Meta’s move to end fact-checking reflects turn toward freewheeling internet

When Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced this week that the social media giant would end third-party fact-checking and make moderated topics more accessible, he said the move reflected the current state of affairs.

The re-election of United States President-elect Donald Trump signalled a “cultural tipping point” towards free speech over moderation, Zuckerberg said.

In many ways, he was right.

The tide has shifted dramatically in favor of voices calling for a less-regulated, more freewheeling internet less than a decade after Donald Trump and Brexit caused US tech platforms to crack down on misinformation online.

“This move by Meta is definitely part of a larger trend, with fact-checking undergoing some headwinds globally”, John P Wihbey, associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern University in Canada, told Al Jazeera.

According to my understanding, political shifts and business necessity contribute to the changes, as do news organizations need to use scarce resources in other ways to reach audiences.

If not over, the era of formal fact-checking initiatives at least appears to be in retreat.

The Duke Reporters’ Lab’s data shows that the number of active fact-checking projects worldwide reached their highest point in 2022, up from 3 in less than a decade.

Even Google searches for the terms “fact check” and “misinformation” hit their high watermark in 2020 and 2022, respectively, according to an analysis of search data by statistician and US election forecaster Nate Silver.

Since many initiatives relied on funding from the tech giant, Meta’s move raises questions about whether fact-checking projects have survived political and financial strains to date.

Meta spent $100m between 2016 and 2022 supporting fact-checking programmes certified by the International Fact-Checking Network, according to the company.

Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, Elon Musk, one of Trump’s most powerful allies, has dragged the political centre of X, formerly Twitter, sharply to the right and touted the platform’s anything-goes bona fides.

Cozying up to Trump

Just as Trump is about to take office, misinformation experts have criticized Meta’s decision and accused Zuckerberg of cosying up with him. He frequently accuses big tech and legacy media outlets of working with his liberal allies.

According to Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychology professor at the University of Bristol who studies misinformation, “I think Meta’s decision is a significant part of a widespread movement among US corporations to pre-emptively submit to Trump’s expected demands,” Lewandowsky said.

Because it eliminates any chance of accountability and prevents evidence-based debate, “that is a standard move in the autocrat’s playbook.”

However, the shift confirms their long-standing complaints that liberal viewpoints are heavily biased in favor of fact-checking policies and content moderation decisions.

In a 2019 Pew poll, 70 percent of Republicans said they believed that fact-checkers favoured one side over the other, compared with 29 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents, respectively.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg himself echoed such concerns, arguing that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US”.

He claimed that Meta would eventually implement a “community notes” system similar to that used by X, where explanatory notes are added to contentious posts based on user consensus, taking a leaf from Musk’s book.

By agreeing to end restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are “just out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerburg also gave cred to conservative complaints about content moderation.

He claimed that what started out as a movement to be more inclusive has grown to be a tool for suppressing opinions and excluding people who share a variety of beliefs.

Fact-checking organizations have refuted claims that liberal bias exist and that Meta has always been the top authority on how to handle misinformation.

“Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts, it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracy theories”, Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday.

Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches misinformation and disinformation, said that arguments about the alleged bias of fact-checking initiatives were made in bad faith.

You want people giving evidence in public for what kind of statements, what kind of claims should be believed, and what kind of claims should not be, according to Graves, who told Al Jazeera.

In a political discourse that frequently features information from all kinds of sources and across the political spectrum, journalists and fact-checkers should make their best efforts to determine what is and isn’t true, Graves said.

There is research indicating that fact-checkers, like journalists, generally, disproportionately lean left in their politics, though it is difficult to say how that may affect their determinations.

In a survey of 150 misinformation experts worldwide conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School in 2023, 126 of them were identified as either “slightly left-of-centre”, “fairly left-wing” or “very left-wing”.

Moreover, various studies also point out that right-leaning audiences are more prone to misinformation than their liberal peers.

Some critics of fact-checking groups, such as Silver, the founder of the FiveThirtyEight election forecasting website, have argued that fact-checkers have too often focused on edge cases, or claims that are not provable one way or the other, because of their liberal leanings.

On Thursday, Silver wrote on his Substack, “The scrutiny of Biden’s age was one such example,” referring to rumors about the state of US President Joe Biden’s physical and mental health before deciding to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election.

Although it’s a reasonable question for a journalistic inquiry, allegations that the White House was concealing Biden’s shortcomings were frequently dismissed as “conspiracy theories” despite subsequent reporting proving otherwise.

Although fact-checking initiatives have limitations on being able to resolve all disagreements over the truth, they are an example of the counter-speech that is essential to democratic and open societies, according to Wihbey, a professor at Northeastern University.

“It is true that, on many issues, there are conflicts of values, not just facts, and it is difficult for fact-checkers to render a strong verdict on which party is right. But in virtually any circumstance, good, rigorous, knowledge-based journalism can add context and provide additional relevant points around the issues being debated”, he said.

In a democratic society, “the ideal speech situation is one where opposing viewpoints clash and the truth prevails.”

Fact-checking efforts can help combat misinformation, but the impact appears to be limited, not least because of the sheer volume of information available online.

According to a 2023 megastudy involving about 33, 000 US citizens, warning labels and digital literacy training reduced the accuracy of headlines by about 5 to 10%.

According to Donald Kimball, Tech Exchange editor at the Washington Policy Institute, a branch of the conservative State Policy Network, fact-checking initiatives frequently fail to change people’s minds in the same way that removing Trump from major social media platforms prevented his followers from vanishing.

“I think in the new media economy ‘ fact-checking away ‘ an idea doesn’t kill it any more”, Kimball told Al Jazeera.

“Perhaps in the past, it was simple to kill alternative narratives, but now there are so many people who support them. When other groups and communities see the opposite of the truth check, you are no longer crazy for disagreeing. I believe that people are sick of being told that what they see clearly in front of them is wrong.

As for the future of fact-checking initiatives?

According to Wihbey, the history of media is full of fresh journalism that has evolved over time as a result of shifting societal, cultural, and political conditions.

“Perhaps the fact-checking movement will be reinvented in new ways, but the precise media form and branding will change – maybe it’s not called ‘ fact-checking ‘ any more”, he said.

Source: Aljazeera