Martin Lewis issues ‘seismic’ warning to Facebook and Instagram users (Image: Getty)
has issued a “seismic” warning on X to Facebook users following a major policy shift announced by Meta.
The warning came after Mark Zuckerberg released a video detailing his plans to significantly reduce censorship, eliminate and promote more political content across Meta’s platforms: Threads, Facebook and .
Reacting to the announcement, Mr Lewis expressed his concerns on X, writing: “This looks a seismic change. It affects all areas. Focusing only on my work area though. Having sued Facebook over scam ads in the past. Is there’s no mention of scams here. Will this free up more people to be ripped off?”
In the video released on Tuesday, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta will be replacing fact-checkers with “community notes,” a system similar to that used by , which allows users to provide additional context and information to posts.
Read more…
Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checkers have been “too politically biased” and have eroded public trust.
Zuckerberg told his 118 million followers: “The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”
Meta also plans to relocate its content moderation teams from California to Texas.
Zuckerberg suggested that this move will help address concerns about bias within the teams and will “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” on the company’s platforms.
He emphasised the need for less restrictive content policies, recommending an increase in political discourse across Facebook, and Threads.
Don’t miss…
Meta plans to make numerous changes for Facebook and Instagram users (Image: Getty)
Characterising the changes as a necessary step in prioritising free speech over censorship, Zuckerberg said: “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
“A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there — drugs, terrorism, child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.
“So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people, and we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritising speech.”
The new system will be phased in over the next couple of months and will see improvements over the year.