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

Nick Clegg’s departure signals a new political era at Meta

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Happy New Year! May dry January leave us all with fewer headaches. Today in TechScape: Meta promotes a Trumpian bulldog, TikTok faces mounting problems that aren’t a ban, Meta faces backlash against its approach to AI and Elon Musk meddles abroad.Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, is now the former head of global affairs at Meta. He announced his resignation on Thursday after six years at the tech giant

Apple says it will update AI feature after inaccurate news alerts

Apple has said it will update an artificial intelligence feature that has issued inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones, including that a man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself and that the tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.The tech company said it was developing a software update that would “further clarify” when news notifications were actually summaries generated by the company’s Apple Intelligence system. It said the update would be rolled out in the coming weeks.It follows a formal complaint by the BBC in December, when news alerts branded with the corporation’s logo told some iPhone users that Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, Brian Thompson, had shot himself. Mangione is alive and being held at a prison in Brooklyn