On 7 January 2025, Meta announced six significant changes to its policies that will affect user safety across all its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. According to Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, changes to fact-checking and proactive enforcement will be “expanded beyond the US” in time. In addition, Kaplan also said that changes to Meta’s hate speech policies announced on January 7th “have been implemented worldwide immediately”.
Our report More Transparency and Less Spin demonstrates that these changes are a huge step backwards in Meta’s efforts to address hate and misinformation. In the EU this could compromise areas the DSA is designed to protect, such as civic discourse, electoral processes, gender-based violence, and fundamental rights. For Europe’s users these massive changes will simply mean more hate and misinformation on their feeds.