"Mark is good at stealing ideas" — Netizens react as Zuckerberg says Meta is going to replace fact-checkers with community notes "similar to X"

On January 7, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg took to his social media platforms and shared a video, in which he revealed that Meta would replace fact-checkers with community notes. In the video, the Meta CEO says:

"We are going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the US..."

Mark spoke about the changes, which would impact both Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, as well as emphasized the concept of "free expression." He then spoke about problems with online content moderation and censoring done by the government and legacy media.

According to Mark, many fact-checkers acted too biased and did more harm than good, especially in the US. Meanwhile, netizens flooded social media platforms reacting to the news. An X user (@SpeakerKidd) tweeted:

"Not surprised. Mark is good at stealing ideas."

Another user wrote:

"I wonder if all of this change from Zuckerberg would have happened if Kamala Harris had won. 🤔"

"Weird, Zuck copying someone else's idea, he has never done that before," commented another platform user.

"The fact people trust him blows my mind," added a tweet.

Several netizens believed that it was too late for Meta to incorporate these changes on Instagram and Facebook. A netizen tweeted:

"It's too late. FB went too far. As if the spying on private messages by government wasn't enough."

"Too little too late. Not going back there," read a tweet.

"He still sold out the American people," mentioned a netizen.

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Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company would make several alterations including changing its content moderation policies

In the recently released video, Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly shed light on the importance of free speech. He recalled the time in 2016 when Trump won the presidential election. According to Mark, at the time, legacy media highlighted the damage that misinformation would do to democracy.

In response to this discourse, Meta employed complex systems to manage content across platforms and launched the independent fact-checking program in 2016. However, these systems and the fact-checkers ended up censoring many posts.

According to the Meta CEO, they were going to remove several restrictions on content related to gender and immigration. In the video, he continued:

"What started as a movement to be more inclusive, has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut down people with different ideas."

The Meta CEO spoke about bringing back civics and political content. The final change would be to shift the trust, safety, and content moderation team from California to Texas.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also commented on these changes, especially the removal of fact-checkers and inclusion of community notes. He tweeted:

"This is cool."

It will be interesting to see how these changes impact Meta platforms and their users.