The fallout of Meta’s content moderation overhaul

Moments after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s all-hands comments to employees were widely leaked, a company executive warned in an internal memo that leakers will be fired.

“We take leaks seriously and will take action,” Meta’s chief information security officer, Guy Rosen, said in an internal memo I’ve seen. “When information is stolen or leaked, there are repercussions beyond the immediate security impact. Our teams become demoralized and we all waste time that is better spent working on our products and toward our goals and mission.”

Tensions were high inside Meta ahead of Mark Zuckerberg’s first all-hands meeting of the year.

Employee-submitted questions for the CEO touched on a couple of big themes: concerns about his announcement that “low-performers” would be let go on February 10th, his MAGA-fueled changes to Meta’s content moderation policies and DEI programs, and his comment to Joe Rogan about wanting more “masculine energy” in the workplace. “Are the changes we’re seeing (in any way) influenced by the new U.S. president?” asked one employee ahead of the internal meeting. “If so, why are we making changes based on these factors?”

Earlier this week, several posts on the Instagram page of Aid Access, an abortion pill provider, were inaccessible to the public. Some images were blurred out, with no option to click through and view the post. Others appeared simply as a gray square with nondescript alt text, as if the image didn’t load.

Aid Access connects patients with doctors who provide abortion pills via telehealth appointments, and the posts that were blocked from being viewed included instructions for performing at-home abortions using pills. The issues on Instagram — first reported by Jessica Valenti — also reportedly made it difficult to find the Aid Access account using the app’s search function.

On today’s episode of Decoder, we’re diving into an especially messy set of ideas. It’s been a chaotic couple of weeks for big tech companies as the second Trump administration kicks off an unprecedented era of how we think about who controls the internet. Meta’s changed its rules to openly allow more slurs and hate speech on its platforms, TikTok was banned and sort of unbanned, and a bunch of tech CEOs attended the second Trump inauguration.

There’s a major collision, or maybe merger, happening right now between billionaire power and state power and everyone who uses tech to communicate — so, basically everyone — is stuck in the middle.

Meta announced last week that it would be ditching fact-checkers in favor of X-like Community Notes, and self-described “leaker” Alessandro Paluzzi shared screenshots on Monday showing what the feature might look like in Threads.

Based on the screenshots, it appears you’ll be able to start the process of writing a Community Note from the three-dots menu on a post, which is where you can already access features like muting an account or reporting a post. Another screenshot shows that when you write a Community Note, your note will be anonymous.

At this point, it’s pretty clear what Donald Trump wants from Mark Zuckerberg. But what does Zuckerberg, who has now gone to Mar-a-Lago twice since the November election, want from the President-elect?

That’s the question I’ve been asking sources in and around Meta over the last several days. They all described Meta’s relationship with the outgoing Biden administration as incredibly hostile. It’s safe to assume that Zuckerberg wants a reset for the MAGA regime, especially since Trump threatened not that long ago to imprison him for life.

I’ll spare you the experience of listening to one of the richest men in the world whine and just tell you straight out: Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on The Joe Rogan Experience is full of lies.

Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta, sets the tone at the very beginning: “I think at some level you only start one of these companies if you believe in giving people a voice, right?”

Meta is eliminating its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs because of the “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts” in the US, according to a memo to employees seen by Axios. Meta will also roll back representation goals and end its “diverse slate approach” to hiring.

The memo, which was written by Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, said the company would replace DEI programs with ones “that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background,” as reported by Axios. The company will also “end efforts to source business suppliers from diverse-owned businesses.”

Meta’s overhaul of its content moderation and fact-checking policies in the US is bringing into focus a key geopolitical tension likely to grow under the incoming Trump administration: the regulation of speech online.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg made no secret of his attempt to align his interests with those of President-elect Donald Trump, saying he planned to work with Trump to “push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more” — naming Europe specifically. The US and the European Union have long had different approaches when it comes to digital regulation, which has at times inflamed tensions since many of the largest tech companies that end up being targeted by Europe’s rules are the US’s crown jewels. That dynamic is likely to be exacerbated under a second Trump administration, with the incoming president’s protectionist policies.

As I write this, there are a lot of social network users who are wondering if they should look for a new home. Over at X, Elon Musk has essentially become part of the incoming Trump administration, while various changes have made the formerly popular social network a dark and forbidding forest for many of its former inhabitants.

Meanwhile, Meta’s announcement that it was abandoning third-party fact-checkers and moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas is making some Facebook and Instagram members nervous. So nervous, in fact, that while we previously included Meta’s Threads social network in this article as a possible alternative to X, we’ve pulled it — at least for now.

It’s been nearly a year since Instagram and Threads defaulted to blocking recommendations of “political” content from accounts you don’t already follow, but now Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says, “...we’re going to be adding political content to recommendations” on both platforms.

That’s a sharp turn from his statements in 2023 laying out the goal of a “less angry place for conversations” that wouldn’t do anything to encourage politics or hard news. However, under Meta’s new approach to moderation — and new rules about what users can say on its platforms — that goal is going out the window just as the Trump administration prepares to take over.

Meta overhauled its approach to US moderation on Tuesday, ditching fact-checking, announcing a plan to move its trust and safety teams, and perhaps most impactfully, updating its Hateful Conduct policy. As reported by Wired, a lot of text has been updated, added, or removed, but here are some of the changes that jumped out at us.

These two sections outlining speech (written or visual) are new additions:

Experts warn that Meta’s decision to end its third-party fact-checking program could allow disinformation and hate to fester online and permeate the real world.

The company announced today that it’s phasing out a program launched in 2016 where it partners with independent fact-checkers around the world to identify and review misinformation across its social media platforms. Meta is replacing the program with a crowdsourced approach to content moderation similar to X’s Community Notes.