Meta is scrapping its third party fact-checking service in the US after nine years and replacing it with a “community notes” system, similar to the one used by X.

It says it will help promote free expression and stop harmless content from getting taking down.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg suggested in an online video that recent events including Donald Trump’s victory in the US election helped inform the change.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech,” he said,.

Users on sites such as Facebook and Instagram will be able to highlight posts that could be misleading and need more context – instead of leaving it to outside organisations and experts.

“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how… A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor,” Meta said.

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It said the current system was “making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression”.

“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail’, and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” said the company.

It means fact-checked content will no longer be demoted and instead there will be a label notifying users there’s additional information – with this written and rated by users.

Agreement between people with a range of perspectives will be a fundamental part of the system to help prevent biased ratings, according to a statement.

Currently, there are full-screen warnings that must be clicked through before a fact-checked post can even be seen.

Meta said the third party system was the “best and most reasonable choice” in 2016, but things had changed.

It said community notes works well on X and allows “people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see”.

Community notes will be rolled out in the US over the next few months and the model will be improved during the rest of the year.

UFC boss White joins Meta board

On Monday, Meta announced UFC boss Dana White had joined its board of directors.

Mr Zuckerberg said White was joining alongside car industry tycoon and Ferrari chairman John Elkann and British tech investor Charlie Songhurst.

White is known for being friends with Donald Trump, and the pair are often seen ringside at the UFC’s mixed martial arts events.

He’s also spoken several times at Republican conventions events and whipped up the crowd during a Trump rally during the last election campaign.

The appointment could prove helpful for Meta’s relations with the incoming president.

Mr Trump and Meta had strained relations after the 2020 election, with Mr Trump accusing the company of suppressing content that would have hurt Joe Biden.

Donald Trump was also banned from Facebook after the US Capitol riots 2021 – but the decision was reversed a year later.

In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg – who also practises mixed martial arts – said White has built the UFC “into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world”.

“I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand,” he added.

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White said he had never been interested in joining a board of directors until he got the call from Meta.

“I am very excited to join this incredible team and to learn more about this business from the inside,” said the UFC mogul. “There is nothing I love more than building brands, and I look forward to helping take Meta to the next level.”

White’s appointment comes a few days after it was revealed former Republican White House deputy chief of staff Joel Kaplan would take over from Nick Clegg as Meta’s president of global affairs.

That move was also seen by many as trying to position the company favourably for the next presidency.

The first indication of Mark Zuckerberg’s capitulation to the MAGA movement came when he went to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for Thanksgiving in December.

Following which Meta, worth $1.5tn, made a decidedly modest $1m contribution to president-elect Trump’s inaugural fund.

But it seems geeks bearing gifts wouldn’t be enough to placate a president-elect who once threatened to jail the man he called “Zuckerschmuck,” whom he accused of conspiring against him in the 2020 election.

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And Meta’s latest move to shift content moderation on its platforms – Facebook, Instagram and Threads – away from third-party fact-checking, might not be its final move to build bridges with the incoming administration.

Why the change of tune? The obvious answer is that Mark Zuckerberg is, first and foremost, a businessman.

The days of big tech companies effectively doing what they like without political interference are coming to an end.

This year Meta faces an antitrust trial and there are moves to revise legislation that effectively protects social media firms from liability for the content they publish.

They, and Silicon Valley’s other tech titans, will need all the friends they can get in Washington.

Little wonder Amazon and Open AI also sent the president-elect $1m each in December.

But there may be a personal aspect to it as well.

Well before Mr Trump’s victory, Mark Zuckerberg had already ditched the grey hoodie for a gold chain and designer clothes.

He and his wife Dr Priscilla Chan, whose philanthropic organisations initially worked to support undocumented migrants, improve access to healthcare and reduce incarceration rates, have since reined in nearly all such activities that could be interpreted as politically partisan.

Either exhausted by or disillusioned with US politics, or – critics might say, rich enough not to care – Mr Zuckerberg was already sitting on the fence.

Changing its plans for content moderation in the US may help Meta’s fortunes there, but it could have the opposite effect in Europe.

The EU Digital Services Act requires companies to do more to combat disinformation and harmful content.

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Meta is already facing multiple investigations in the EU and the UK’s Online Safety Act has similar provisions as well.

This explains why Meta is only ending third-party fact-checking on its content in the US, not elsewhere.

A fact that underscores, perhaps more than anything, Mr Zuckerberg’s shift from his once lofty ideals to pragmatism and the threat even companies as powerful as Meta see from the incoming president.

President-elect Donald Trump has asked a New York court to throw out his hush money conviction before Friday’s scheduled sentencing.

It has been set for 10 January, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration.

Trump was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, relating to an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of his first campaign in 2016.

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Trump’s spokesperson has called the case “lawless” and a “witch hunt”.

Lawyers for the 78-year-old have previously pushed to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds, due to his impending return to the White House.

Their request to a state appeals court represents a last-ditch effort by Trump to block a lower court ruling on Monday to proceed with the sentencing.

In the ruling Judge Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump’s lawyers to delay the sentencing while they appealed two of his previous rulings upholding the Manhattan jury’s guilty verdict on 34 felony counts of falsifying records in May.

Scheduling Trump’s sentencing for Friday, Judge Merchan said he was not inclined to send Trump to jail.

He said a sentence of unconditional discharge, which essentially puts a judgment of guilt on his record without a fine or probation, would be the most practical approach ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

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On Monday, Trump’s lawyers cited both presidential immunity and the demands of the impending inauguration, saying Judge Merchan’s intention not to penalise the president-elect was “of no moment”.

“Presidential immunity violations cannot be ignored in favour of a rushed pre-inauguration sentencing,” the lawyers said in a court filing.

Trump has always denied a sexual encounter with Daniels, but was convicted of falsifying business records over a $130,000 (£102,000) payment to allegedly keep her from publicising claims in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

The case made Trump the first US president to be charged with and convicted of a crime.

His lawyers have made two unsuccessful attempts to have the case dismissed, which they now say they plan to appeal.