Mark Zuckerberg, who often bows to the political winds, is withdrawing from the fact-checking business.

And this is part of a broader effort by the meta-CEO to curry favor with Donald Trump after a long and checkered relationship.

After an earlier outcry, Zuck made a show of announcing that Facebook would be hiring fact-checkers to combat misinformation on the globally popular site. This was a clear sign that Facebook was becoming more of a journalistic organization than a passive publisher of user opinions (and dog pictures).

But it didn’t work. In fact, it led to more information suppression and censorship. Why would anyone believe a bunch of unknown fact-checkers working for one of the increasingly unpopular tech titans?

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Now Zuckerberg is pulling the plug and announcing his decision in a video to underscore the big deal:

“The problem with complex systems is that they make mistakes. Even if they accidentally censor just 1 percent of posts like a cultural tipping point to prioritize language again.

Let me jump in here. With this “cultural tipping point” statement, Zuckerberg is bluntly admitting that he is following conventional wisdom—and of course, the biggest tipping point is Trump’s election to a second term. And skeptics portray this as a nod to the president-elect and his team.

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“So we’re going back to our roots and focusing on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms…

“We will eliminate fact checkers” and replace them with community notes, which are already on

“We have attempted in good faith to address these concerns without becoming arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers were simply too politically biased and destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the US.”

It was Zuckerberg who, along with Twitter’s previous management, banned Trump after the Capitol insurrection. This led to numerous Trump attacks on Facebook, and the president-elect told me that he changed his stance on banning TikTok because it would help Facebook, which he saw as the greater threat.

Trump said last summer that Zuckerberg plotted against him in 2020 and would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again.

The president-elect summed it up in a post: “ZUGERBUCKS, DON’T DO IT!”

Here’s a little more from Z: “We will simplify our content policies and remove a number of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that simply have no connection to mainstream discourse. What began as a movement for greater inclusion is increasingly being used to suppress opinions and exclude people with different ideas. And that goes too far.”

In fact it is. And I agree with that. In 2020, social media, led by Twitter, suppressed the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, dismissing it as Russian disinformation, even though a year and a half later the establishment press suddenly declared, “Hey, the laptop report was correct.”

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Let’s face it: people like Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (who is currently embroiled in a war of words with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over an alleged cover-up of gang rapes of young girls when Starmer was chief prosecutor) have enormous influence. They are the new gatekeepers. As so-called legacy media becomes less relevant – as we see with the mass exodus of top talent from Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and the recent rise of podcasts – they control much of the public dialogue. And yes, they are private companies that can do whatever they want.

At yesterday’s marathon press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Zuckerberg: “Do you think he’s going to respond directly to the threats you’ve made to him in the past with promises?”

“Probably. Yes, probably,” Trump said, twisting the knife a little.

Meanwhile, after making the obligatory trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner, the CEO has made a number of moves to align himself with the new administration. And it doesn’t hurt that Meta is donating a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration.

Zuck named prominent Republican lawyer Joel Kaplan as global affairs chief, replacing a former British deputy prime minister. Yesterday, Kaplan said on “Fox & Friends”:

“We have a real chance now. We have a new administration and a new president who are great champions of free speech, and that is making a difference. One of the things we’ve experienced is that when you’ve done it, a U.S. president, a government that pushes for censorship, gives other governments around the world that don’t even have the protections of the First Amendment , the opportunity to really put pressure on US companies. We will work with them. President Trump will take action against this kind of thing all over the world.

We will work with President Trump. Got it?

In addition, Zuckerberg is adding Dana White, CEO of United Fighting Championship, to the meta board. White is a longtime Trump ally, so MAGA now has a voice within the company.

In other words, get with the program.

Footnote: At his press conference, where Trump appeared upset about recent court battles and plans to convict him, the new president said – or in journalistic parlance – ruled out “military coercion” against two of his recent targets.

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“Well, we need Greenland for national security reasons,” he said. And the Americans lost many lives building the Panama Canal. “You might need to do something.”

He will not use military force against either of them. But his answer causes a stir, as he expected.