Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to Move Content Moderation Teams from California to Texas

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that the company will be relocating its content moderation and trust and safety teams from California to Texas as part of a broader effort to promote free expression and address the extreme leftist bias introduced into its content moderation process at the hands of its woke Silicon Valley workforce.

In a major shakeup to its content moderation practices, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed plans to move the company’s U.S.-based content review operations from California to Texas. The decision, announced alongside other significant changes to Meta’s approach to content moderation, is aimed at building trust and tackling concerns about potential bias among the company’s moderation teams.

“We’re going to move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our U.S.-based content review is going to be based in Texas,” Zuckerberg stated in a video detailing the updates. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that it will help us build trust to do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams.”

The relocation of Meta’s content moderation workforce to Texas follows a similar move by Elon Musk, who brought both X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX to the state.

Breitbart News editor in chief Alex Marlow addressed the move during the Alex Marlow Show, explaining, “I do regard it as a stunt, the moving to Texas. Because if he goes to Austin, it’s going to be very similar people to Silicon Valley…it’s a big middle finger in the air to Newsom. … You’ve got to go to a place where there’s more normal people.” Zuckerberg has not announced where he will relocate operations — but practically anywhere outside of Austin will provide a workforce with a very different political worldview than that of Silicon Valley, home to some of the most progressive leftists in the country.

Meta’s overhaul of its content moderation practices extends beyond the geographical shift. The company plans to replace its independent fact-checking program in the U.S. with a crowdsourced “Community Notes” feature, inspired by a similar system implemented by X. Additionally, Meta will remove restrictions on sensitive topics such as immigration and gender, while reintroducing civic content to its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Breitbart News reported on this development yesterday, writing:

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, is undergoing a major overhaul of its content moderation practices. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the company will end its fact-checking program, plagued by severe leftist bias, and replace it with a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes. The changes come as a response to what Zuckerberg perceives as a “cultural tipping point” towards prioritizing speech, influenced by the recent elections.

In his video, Zuckerberg states: “We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”

In a press release, Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, stated, “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.”

Kaplan highlighted Zuckerberg’s 2019 speech at Georgetown University, where he argued that free expression has been the driving force behind progress in American society and around the world. “Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together. More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous,” Zuckerberg said at the time.

Kaplan acknowledged that Meta had developed complex systems to manage content in recent years, partly in response to societal and political pressure. However, he admitted that this approach had gone too far. “As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” he said.