The company’s content moderation strategy is getting a major overhaul, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing that the company’s trust and safety teams will be moved from California to Texas. Unveiled in a post on Threads, the move is meant to combat perceptions of bias in content moderation.
In a video explaining the changes, Zuckerberg said: ‘We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US-based content review is going to be based in Texas.’ “I think it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams as we promote free expression.”
This aligns with Meta’s broader efforts to strike a balance between free expression and content oversight and to address accusations of ideological partiality that have dogged Meta’s California-based teams. Meta wants to reassure users who are skeptical of its moderation policies by establishing these operations in Texas.
Texas is still luring big tech players, with Elon Musk already moving X and SpaceX to the state. But the political landscape in Texas is its own thing. Restrictive policies will include bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors and some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation for employees relocating.
Meta also announced other sweeping moderation updates, in addition to the relocation. In the US, the company is ending its independent fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes feature inspired by X, lifting restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, and bringing civic content back to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The changes are a reflection of Meta’s evolving approach to content moderation, which allows for free expression while addressing user concerns about fairness and transparency.
