Mark Zuckerberg announced via his Facebook account that the platform will return to “its roots” by restoring free speech.

He vowed to:

• Replace fact-checkers with a new system inspired by X’s community notes.
• Simplify content policies and remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender.
• Change policy enforcement so filters will no longer automatically block content unless it violates high-severity rules (e.g., illegal activity).
• Bring back civic content, ending restrictions on political content and pages, allowing for a return to debate on Meta platforms.
• Move the U.S. content review team from California to Texas to reduce bias.
• Work with President Trump to protect free speech in U.S. companies.

Zuckerberg admitted that previous U.S. Democrat administrations pressured Meta to censor content.

In the past, Facebook in Canada granted state media, CBC, fact-checker status during the 2021 election campaign, while also working with the Liberal government to censor content.

However, even the Trudeau Liberal government took their cozy relationship with Meta too far when they asked Facebook to censor news, only to have their requests rejected.

The deteriorating relationship between Trudeau and social media companies came to a climax in 2023, when the Liberal government pushed forward Bill C-18, otherwise known as the Online Streaming Act.

This bill forced social media companies to remove news articles and other content from their platforms unless they obeyed an unprecedented bargaining mechanism to pay news companies in Canada for their work.

This announcement, along with other public behaviors of Zuckerberg, is a clear sign that he wishes to warm up to conservatives—perhaps even signaling his own changing political views, aligning with those of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

These big announcements come off the back of Zuckerberg announcing that UFC’s Dana White will join Meta’s board of directors. The UFC CEO and president, and long-time Trump ally, will expand his influence in Meta’s future.