In one fell swoop, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has reshaped the company’s approach to the truth, removing its “politically biased” fact-checkers and cementing Silicon Valley’s radical facelift as it cosies up to US President-elect Donald Trump.

As Zuckerberg (or Zuck, as he’s often referred to) announced overnight in talking points that often directly echoed Trump, Meta will “return to our roots around free expression” and “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” by removing its fact-checkers and lifting restrictions on divisive topics like “immigration and gender”.

Some might be surprised to learn that the company had fact-checkers in the first place.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced Meta will stop using independent fact-checking organisations to moderate content on the company’s platforms.Credit: AP

About 3 billion people globally use Meta’s products, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Its fact-checking efforts, in fact, date back nearly a decade, to the 2016 US presidential election, in which Russia spread misinformation on Facebook and other platforms.

In response to those efforts, Facebook created what has been seen as somewhat of a gold standard for how tech platforms handle misinformation: relying on more than 90 third-party organisations globally, including in Australia, who helped fact-check content in more than 60 languages about topics including COVID-19 and climate change.

“We don’t think a private company like Meta........

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