Four years is a long time in the social media industry. On January 7th, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg suspended Donald Trump from Facebook for “using our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government”. On January 7th 2025, Zuckerberg apologised for “too much censorship” and announced that he wanted to “work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more”.
This volte-face is part of a swathe of changes across all the Meta platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
The Meta fact-checking system is to be abandoned in favour of a crowdsourced “community notes” system such as that used by X. This means removing the key restrictions on fact-checked content: misinformation and disinformation will no longer be demoted in the algorithm, nor trigger a warning page before you see a post. While we don’t yet have full details, it will presumably also eliminate other fact-checking safeguards including the ban on ads which have been debunked and the rule preventing misinformation repeat offenders from monetising their Facebook pages.
While Zuckerberg now describes this as “censorship”, in its reports to the EU, Meta has previously said that fact-checking is “the basis to prevent the spread of large-scale misinformation and disinformation” and was a key part of its approach to election integrity during the high number of EU elections in 2024.
Meta goes Maga - why Zuckerberg chose Trump
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, was ending its fact-checking programme and going back to its roots – promoting free expression.And the reason? That fact-checking had led to “too much censorship” and “too many mistakes”.He positioned himself as a supporter of free speech, an American virtue that’s a world away from Europe, a tech backwater with ever-creeping censorship.But critics say the move is a cynical ploy to curry favour with incoming US president Donald Trump – and with millions of people using these social media platforms every day it risks ushering in “an age without facts”.Irish Times tech journalist Ciara O’Brien goes through Zuckerberg’s five-point plan for Meta and explains why the newly bullish Meta boss is changing the way his business operates.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.
Meanwhile, the hateful-conduct policy has already been changed to cater to the far-right by loosening restrictions on hate speech targeting women, migrants, and transgender people. For example, the policy now allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”, allows “insulting language when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality”, and no longer bans describing women as “property” and “household objects”.
The nakedly political nature of these changes is highlighted by Zuckerberg’s announcement that content moderation roles will be moved away from (liberal) California to locations such as (conservative) Texas because of “concern that biased employees are overly censoring content”. As it happens, research does confirm that pro-Trump accounts are more likely to be restricted or suspended on social media – because they share more misinformation and are more likely to be bots. However, this has not got in the way of the conservative narrative of victimhood and grievance.
There is probably opportunistic cost-cutting also. Meta will save on payments to third-party fact checkers, shift US staff from California to low-wage states, and reduce its overall reliance on content moderators by cutting back on moderation and relying more heavily on crowdsourcing and AI moderation. Meta is facing worldwide litigation by moderators who say they have suffered serious psychological harm from being exposed to violent and graphic content such as beheadings, suicide, and child abuse images, and these changes might reduce its liability in future cases.
What are the implications for Europe and Ireland?
Zuckerberg’s capitulation to Trump must be seen in the wider context that a small number of foreign entities control European social media. Public discourse is largely in the hands of two billionaires aligned with the far-right, and one Chinese-founded firm (TikTok) that is under formal investigation by the European Commission on suspicion that it allowed Russian interference in the 2024 Romanian presidential election. We should be very worried about what this means for election integrity and the growth of the far-right in Europe in the coming years.
Meta claims it has no immediate plans to end fact-checking in the EU. However, this is probably only a temporary reprieve. Zuckerberg has accused the EU of having “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship” and said that “the best way to defend against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the US government”. This endorses Elon Musk’s project to use American power to dismantle EU controls on social media, exemplified by the incoming vice-president JD Vance, who has threatened to withdraw US support for Nato if the EU imposes penalties on X.
The scene is set for a showdown between the US and the EU over social media regulation, though the flashpoint will come with the increasingly manic Musk rather than the more cautious Zuckerberg. Musk has heavily promoted the far-right across Europe, including by attacking the then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in the wake of the Dublin riots. In the last week alone Musk has been accused of interfering with the German elections by hosting a live-stream with the radical Alternative für Deutschland party, has promoted the UK anti-Islam extremist (and imprisoned criminal) Tommy Robinson, and has set out to undermine the UK’s Labour government through misinformation about child sexual abuse.
As a purely legal matter, the European Commission is already investigating X for multiple breaches of its obligations under the Digital Services Act, and these new provocations very likely also breach X’s obligations regarding algorithmic transparency and disinformation. These should ultimately result in significant fines. However, enforcement will depend on whether there is political will within Brussels to stand up to US pressure. National governments are split on this issue with some, such as the Italian government of Giorgia Meloni, choosing to cosy up to Musk instead.
At the moment Ireland is largely on the sidelines. While X and Meta have their European headquarters in Dublin, enforcing the Digital Services Act against these very large platforms is primarily the responsibility of the European Commission rather than the Irish Coimisiún na Meán. Meanwhile, politicians have been distracted from responding to current developments by government formation.
Nevertheless, there are several things we must do. First, the Irish government should vocally support action by the European Commission against X and any other firms that choose to break the law. Second, it should immediately revisit the hate-speech offences that were dropped from the Hate Offences Act last year in order to get it passed before the election. Third, it should fully implement the Electoral Reform Act 2022, which will address online political advertising and electoral misinformation but has not yet been brought into force. Finally, we need to move Irish government bodies off platforms such as X that promote the far right and on to decentralised alternatives instead.
Dr TJ McIntyre is an associate professor in the UCD Sutherland School of Law, consultant solicitor with FP Logue Solicitors and chairman of Digital Rights Ireland
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