Meta announces replacement of fact-checking program with X-style community notes
Company says change comes in part due to shift in focus to free speech after election of Trump; ADL slams company for backtracking on addressing hate, antisemitism
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it was scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Starting in the US, Meta will end 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.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context,” Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post.
The Associated Press had participated in Meta’s fact-checking program previously but ended its participation a year ago.
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 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 US presidential election victory.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, which was set up to act as a referee on controversial content decisions, said it welcomed the changes and looked forward to working with the company “to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.”
The Anti-Defamation League expressed concern over the announced change on Tuesday, noting that it recently found that Meta had failed to respond to any reports of antisemitic content on its platforms since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages.
“It is mind-blowing how one of the most profitable companies in the world, operating with such sophisticated technology, is taking significant steps back in terms of addressing antisemitism, hate, misinformation and protecting vulnerable and marginalized groups online. The only winner here is Meta’s bottom line and as a result, all of society will suffer,” said ADL CEO Johnathan Greenblatt in his statement.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
