- Dana White, chief executive of UFC, is one of three new board members
- Mark Zuckerberg says the appointments will help tackle opportunities in AI
- Facebook and Instagram are also dumping independent fact checkers
Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has been revealed as one of three new appointments to the board of social media company Meta.
White joins the board alongside John Elkann, who heads up investment company Exor, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst.
Expertise and perspective
In a statement, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta – which owns Facebook and Instagram, among other platforms – said: “Dana, John and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with [artificial intelligence], wearables and the future of human connection.”
In response, White posted on Instagram of his excitement to be “a small part of the future of [AI] and emerging technologies.”
White is a prominent supporter of incoming president Donald Trump. Zuckerberg has appeared to be building ties with the incoming Trump administration recently, having had a fractious relationship in the past, especially after the president elect was banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2021. This has included making a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration fund.
In addition, Joel Kaplan, a prominent republican, has been named as the replacement for Sir Nick Clegg as president of global affairs.
Fact checkers abandoned
In addition, Zuckerberg has revealed that independent fact checkers are being shuttered on Facebook and Instagram, to be replaced by community notes – similar to what is used on X (formerly Twitter).
In a blog post, Zuckerberg claimed that third-party fact checkers were “too politically biased” and that it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression.”
In a written post, Kaplan added that while using independent fact checkers was “well-intentioned” it had too often meant that users had been censored.
On X, community notes allow users to add context or clarifications to posts seen as controversial.
