Meta to End Fact-Checking Across Its Platforms, Including Facebook and Instagram
Meta is revising its content review policies, eliminating fact-checking across its platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. Instead, the company will introduce user-generated “community notes,” akin to the approach taken by Elon Musk’s X.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the changes on Tuesday, stating, “Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”
“We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
Zuckerberg admitted that this decision is expected to also increase harmful content on the platform.
“The reality is this is a tradeoff. It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
Following allegations that it had not been able to prevent foreign actors from using its platforms to disseminate false material and foment dissension among Americans, the corporation started an independent fact-checking program in 2016.
It has since still struggled with the proliferation of heated issues on its platform, including hate speech, violence, anti-vaccination posts, and election-related disinformation.
According to CNN, Meta informed Trump’s team that the change was coming beforehand. In addition to Zuckerberg’s efforts to strengthen his connection with Trump before the president-elect takes office later this month, the move coincides with a larger apparent ideological tilt to the right inside Meta’s upper echelons.
The Real Facebook Oversight Board, an outside accountability organization comprised of academics, lawyers, and civil rights advocates, including early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, said in a statement that the policy changes represent Meta going “full MAGA.”
“Meta’s announcement today is a retreat from any sane and safe approach to content moderation. Censorship is a manufactured crisis, political pandering to signal that Meta’s platforms are open for business to far-right propaganda. Twitter’s shift from fact-checking has turned the platform into a cesspool; Zuckerberg is joining them in a race to the bottom.”
Following his acquisition of X, formerly known as Twittter, Elon Musk implemented a similar policy. After dissolving the company’s fact-checking teams and partnerships, Musk enforced using user-generated “community notes” as the only means of fact-checking on the platform.
The automatic systems that check for policy infractions, which Meta claims have led to “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been,” will also be modified. Now, the algorithms will exclusively look for unlawful and “high-severity” infractions, such as drug usage, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, fraud, and scams.
Meta will move its trust and safety teams from California to Texas and other US locations. “I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.
