Trump is a big reason meta is done with fact-checkers, says CMO

• Meta said Tuesday that it plans to ditch third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community notes feature.
• Meta CMO Alex Schultz told Business Insider that the election of Donald Trump to the presidency influenced the shift.
• He also said that a change in how Americans view censorship and moderation of content played a role.

After Meta announced it was dropping fact-checkers, Alex Schultz, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday that the election of Donald Trump as president influenced the decision.

“Look, we will adapt to any administration, and we always do, and I think that’s appropriate,” Schultz said at CES 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday, adding, “We’ve worked with the Biden administration through its We will work with The Trump administration throughout its term.

Earlier Tuesday, Meta announced that it would stop using third-party fact-checkers in favor of user-generated community notes.

The company also said it was moving some of its content moderation teams from California, which typically votes Democratic, to Texas, which typically votes Republican. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the move would “help address the concern that biased employees are excessively censoring content.”

Schultz added that in addition to the incoming administration playing a role, the timing of the decision was also influenced by a shift in “the mood in America.”

Schultz said there is a change in how Americans generally view censorship, free speech and content moderation, which he said was signaled by the results of the election.

“It’s a big, big shift,” he said. “So I think, yes, we’re responding to it at this time because it’s the logical time to do it.”

Zuckerberg said the new community notes feature would be similar to the one used on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, which allows users to add notes to posts that potentially contain misinformation or lack context.

Schultz told BI that the announced changes also bring Zuckerberg “back to the core of what he cares about.”

“I think fundamentally he’s been pushed into a place that was further than he wanted to be in terms of censorship and content moderation,” Schultz said, adding that Zuckerberg “seized the moment to do what he thinks is right.”

Meta’s content moderation policies have been scrutinized for years. Four years ago, Facebook banned President Donald Trump from the platform for policy violations, drawing the ire of Republicans who have accused the site of silencing conservative views.

Schultz said he thought those complaints of bias were reasonable and that Meta couldn’t find fact-checking organizations on the political right at the same rate as leftists. He said community notes on X have been more successful in getting people from across the political spectrum to contribute.

However, he said Meta will take a different approach than X when it comes to relationships with the brands that advertise on its platform.

“We don’t go out there and denigrate our advertisers and put them in terrible positions,” he said, alluding to critical comments Musk has made about some of X’s advertisers. X sued a group of advertisers in August, accusing them of antitrust violations.

Schultz said Facebook would maintain its brand safety tools that give companies some control over the kind of content their ads appear alongside.

He also said that the primary concerns for their major advertisers are about hate speech and adult nudity, rather than content addressed by fact-checkers, and that brand safety tools remain focused on those areas.

“We want to focus on precision and not take down things we shouldn’t take down,” he said.