CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that Meta is discontinuing its program of fact-checking with reliable partners and replace it with a community-driven approach like to X’s Community Notes.
“We’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerbergsaid in a video. “To be more precise, this is what we intend to do. First, beginning in the United States, we will replace fact checkers with community notes that resemble x.
Due in part to the politics of moderation decisions and initiatives, Meta and social media businesses in general have reversed their path on content moderation in recent years. Meta’s fact-checking method and fact-checking in general have long been condemned by Republicans as being unjust and biased in favor of Democrats.
Conservatives have praised X’s Community Notes system, which CEO Elon Musk replaced X’s earlier efforts to combat misinformation. It has enabled a variety of community-driven activities, including trolling and fact-checking.
When Meta first introduced its fact-checking system on Facebook in 2016, it used third-party fact-checkers certified by the European Fact-Checking Standards Network and the International Fact-Checking Network to verify the content on its platforms. Over 90 organizations participated in the program, which involved fact-checking posts in over 60 languages. They have included organizations such as PolitiFact and Factcheck.org in the US.
Based on how users were reacting to specific content and how quickly articles spread, Meta claimed in a news release that it could detect posts that might be spreading false information. On their own, independent fact-checkers would also try to find posts that might include false information. As they awaited assessment, posts deemed to contain false information would subsequently appear lower in feeds.
After confirming the veracity of the highlighted content, the independent fact-checkers would assign a content rating, classifying the information as either False, Altered, Partly False, Missing Context, Satire, or True and attaching notices to the posts.
These fact-checking procedures were applied to all Facebook postings, and last year they were extended to Instagram and Threads. Text-only posts, advertisements, articles, images, videos, Reels, and audio might all be reviewed by fact-checkers.
According to the system, content would be deleted if it broke the company’s community standards, which Meta itself identified, and fact-checkers were not able to do so.
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