Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has announced a bunch of big changes for Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
He says Donald Trump's election win represents a "cultural tipping point" in favour of free speech, and his company will work with Trump to push back on censorship.
The president-elect has praised the changes and says Zuckerberg is "probably" responding to the threats he's made against the Meta CEO in the past.
The changes will initially be rolled out in the US.
Here's what's happening.
Ending third-party fact checks
Meta will stop using independent fact-checking organisations to moderate content on the company's platforms.
Zuckerberg said the fact checkers had become "too politically biased", and they'd "destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US".
"We've reached a point where it's become too many mistakes, and too much censorship," he said in a video posted online.
Instead, Meta willintroduce a "community notes" system, like the one used by Elon Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter).
It allows users to attach fact checks or context notes to posts. These notes are only displayed if enough other users, who are deemed to have diverse perspectives, rate them as helpful.
Appointing a Trump ally
Dana White, the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), has been appointed to the Meta board.
White is a good friend of Trump's. He was the last person to speak before Trump at the Republican National Convention last year and introduced Trump's headline speech.
"I am very excited to join this incredible team and to learn more about this business from the inside," White said in a statement released by Meta.
"There is nothing I love more than building brands, and I look forward to helping take Meta to the next level."
Also joining the board are tech investor Charlie Songhurst and Italian business executive John Elkann.
A 'new era' for political posts
Meta will change its algorithms so more political content will be recommended on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
"For a while, the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed," Zuckerberg said.
"So we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we are in a new era now."
Zuckerberg also Meta would "get rid of a bunch of restrictions" on how people can talk about topics like gender and immigration, which he said were "out of touch with mainstream discourse".
Working with Trump to 'push back' on censorship
Zuckerberg suggested governments around the world, and the outgoing US government, had been hampering free speech.
"It's been so difficult over the past four years when even the US government has pushed for censorship by going after us and other American companies," he said.
"It has emboldened other governments to go even further."
Zuckerberg said Europe had "an ever-increasing number of laws industrialising censorship and making it difficult to build anything there". He also pointed to "secret courts" ordering content removal in Latin America, and China's bans on Meta's apps.
"We're going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more," Zuckerbeg said.
Progressive digital watchdog and civil rights groups have largely condemned the moves.
The anti-misinformation News Literacy Project said Meta was removing measures that stopped the spread of false, harmful information and "social media users will suffer for it".
The Accountable Tech lobby group said Meta was "re-opening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation and conspiracy theories that caused January 6th".
But conservatives in the US have long been critical of Facebook's moderation systems, accusing them of favouring progressive narratives, silencing right-wing voices and suppressing discussion about issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, Zuckerberg told a congressional committee that the White House "repeatedly pressured" Facebook to remove "certain COVID-19 content including humour and satire".
Republican Jim Jordan, who chaired the committee, said Meta's latest announcement was a move in the right direction.
"We hope that other Big Tech companies, including Google, follow the lead of X and Meta in upholding freedom of speech online," he posted to X.
Trump's win a 'cultural tipping point'
Zuckerberg and Trump have long had a strained relationship.
Facebook and Instagram were among the platforms that banned Trump after the January 6 Capitol insurrection in 2021.
Trump, meanwhile, has accused Zuckerberg of "illegal" election interference. In a book released last August, the then-presidential candidate said Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison" if he interfered in the 2024 election.
The president-elect has also said he'd consider preventing the US from banning TikTok, because the ban could help Meta. "Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people," he told CNBC in March last year.
Zuckerberg has since made efforts to improve his relationship with Trump.
He phoned Trump after last year's assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and visited the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort after his election win. Meta also donated $US1 million ($1.6 million) to Trump's inauguration fund.
In his video post, Zuckerberg said: "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech."
Trump later praised Meta's announcement. "I think they've come a long way," he told a press conference.
Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was directly responding to threats he had made in the past, Trump said: "Probably."
A broader trend in tech
Zuckerberg is one of several top Silicon Valley executives to meet with, and donate to, Trump since his election win.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, was another notable visitor to Mar-a-Lago and donor to Trump's inauguration fund.
His newspaper broke with tradition and refused to endorse a presidential candidate last year. More recently, cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit the paper when it refused to publish a cartoon that depicted Bezos and other tech bosses kneeling at the feet of Trump.
"That cartoon sort of captured exactly what's going on with Meta today," said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University.
He described Meta's announcement as alarming, but not surprising.
"I think it shows us, yet once again, that media companies, whether they be social media or newspapers, are bowing to the pressure that's coming from the Trump administration and from Trump."
