Facebook And Instagram Scraps Fact Checkers
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta is scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with Community Notes written by users similar to the model used by X.
Meta will start in the U.S. by ending its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact-checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact-checked.
Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
In a video posted alongside a blog post by the company on Tuesday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.
The move comes as Zuckerberg and other tech executives seek to improve relations with US President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office later this month.
Trump and his Republican allies have criticised Meta for its fact-checking policy, calling it censorship of right-wing voices.
Speaking after the changes were announced, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Zuckerberg’s decision and that Meta had “come a long way”.
The social media company also said it plans to allow “more speech” by lifting some restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discussion such as immigration and gender in order to focus on illegal and “high severity violations” like terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.
Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms has “gone too far” and has made “too many mistakes” by censoring too much content.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by political events including Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
