The boss of Facebook and Instagram has accused Europe of holding back innovation and institutionalising censorship.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that it will get rid of fact checkers in the US and instead use a system of “community notes” to moderate content on its platforms.
Community notes are where users flag content that they believe to be inappropriate instead of professional fact-checkers employed by Meta.
He admitted that the new system will mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff”.
It’s a u-turn by Zuckerberg who has previously exstolled the value of fact checking.
The Meta boss called it going “back to our roots around free expression”.
In the European Union, Meta is designated a so called ‘Very Large Online Platform’ or VLOP under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
That obligates the company to actively tackle misinformation and illegal content. Meta must submit regular reports to the EU.
Zuckerberg said Europe has “an ever increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative.”
Meta’s European headquarters is based in Ireland.