Meta has announced that it is abandoning its third-party fact-checking programs on Facebook, Instagram and Threads and replacing its army of paid moderators with a Community Notes model that mimics X’s much-criticised volunteer program, where commenting on the accuracy or otherwise of posts is left to users.

In a vlog post on Tuesday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said, “it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression”.

Joel Kaplan, who is replacing Sir Nick Clegg as Meta’s head of global affairs, wrote that the company’s reliance on independent moderators was “well-intentioned” but had gone too far.

“Too much harmless content gets censored” he wrote, adding Meta was “too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”

The move to a community notes system will be phased in over the coming months in the US. The system – which Meta says it has seen “work on X” – sees people of different viewpoints agree on notes which add context or clarifications to controversial posts.

The company’s blog post said it would also “undo the mission creep” of rules and policies – highlighting removal of restrictions on subjects including “immigration, gender and gender identity” – saying these have stemmed political discussion and debate.

“We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” it says.

“It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms”.

The changes come as technology firms and their executives prepare for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.

Trump has previously been a vocal critic of Meta and its approach to content moderation.