The Meta boss claims there is “too much censorship” on its platforms due to “politically biased” fact-checkers
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will end third-party fact-checking on its sites claiming there is “too much censorship” and citing a “cultural tipping point” since Donald Trump’s re-election.
Meta will replace independent fact-checking with a ‘community notes’ system like the one used on X, which relies on users adding context or corrections to ‘misleading’ posts.
Elon Musk has been criticised for allowing disinformation to spread on X since he acquired the platform in 2022.
In a video message announcing the changes, Zuckerberg said “it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram”.
He stated that Meta’s “fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created”.
In his statement, Zuckerberg also criticised governments and the media for pushing to “censor more and more”, stating “a lot of this is clearly political”.
He also said “complex systems” are used to moderate content, and that they make mistakes, adding “even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts, that’s millions of people”.
Zuckerberg framed the content moderation changes around Trump’s re-election, stating that the elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising free speech”.
Meta previously said that its work with independent fact-checkers formed “the basis to prevent the spread of large scale misinformation and disinformation”.
Joel Kaplan, a Republican who has replaced former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg as Meta’s head of global affairs, said in a blog post that “We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate”.
Dana White, a longtime Trump ally and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has been appointed to Meta’s board of directors.
Director of research at Hope not Hate, Joe Mulhall, said on X that the changes an attempt by Zuckerberg to ingratiate himself with the Trump administration, and “another example of a tech billionaire framing naked self interest as a commitment to free speech”.
The European Union is currently assessing the effectiveness of X’s ‘community notes’ system, but critics have warned that removing professional fact-checkers will lead to the spread of both misinformation and disinformation on Meta sites.
The introduction of a ‘community notes’ system will be implemented in the US first. As per reports on the BBC, it is not yet clear whether it will be introduced elsewhere.
Meta launched its third-party fact-checking programme in 2016, amid growing concerns about information integrity during the lead-up to Trump’s election.
In January 2021, Zuckerberg suspended Trump from Facebook and Instagram as a consequence of him supporting rioters who stormed the US capitol.
Trump referred to Facebook as “an enemy of the people” in March this year, but
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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