Elon Musk’s Tesla has received almost £200m in UK grants since 2016

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has received almost £200m in grants from the UK government since 2016, according to analysis.Tesla, which is run by the tech billionaire who has become increasingly vocal about the UK government, has received £191m from Westminster through grants, according to Tussell, which analyses public contract data.The bulk of the funds came from the Department for Transport (DfT), which has given the company £188m over that period.The transport funds related to the plug-in car grant, which was designed to encourage the uptake of EVs and plug-in hybrids. Introduced in 2011, the grant provided a discount towards the cost of new plug-in cars, initially at £5,000, until the scheme ended in June 2022

Meta scrapped factcheckers ‘because systems were too complex’

The co-chair of Meta’s oversight board said the company’s systems had become “too complex”, as the chief executive of Elon Musk’s X welcomed its decision to scrap factcheckers.Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the co-chair of the social media company’s oversight board and the former prime minister of Denmark, has said she and the departed president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, had agreed “Meta systems have been too complex”, adding that there had been “over-enforcement”.On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that the Facebook owner would move away from using third-party checkers to flag misleading content in favour of notes from other users.The 40-year-old billionaire said that, starting in the US, Meta would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”, as the company moves to prioritise free speech in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House.The move came only days after Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister, left Meta after six years at the company, most recently in the role of president of global affairs

Mark Zuckerberg sports $900,000 watch as he calls time on Meta fact-checking

Mark Zuckerberg wore a rare Swiss watch worth nearly $900,000 as he announced a sweeping policy overhaul across Facebook and Instagram and offered to help Donald Trump take on governments deemed too censorious, according to a report.In a video message posted to Facebook on Tuesday, Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Trump to the White House, and said that Meta Platforms – the world’s largest social media business – would ditch its third-party fact-checkers and recommend more political content across its social networks.Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Threads, plans to “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”, Zuckerberg added.Meta would also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” that were “out of touch with mainstream discourse”, the 40-year-old billionaire said, while wearing a Greubel Forsey “Hand Made 1” on his left wrist, Bloomberg reported. The watch retails for $895,500 before taxes, according to the outlet

Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?

Meta is shifting to the right, following the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States. A more partisan era now looms for the social media giant and its corporate leaders, though Mark Zuckerberg himself has few personal politics other than ambition.On Tuesday morning, Meta disbanded Facebook and Instagram’s third-party factchecking program. The company will also recommend more political content across its social networks.CEO Zuckerberg announced the changes as he attempts to curry favor with Donald Trump’s incoming administration, demonstrating just how far he will go to win the president-elect’s approval

Ditching of Facebook factcheckers a ‘major step back’ for public discourse, critics say

Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to ditch factcheckers on Facebook and “prioritise free speech” weeks before Donald Trump returns to power was condemned on Tuesday as a “major step back” for public discourse.The Meta founder announced multiple changes to his platforms including Facebook and Instagram in an attempt to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship”.In a statement on Tuesday he said that, starting in the US, independent factcheckers would be replaced in the US by a system of “community notes” similar to that used on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, which relies on users to add caveats and context to contentious posts.Content moderation teams would also be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”, said Zuckerberg in a five-minute video statement that Nina Jankowicz, a former US government official tasked with fighting disinformation, described as “a full bending of the knee to Trump”.Changes to the way Meta filtered content would also mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff” while still taking seriously “a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there, drugs, terrorism, child exploitation”, Zuckerberg said

Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content

Meta will get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced.In a video message, Zuckerberg vowed to prioritise free speech after the return of Donald Trump to the White House and said that, starting in the US, he would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”.X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, relies on other users to add caveats and context to contentious posts.Zuckerberg said Meta’s “factcheckers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created”.The tech firm’s content moderation teams will be moved from California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams”, he said