Mark Zuckerberg takes Meta’s hostility toward journalism to new level
In a five-minute video, Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed his social media empire’s subjugation to the future Trump administration in a radical shift to “Musk-style” policies on its platforms. In his new Meta purged of fact-checkers, journalism is portrayed as the enemy of free speech. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled by this dramatic surge in hostility toward the right to information.
No more room for journalism. In a video posted on Facebook on January 7, Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his company's new policy on political information and debate. The billionaire says Meta will “get rid of fact-checkers” – who have been accused of helping destroy online trust rather than repairing it. Instead, they will be replaced with a system derived from X's “Community Notes,” leaving it to users to verify the reliability of information themselves.
This announcement, which was all the more astonishing given the energy with which Meta previously defended fact-checking as the way to combat disinformation on its platforms, was followed by other strategic innovations that betray a clear purpose. The new policy’s obvious goal is to pay allegiance to Donald Trump by quickly “Muskifying” its platforms, which have more than three billion daily users, according to Meta’s figures.
To this end, Zuckerberg is embracing some of X boss Elon Musk’s favorite subjects by accusing traditional media of having “pushed to censor more and more.” RSF views this new policy, which would initially apply only to the United States, as part of a global strategy of marginalizing journalism and its actors in the name of a freedom of expression perverted to serve ideological interests.
“Mark Zuckerberg is following the path blazed by Elon Musk on X and is pledging allegiance to an ideology promoted by Donald Trump, abandoning journalism in favor of an absolutist vision of freedom of expression. This ‘Muskification’ of the Meta group’s platforms obeys a political strategy that allows private sector interests to prevail over the need for a public conversation based on facts. But promoting truth is not censorship, and democratic regulation is not an illegitimate obstacle. Zuckerberg says he has gone too far but he is now going all the way back.
This announcement is part of a series of decisions taken by Meta that show a clear anti-journalistic change of direction. In 2023, Meta eliminated Facebook News in several countries and chose to cut off access to media outlets in Canada in retaliation for the passage of Bill C-18, which would have forced Facebook to pay them. Algorithm changes have also restricted traffic to media sites on Facebook.
By now criticizing fact-checking, previously touted as one of the leading tools of its fight against disinformation, Meta is accentuating its disengagement from the right to access reliable news and information and is reinforcing a model based on virality, at the risk of amplifying hate speech, manipulation and false information.
