This photo illustration created on January 7, 2025, in Washington, DC, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta employees took to their internal forum on Tuesday, criticizing the company’s decision to end third-party fact-checking on its services two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Company employees voiced their concern after Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer and former White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, announced the content policy changes on Workplace, the in-house communications tool.
“We’re optimistic that these changes help us return to that fundamental commitment to free expression,” Kaplan wrote in the post, which was reviewed by CNBC.
The content policy announcement follows a string of decisions that appear targeted to appease the incoming administration. On Monday, Meta added new members to its board, including UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime friend of Trump, and the company confirmed last month that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Among the latest changes, Kaplan announced that Meta will scrap its fact-checking program and shift to a user-generated system like X’s Community Notes. Kaplan, who took over his new role last week, also said that Meta will lift restrictions on certain topics and focus its enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations while giving users “a more personalized approach to political content.”
One worker wrote they were “extremely concerned” about the decision, saying it appears Meta is “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.”
Another employee commented that by “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take.” Other comments expressed concern about the impact the policy change could have on the discourse around topics like immigration, gender identity and gender, which, according to one employee, could result in an “influx of racist and transphobic content.”
A separate employee said they were scared that “we’re entering into really dangerous territory by paving the way for the further spread of misinformation.”
The changes weren’t universally criticized, as some Meta workers congratulated the company’s decision to end third-party fact checking. One wrote that X’s Community Notes feature has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”
Another employee commented that the company should “provide an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” that necessitated the creation of a third-party fact-checking program and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of fall out from happening again.
As part of the company’s massive layoffs in 2023, Meta also scrapped an internal fact-checking project, CNBC reported. That project would have let third-party fact checkers like the Associated Press and Reuters, in addition to credible experts, comment on flagged articles in order to verify the content.
Although Meta announced the end of its fact-checking program on Tuesday, the company had already been pulling it back. In September, a spokesperson for the AP told CNBC that the news agency’s “fact-checking agreement with Meta ended back in January” 2024.
Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship gestures as he speaks during a rally for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., Oct. 27, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
After the announcement of White’s addition to the board on Monday, employees also posted criticism, questions and jokes on Workplace, according to posts reviewed by CNBC.
White, who has led UFC since 2001, became embroiled in controversy in 2023 after a video published by TMZ showed him slapping his wife at a New Year’s Eve party in Mexico. White issued a public apology, and his wife, Anne White, issued a statement to TMZ, calling it an isolated incident.
Commenters on Workplace made jokes asking whether performance reviews would now involve mixed martial arts style fights.
In addition to White, John Elkann, the CEO of Italian auto holding company Exor, was named to Meta’s board.
Some employees asked what value autos and entertainment executives could bring to Meta, and whether White’s addition reflects the company’s values. One post suggested the new board appointments would help with political alliances that could be valuable but could also change the company culture in unintended or unwanted ways.
Comments in Workplace alluding to White’s personal history were flagged and removed from the discussion, according to posts from the internal app read by CNBC.
An employee who said he was with Meta’s Internal Community Relations team, posted a reminder to Workplace about the company’s “community engagement expectations” policy, or CEE, for using the platform.
“Multiple comments have been flagged by the community for review,” the employee posted. “It’s important that we maintain a respectful work environment where people can do their best work.”
The internal community relations team member added that “insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE.”
Several workers responded to that note saying that even respectful posts, if critical, had been removed, amounting to a corporate form of censorship.
One worker said that because critical comments were being removed, the person wanted to voice support for “women and all voices.”
Meta declined to comment.
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Elon Musk, during a news conference with President Donald Trump, inside the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on May 30, 2025.
Tom Brenner | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Tesla shares fell 6% in premarket trading on Thursday after the company reported a second straight quarter of declining automotive sales.
Elon Musk’s electric carmaker reported a top and bottom line miss on second-quarter results, noting that automotive revenue fell 16% year-on-year to $16.7 billion.
On an earnings call, Musk said Tesla “probably could have a few rough quarters” ahead as a result of the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits.
“I am not saying that we will, but we could,” Musk said.
Tesla has been facing rising competition in key markets like China and Europe, especially from lower costs Chinese electric vehicle players.
Tesla shares have been hammered this year with the stock down nearly 18% to date, not including the Thursday premarket move.
Along with Tesla’s core auto business coming under pressure, Musk’s own political activity has been in focus.
The tech billionaire played a key role at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, under President Donald Trump‘s administration and has endorsed Germany’s extreme anti-immigrant AfD party. In recent months, the two former allies have clashed over the president’s spending bill. Musk has since said he is forming his own political party.
Some investors have urged the billionaire to step away from politics, for fear that his involvement is hurting Tesla’s brand and sales.
Tesla investors have been eagerly waiting for the company to release a cheaper model to refresh the aging lineup and perhaps reinvigorate sales. Tesla management said it started limited production of the more affordable model in June and expects to ramp that up in the second half of the year.
Still, the outlook for the rest of the year remains murky as Tesla did not provide any official guidance — in a departure from earlier this year, when management said Tesla would return to growth in 2025.
“Management initially guided for deliveries growth in 2025. We interpret no guidance as a signal that management is no longer forecasting volume growth. This aligns with our expectation for deliveries to decline in 2025,” Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a Wednesday note.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order related to AI after signing it during the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.
Kent Nishimura | Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to keep “woke AI” models out of Washington and to turn the country into an “AI export powerhouse” through the signing of three artificial intelligence-focused executive orders on Wednesday.
The phasing out of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — an umbrella term encompassing various practices, policies, and strategies aimed at fostering a more inclusive and equitable culture — has been a major focus of the second Trump administration. Now, the White House is bringing the battle to AI.
The “PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” order states that the federal government “has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”
The executive order identifies DEI as one of the “most pervasive and destructive” of these ideologies to be kept out of AI models used by the government.
“LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” the order said, adding that developers should not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by users.
As acknowledged by the order, the use of AI is increasingly prevalent across Americans’ daily lives and is expected to play a critical role in the way they learn and consume information — making “reliable outputs” necessary.
In the eyes of the Trump administration, DEI in AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes; distort and manipulate AI model outputs in regard to race and sex; and incorporate concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality and systemic racism.
“DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI,” the anti-woke order reads.
Without giving specifics, the order refers to past examples of this, including a major AI model that changed the race or sex of historical figures such as the pope and Founding Fathers when prompted for images.
In response to backlash last year, Google had pulled its Gemini AI image generation feature, saying it offered “inaccuracies” in historical pictures. Months later, the company rolled out an improved version.
Instead of “woke AI”, the government should procure “truth-seeking” AI models that “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory,” the order stated.
However, it adds that the federal government “should be hesitant” to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace.
In other AI developments on Wednesday, the Trump administration signed an order to spur innovation in the technology by removing what it called “onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment.”
Another order aims to establish and implement an “American AI Exports Program” to support the development and deployment of the U.S. AI technology stack abroad.
The moves are part of the administration’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which it says identifies 90 federal policy actions across three pillars: the acceleration of innovation, building of AI infrastructure, and leadership in international diplomacy and security.
Some of the biggest names of Estonia’s tech scene are backing Lightyear, a startup looking to become Europe’s answer to commission-free trading pioneer Robinhood.
Based in London, Lightyear develops an app that lets users invest in a range of over 5,000 stocks, exchange-traded funds and money market funds. It was founded by two former Wise employees, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, in 2021.
The company is set to announce later on Thursday that it has raised $23 million in a new round of funding led by NordicNinja, a Japanese-backed venture capital fund based in Europe. Estonian tech entrepreneur Markus Villig, who co-founded ride-hailing unicorn Bolt has also invested.
Lightyear CEO Sokk told CNBC that the firm didn’t necessarily need to raise more cash for the business but chose to do so because of the caliber of investors involved.
“People like Markus have been building massive companies in many, many markets, and this is something that’s really exciting for us because it’s so hard to go into all the markets and understand their local dynamics and what people need,” he said.
Lightyear currently operates in 25 countries. However, with help from angel investors like Bolt’s Villig, the firm will be able to launch in another five markets “pretty quickly,” Sokk said.
Villig told CNBC that it can be “challenging to scale a business across multiple countries in a heavily regulated sector,” adding that Europe’s less developed retail investing market provides ample opportunities for disruption.
Other Estonian angel investors who have previously backed Lightyear also participated in the funding round, including Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Checkout.com’s formerChief Technology Officer Ott Kaukver and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn.
Estonia is widely considered a prominent tech hub in Europe. The country is home to the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, according to the Estonian Investment Agency. Meanwhile, Estonia’s e-residency scheme has also enabled foreigners to become digital residents and launch their companies in the country.
The new round values five-year-old Lightyear at between $200 million and $300 million, significantly higher than its valuation in 2022 when it raised $25 million, according to two people familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous as the information has not been made public.
Pushing into AI, crypto
Alongside the additional funding, Lightyear is also launching new artificial intelligence features. AI has been a hot area of investment for startups following the explosive popularity of generative AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
One of the features, called “Why Did It Move,” allows users to select a point in time on a stock chart and see what happened that day to cause a jump or fall in a company’s share price. The firm is also using AI to provide “bull” and “bear” theses on stocks as well as short updates on assets in their own portfolios.
“In the end, you’re going to have two models” when it comes to investing, according to Sokk: “Self-driving money,” where you ask an AI to achieve certain investment goals, and a “manual gearbox” approach of figuring out different strategies and approaches on your own.
Still, the market for online investment products is heavily competitive. Lightyear faces some hefty competition from both incumbent brokerage services as well as more modern tech players such as Robinhood, Revolut and Trade Republic.
However, Sokk insists Lightyear is building a differentiated enough product to stand out from the crowd. While competitors like Robinhood profit from offering risky products like crypto and margin trading, Lightyear is focused on serving long-term investors, he told CNBC.
To that end, Sokk said Lightyear is planning on rolling out a crypto product of its own in two months’ time — one that’s “more focused on a long-term view.”