By Gavin Boyle
Meta has officially shut down its fact-checking program, opting for a “community notes” style of moderation instead to provide additional context for posts.
“We believe this is a better approach that will be less biased and more scalable, and ultimately we expect to have more people with more perspectives adding context to more types of content,” a Meta spokesperson told Fox Business via email. “The community decides what notes get written and rated. That said, this is a brand new product that we’re still testing and building. We don’t expect this process to be perfected and we’ll continue to improve as we learn.”
The removal of its fact-checking program follows through on a commitment by Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to make the platform less biased. Shortly before President Donald Trump took the office, Zuckerberg shared he would enact sweeping changes to make his platforms less liberal. Meta-owned Facebook previously burned Trump when it banned him following Jan. 6, 2021.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today,” Zuckerberg said in January when he announced the change. “We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
“After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerbeg added. “We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S.”
While this change is a positive for all Meta-owned platforms, it has left many users both disturbed and worried about how the platform could change in the future. Zuckerberg largely made these changes in order to appease the president as he took office. With the speed and magnitude of the company’s change in approach to content moderation, many worry about how things might change when Trump is no longer the president.
After Zuckerberg announced the changes, Google searches on how to “delete a Facebook account” and how to “delete an Instagram account” skyrocketed.
The change in content moderation isn’t the only move Zuckerberg has made since Trump was elected president in November. He also settled a longstanding lawsuit over Trump’s ban in 2021 paying out $25 million — though not admitting any wrongdoing. Zuckerberg has also called out the tech industry, saying it has gone soft, and needs to become cutthroat again.
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