Meta Ends Fact-Checking Programmes In The US

Social media giant Meta made a significant change to its content moderation practices on Tuesday, including the termination of its American third-party fact-checking program.

Starting in the US, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a post on social media that “we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers” and replace them with community notes akin to X (previously Twitter).

According to Zuckerberg, “fact checkers have simply been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”

Many of the complaints made by Republicans and X-owner Elon Musk about fact-checking programs, which many conservatives view as censorship, were repeated in Meta’s announcement.

The 40-year-old tycoon said that “recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech”.

Zuckerberg has been working to reconcile with Donald Trump, including contributing $1 million to his inauguration fund.

Zuckerberg added that Meta sites like Facebook and Instagram “would simplify” their content policies and remove “a number of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”

In recent years, Trump has harshly criticized Meta and Zuckerberg, accusing them of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.

The Republican’s account was restored in early 2023 after the Facebook attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In order to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the election, Zuckerberg also had dinner with Trump in his Mar-a-Lago resort in November.

Joel Kaplan, a former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, was appointed as the company’s head of public affairs last week, in a recent move toward the Trump team.

In a statement, Kaplan claimed that its current policy on content moderation has “gone too far” and that too many innocent people find themselves wrongly locked up in “Facebook jail.”

Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.

As part of the overhaul, Meta said it will relocate its trust and safety teams from California, where liberal views are commonplace, to more conservative Texas.

That will enable us to establish trust in our work in areas where bias is less important, according to Zuckerberg.

Additionally, Meta announced it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content across its platforms.

Instead, the company will adopt a more personalized approach, allowing users greater control over the amount of political content they see on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.

Source: Channels TV