Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has announced a significant shift in its approach to content moderation, abandoning third-party fact-checking in favor of a Community Notes program inspired by X, a platform championed by Elon Musk. The move, outlined in a statement by Meta's new policy chief Joel Kaplan, aims to address concerns of bias and censorship on the platforms.

The Community Notes feature, set to roll out in the US over the next couple of months, will display an unobtrusive label indicating that additional information is available on a post, rather than full-screen warnings that users must click through. This approach, similar to X's community-driven moderation, requires agreement between people with diverse perspectives to prevent biased ratings.

According to Meta, the changes are designed to address user complaints that the company censors "too much harmless content" and is slow to respond to users who have their accounts restricted. By empowering the community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, Meta hopes to provide users with information about what they're seeing while minimizing bias.

In addition to the Community Notes program, Meta is relocating its trust and safety teams responsible for content policies and reviews from California to Texas and other US locations. This move is seen as a departure from the company's previous approach, which has been criticized for being overly restrictive.

As part of its new approach, Meta is also scrapping restrictions around topics like immigration and gender identity, and will start phasing political content back into users' feeds on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with a more personalized approach. Automated moderation systems will still be utilized, but will focus on tackling more severe policy violations, such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams.

Less severe policy violations will now require community detection and reporting before Meta takes any action against them. Most of Meta's systems for automatically predicting which posts may violate its policies and demoting such content are also being scrapped. This shift marks a significant departure from the company's previous reliance on automated moderation and third-party fact-checking.

According to Meta, these changes are an attempt to return to the commitment to free expression outlined by Mark Zuckerberg in his Georgetown speech. By being more vigilant about the impact of its policies and systems on users' ability to make their voices heard, Meta hopes to create a more open and inclusive online environment.

The move has sparked debate about the role of social media companies in regulating online content and the potential risks and benefits of community-driven moderation. As Meta navigates this new approach, it remains to be seen how effective the Community Notes program will be in addressing concerns of bias and censorship, and what implications this shift may have for the broader social media landscape.