Meta's pivot to freedom of speech

Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Joe Rogan recently to talk through Meta’s latest changes to moderation, fact-checking and political content. It’s pretty clear the company is heading in a new direction.

I’d strongly recommend listening to the full podcast. Zuck’s more candid than usual, and the conversation covers a lot of ground: from content policy to jiu-jitsu to open-source AI.

But three things in particular stood out to me:

1. No more third-party fact-checkers

Meta is scrapping its US fact-checking program and shifting to a model inspired by X’s Community Notes. The idea is to add context rather than label posts as true or false — a more decentralised and (in theory) less biased approach.

In Zuck’s words: “Trust in centralised fact-checking has eroded. People want to see context from others, not be told what’s true or false by a single source.”

This is a significant shift, especially given how heavily Meta leaned into third-party fact-checking during COVID and the 2020 election cycle. He admits, in hindsight, the company may have deferred too much to media and political pressure.

2. A lighter touch on moderation

Meta is also scaling back how aggressively it moderates content — especially for topics like immigration or gender identity that sit within mainstream political discourse.

The goal is to focus enforcement on high-severity violations (like terrorism or fraud), while reducing overreach and false positives. Fewer takedowns, fewer demotions, fewer people wrongly locked out of their accounts.

Zuck: “Over-moderation has often silenced legitimate voices. Platforms like ours should support open dialogue, not stifle it.”

3. Political content is back in the feed

After years of downranking political content, Meta is changing course. Users who want to see political content will see more of it — and political posts won’t be penalised in the algorithm like they were in recent cycles.

This matters for campaigns. Facebook and Instagram have become less central to political strategy in recent years as more attention has shifted to TikTok, YouTube and X. That could now start to reverse.

Zuck: “We don’t want people to feel like their views are being suppressed — especially on issues that matter most to them.”

Why now?

It comes down to three things: Trust, relevance, competition.

Zuckerberg seems to be repositioning Meta as a platform for free speech, robust debate and fair representation. Musk’s changes at X clearly rattled the cage, and now Meta is playing catch-up.

The context is important too. Nick Clegg is out. Dana White is in. Pressure from the Biden administration during COVID and the backlash that followed seems to have left a lasting impression.

The podcast is worth a listen if only to see how publicly Zuck is now embracing ideas that would’ve been unthinkable for Meta five years ago.

Plenty of people will disagree with the direction of travel. But one thing’s clear: Meta wants to be back in the political game, and it’s betting big on backing free speech as the way to get there.