On January 7 — less than two weeks before Trump takes office for the second time — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a video, reportedly first shared with Fox News, announcing the changes and claiming that “the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.” He said the company would be replacing fact-checkers with community notes, removing most content moderation, eliminating most proactive policy enforcement to rely on user reporting, and moving the company’s content moderation teams from California to Texas, “where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams."

Meanwhile, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, gave an exclusive interview on Fox & Friends, claiming that there is a “new administration and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression."

Zuckerberg and Kaplan’s commentary echoes years of false claims about social media and censorship from Trump and MAGA media.

For years, conservatives — including right-wing media and politicians — have falsely claimed that they’re being censored on Facebook and other social media platforms, even as an internal audit in 2019 by former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) found no evidence of such bias, and Media Matters and other researchers and journalists have repeatedly found no evidence of such bias.

In response, Meta has repeatedly capitulated to right-wing pressure, rolling back policies, favoring right-wing figures and content, and bending rules in ways that favor conservatives, and this week’s moderation changes are no different.

The announcement — which CNN’s Brian Stelter noted “almost seemed to be addressed directly to Trump” — comes as Meta is reportedly facing an antitrust trial in April and amid other changes that seem to reflect a rightward shift in the company’s approach. Meta recently replaced Nick Clegg as head of global policy in favor of Kaplan, who has Republican ties, added Trump ally Dana White to its board of directors, and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.

On Tuesday, Trump responded to the news by saying Meta “has come a long way” and admitting that the policy changes were “probably” a response to his previous threats targeting the company (and specifically threatening Zuckerberg with “life in prison”). He also indicated that he saw the announcement on Fox News.

Zuckerberg and Meta have abandoned fact-checking and most content moderation, in an apparent effort to appease Trump and MAGA media. While conservatives have claimed censorship, repeated studies by Media Matters and others have shown that, whatever the topic, right-wing pages have earned more engagement than others. And previous gaps in content moderation have spurred violence and hate. We’ll go through the details below.

• A Media Matters study over six months in 2018 found that right-leaning Facebook pages had a higher total number of interactions than left-leaning Facebook pages. In fact, right-leaning pages had 23% more total interactions (reactions, comments, and shares) than nonaligned pages and 51% more total interactions than left-leaning pages, and images shared by right-leaning pages — including memes that frequently included false and bigoted messages — were by far the highest performing content from 463 Facebook pages that had over 500,000 page likes and pertained to news and politics. [Media Matters, 7/16/18]
• Follow-up studies in 2019 found similar results. Between March 18 and August 4, 2019, right-leaning Facebook pages earned on average about 45,000 more interactions (reactions, comments, and shares) per week than left-leaning pages. [Media Matters, 4/9/19, 8/13/19]
• A 2019 Media Matters study found right-wing sources dominated abortion-related coverage on Facebook. Of top-engaged U.S. abortion-related coverage on Facebook in April 2019, 63% of links with the most interactions came from right-leaning websites, and 72% of the page posts with the most interactions came from right-leaning pages. Two anti-abortion websites, LifeNews.com and Live Action, made up almost 30% of viral links, and the two main Facebook pages affiliated with these sites made up more than a quarter of the most popular Facebook posts. [Media Matters, 5/28/19]
• Zuckerberg reportedly authorized a change to Facebook’s algorithm after the 2020 election to increase visibility of so-called “mainstream publishers” and reduce visibility of ideologically aligned pages, but in the following 20 days right-leaning pages maintained their typical engagement levels and consistently earned more interactions than left-leaning or nonaligned pages. [Media Matters, 12/1/20]
• A Media Matters study found right-leaning Facebook pages outperformed others in 2020. We found that right-leaning pages consistently earned more weekly interactions than left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages. In 2020, right-leaning pages earned the most interactions, with nearly 9 billion interactions on roughly 2.3 million posts. They also accounted for 45% of total interactions from all news and politics pages and nearly 30% of total posts. [Media Matters, 1/2/21]
• Between January 1 and September 21, 2021, a Media Matters analysis found that 7 of the top 10 political and news-related pages with the most interactions were right-leaning pages, including for Ben Shapiro and Fox News. Other top pages included those for Dan Bongino, Daily Mail, Breitbart, Newsmax, and Trending World by The Epoch Times. During the time frame, right-leaning pages earned more interactions than left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages. [Media Matters, 10/8/21]
• A follow-up study covering nine months of 2021 also found that right-leaning pages outperformed others. Right-leaning pages earned 47% of interactions between January and September while accounting for only a quarter of the posts from political pages. [Media Matters, 10/8/21]
• Analysis of the top daily Facebook posts from October 1, 2021, through April 6, 2022, found right-leaning pages often accounted for the top daily Facebook posts. Dewey Square Group analyzed Media Matters’ data and found that right-leaning pages were typically well-represented in the top 10 daily Facebook posts. During the six-month time frame, right-leaning pages among the top 20 posts earned over 1 billion engagements. [Media Matters, 11/5/21; Dewey Square Group, September 2022]
• Right-leaning pages earned a greater proportion of interactions on election-related posts in the year after the January 6 insurrection than in the year before. These pages earned over 2 billion interactions — or 54% of total interactions on election-related content — on nearly 570,000 posts between January 7, 2021, and December 31, 2021. [Media Matters, 1/5/22]
• Right-leaning Facebook pages continued to outperform others in the first few months of 2022. Right-leaning pages earned nearly 550,000 interactions, or 42% of total interactions earned on posts from news and politics pages, while ideologically nonaligned pages made over 60% of posts. [Media Matters, 3/21/22]
• As Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill advanced and was signed into law on March 28, 2022, right-leaning pages dominated discussions of the legislation. Between March 1 and April 4, 2022, right-leaning Facebook pages posted the most about the legislation compared to other news and politics pages, and also earned the most interactions. Right-leaning pages earned over 9.2 million interactions on nearly 3,700 posts, accounting for nearly 52% of the total posts and over 73% of total interactions. [Media Matters, 4/6/22]
• During Hurricane Ian, right-leaning Facebook pages directed users to content that downplayed or completely refuted the connection between the climate crisis and the changing nature of extreme storms. On September 28, 2022, when Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida, right-leaning posts received nearly 82% of total interactions. Out of the top 100 posts made between September 24 and October 2, 2022, that had keywords related to the hurricane, 63% came from right-leaning pages. [Media Matters, 10/7/22]
• In the days following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on West Virginia v. EPA that severely limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to make power plants cut toxic pollution, right-leaning Facebook pages earned the most interactions on posts related to the decision. These pages earned over 338,000 interactions, accounting for 54% of total interactions on posts. [Media Matters, 7/12/22]
• On the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, right-leaning Facebook pages posting about the decision earned more interactions than left-leaning and ideologically nonaligned pages combined. [Media Matters, 6/28/22]
• Right-leaning pages earned more total interactions than either left-leaning or ideologically nonaligned pages from 2020 through 2022. During the time frame, 6 of the top 10 posts that earned the most interactions were from right-leaning pages — and 5 of those were from pages affiliated with right-wing media outlet The Epoch Times. [Media Matters, 6/12/23]

In the announcement, Zuckerberg said the platform will “simplify our content policies” and “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.” Wired reported that the company also quietly updated some policies, including its Hateful Conduct policy, which covers immigration and gender. Among these changes, users are now reportedly allowed to refer to “women as household objects or property” and “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it.’” The announcement also stated Meta would be “bringing back civic content” on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Previous content moderation failures have contributed to real-world harm, including the January 6 insurrection, vaccine hesitancy, and harassment and threats of violence toward the LGBTQ community.

• House January 6 committee investigators found mountains of evidence demonstrating that social media companies “like Facebook and Twitter” provided “megaphones” for right-wing extremists ahead of the Capitol insurrection. The findings also acknowledged that platforms refused to enforce their own content moderation policies out of fear of conservative backlash. [Media Matters, 1/18/23; The Washington Post, 1/17/23]
• Researchers have found that Facebook “misinformation containing false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine reduced vaccination intentions by 1.5 percentage points.” [Science, 5/31/24]
• Meta also made it harder for users to find accurate information about the pandemic. Two months after launching Threads, Meta added a search function, but it blocked users from searching for content about COVID-19 and vaccines — supposedly deeming it “potentially sensitive content.” Public health workers criticized the company’s decision, noting that “its timing was especially poor” as case numbers climbed once again. [Media Matters, 6/22/23; The Washington Post, 9/11/23; Mashable, 8/31/23]
• For years, Meta has failed to protect LGBTQ users, allowing anti-LGBTQ content, slurs, and hate speech, content that GLAAD said has “an outsized impact on real world violence and harmful anti-LGBTQ legislation.” Meta has allowed networks of right-wing pages — such as those affiliated with right-wing outlets The Daily Wire, TheBlaze, and The Western Journal — to amplify anti-LGBTQ hate with impunity, and it has failed to moderate accounts that repeatedly engage in anti-LGBTQ hate speech and harassment, including the anti-LGBTQ accounts “Gays Against Groomers” and “Libs of TikTok.” Libs of TikTok’s social media posts have seemingly inspired violent protests and threats to Pride events, drag shows, and drag queen story hours. Media Matters has documented dozens of institutions, events, and individuals who reported threats after being targeted by the social media account. [Media Matters, 7/6/22, 7/6/22, 3/17/23, 9/26/23, 9/28/23, 10/27/23, 11/2/23; Mashable, 6/15/23]
• Meta has also profited from anti-LGBTQ hate speech, earning millions in revenue. In March 2023, Media Matters found that The Daily Wire spent over $5.7 million running at least 558 ads on Meta’s platforms from June 4, 2018, through March 4, 2023. In other studies, we found hundreds of ads with the anti-LGBTQ “groomer” slur, even though the platform claimed to have banned the term. [Media Matters, 3/10/23, 9/6/22, 2/21/23, 10/13/22]
• Media Matters and GLAAD reported that between March 2023 and August 2024 at least 100 posts made on Meta’s platforms contained an anti-trans slur. [Media Matters, 8/28/24]
• The day before Zuckerberg announced the policy changes, Meta admitted that for months it had mistakenly restricted content with LGBTQ-related hashtags from search and discovery under its “sensitive content” policy, which is supposed to restrict “sexually suggestive content.” Taylor Lorenz reported: “Meta reversed the restrictions on LGBTQ search terms after User Mag reached out for comment, saying that it was in error. ‘These search terms and hashtags were mistakenly restricted,’ a Meta spokesperson said. ‘It’s important to us that all communities feel safe and welcome on Meta apps, and we do not consider LGBTQ+ terms to be sensitive under our policies.’” [User Mag, 1/6/25]
• Prior to announcing a ban on all QAnon accounts in October 2020, Facebook helped the conspiracy theory, which has been tied to violence, grow exponentially on the platform. A 2020 Media Matters analysis found that some of the largest public QAnon groups on Facebook experienced 101% growth between March and October. By announcing that a crackdown would come, the platform gave the QAnon community ample time to change names, page descriptions, and hashtags in order to flout enforcement. In total, Facebook allowed QAnon groups to amass millions of followers. [Media Matters, 10/6/20, 10/7/20; NBC News, 8/10/20; University of Maryland, accessed 1/7/25]