The parent company of Instagram and Facebook is moving its teams that oversee what content is allowed on its social media platforms out of California as part of its plans to end its third-party fact-checking program.
Meta will be relocating what it calls its trust and safety group to Texas and other U.S. locations so the work can be done in places where "there is less concern about the bias of our teams," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared video this week.
Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, plans to restore "free expression" by users on Facebook and Instagram amid widespread debate of the political harms in censoring online content, Zuckerberg said in the video.
"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said. "We are going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S."
U.S. content review will be based in Texas, Zuckerberg said, without naming a city. The company has offices and data centers throughout the Lone Star State, including in downtown Austin, the Dallas-Fort Worth region and Houston. Meta did not immediately respond to a CoStar News request for additional information about the move.
Site Selection Group CEO King White, who has helped content moderation teams find locations during his 20-year career, said it is likely Meta could move the executives overseeing content strategy, as well as software engineers, to Texas. But the content review work could be done by artificial intelligence or by employees at large call centers overseas, said King, who is not directly involved with Meta's operations.
White said he's familiar with content moderation work being done at large facilities in Eastern Europe and in Colombia in South America, with much of the content being image-based.
"There's no reason this work would be done by Texas employees," White said.