Facebook founder and META CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that his social media platform would be ditching its relationships with third-party fact-checkers in favor of an X-style Community Notes model. According to Zuckerberg, the previous fact-checking methods had become politically biased and eroded institutional trust, whereas now he seeks to restore freedom of expression on META properties.
However, many of Zuckerberg’s fact-checking partners have since complained they were “blindsided” by the sudden move, which comes just before Trump returns to power later this month. “We were blindsided by this,” said Jesse Stiller, the managing editor of Meta fact-checking partner Check Your Fact, as reported by WIRED. His organization started working with Meta in 2019, and it has 10 people working in the newsroom. “This was totally unexpected and out of left field for us. We weren’t aware this decision was being considered until Mark dropped the video overnight.”
Similarly, Alan Duke, cofounder and editor in chief of fact-checking site Lead Stories said, “We heard the news just like everyone else.” Duke and his company began working with Meta in 2019 under the first Trump administration. “No advance notice.” Duke also noted, “Without fact checking on Meta, disinfo spreaders will be partying like it’s 2016.”
The American Tribune recently reported on Zuckerberg’s announcement that he would be changing the fact-checking practices at META. “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” he said. “So over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system.”
Explaining how fact-checking, while starting with good intentions, went awry. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas.” He then stated, “And it’s gone too far. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”
Initially introducing the topic, Zuckerberg said, “Hey, everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. But a lot has happened over the last several years. There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.”
However, he maintained that META still intends to take down illegal content, stating, “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, Child exploitation. These are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content.”
Watch Zuckerberg’s statement below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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