its ability to cut traffic congestion and slash emissions.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that included a pilot program for testing electric air taxis.
Oracle CEO Safra Catz speaks at the FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2025.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Oracle shares jumped more than 5% after a recent filing showed a cloud deal that would add over $30 billion annually.
CEO Safra Catz is slated to share the deal news at a company meeting Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The revenues are expected to start hitting in the 2028 fiscal year.
“Oracle is off to a strong start in FY26,” Catz is expected to say, according to the filing. “Our MultiCloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%, and we signed multiple large cloud services agreements including one that is expected to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue starting in FY28.”
The deals revealed Monday by Catz will not affect the company’s 2026 guidance, according to the filing.