Social media giant Meta announced on Jan. 7 that they are ditching their previous fact-checking system in favor of community notes, akin to Elon Musk’s platform, X. This change will take place over the course of the coming months according to Meta’s transparency center. The current fact-checking system utilizes real people non-partisan third party fact checker organizations. The content on Instagram, Threads and Facebook that is flagged as misinformation is not taken down but rather left up with a warning for viewers. The new community notes system will be rolled out starting in the U.S. and rely entirely on users’ fact-checking the content they see. Meta believes this will lead to less censorship and believes that the information in these community notes will be less biased than their current fact checkers. In fact, in a video posted to Meta’s website, Mark Zuckerberg accuses the fact checkers working for Meta of political bias. Community notes will be rated by users as well, requiring high confidence in their falsehood before Meta will take them down.
According to Politico, fact checkers are facing backlash after Zuckerberg’s announcement. Many of the employees at the companies which handle Meta’s fact-checking are reporting harassment and death threats online. Politico also reports, “Anuška Delić, the editor-in-chief of Slovenia-based media Oštro, said ‘connecting censorship with fact-checking’ has been damaging.” Critics of Meta’s decision fear that there is now a link between misinformation and political thought; critics worry that under this new community note system, falsehoods will simply be passed off as someone’s truth, allowing lies (politically motivated or otherwise) to influence people’s thinking while going unchecked. This harassment and view of lies as opinions is probably directly linked to Zuckerberg’s own accusations toward fact checkers of bias.
Many of Zuckerberg’s supporters believe this change is what is best for free speech and is motivated by a positive shift away from the previous precedent of censorship set by foreign countries such as China. However, Zuckerberg’s critics are calling out this decision as him bending the knee to President Trump as a way to get on Trump’s good side for the next four years.
