Dawn Butler MP: Social media companies abandoning the use of independent fact-checkers is a danger to society

‘When social media companies fail to tackle hatred and abuse, and fail to censor fake news and conspiracies, there is a risk of creating a group of people who are bad actors who can put people in danger’

This week, I read the very concerning news that Meta is abandoning the use of independent fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style “community notes”. This effectively means that the accuracy, misinformation and disinformation of posts will be left to users, instead of moderators.

I was absolutely startled to see many of my worst fears play out in real time.  Meta’s updated hate speech guidelines now allows users to call people mentally ill based on their sexuality or gender identity.  It really makes me wonder what sort of world we are now living in that this can be deemed acceptable.

The reality is as a country our protections have been slowly stripped away, leaving us vulnerable and naked to the far right, right wing, narcissists that often shout the loudest.

Let me explain further, there is money in clicks, so social media platforms promote negative content that generate more clicks than positive content. The war on woke was actually a war on decency and respect, encouraging people to discriminate and abuse people, especially if they are from a legally protected characteristic.

There is a thin line between free speech and hate speech and the reality is what the far right wanted was to encourage hate speech. Remember the arguments around critical thinking? How the Tories argued that we did not need to teach critical thinking in schools. Let me be clear, the only way to identify fake news, and dis and misinformation is if you have the ability to think critically about what you are reading.

As someone who has slowly reduced my activity on X, due to it becoming a cesspit of racism, misogyny, and far-right content in recent years (which I’ve highlighted with my ‘Block of the Week’ feature on social media), this latest move by Meta is very disappointing and I believe it puts us all at risk.

In my personal experience, while I mostly receive hate, racism, threats and abuse on X, the comments I receive on Facebook and Instagram are often positive and uplifting – and even when there is disagreement, it is often constructive and respectful.

So, in my view, anything that seeks to make Facebook and Instagram more like X is unwelcome and unwise. Far from weakening regulations, I have long called on successive Governments to strengthen regulations to ensure social media companies tackle racism and abuse on their platforms.

What has happened in the first month of 2025 completely highlights why my calls were necessary.

I’m not the only one who is concerned by this – the co-chair of the independent body that reviews Facebook and Instagram content has said herself she is “very concerned” about how Meta’s decisions will affect minority groups.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt said “We are seeing many instances where hate speech can lead to real-life harm, so we will be watching that space very carefully,”. I agree – and I’ve seen this first hand, having reported several death threats made against me on social media in recent years.

I do wonder whether these changes are also motivated by corporate greed by cutting spending. Getting rid of 40,000 moderators will save a lot of money, but for what purpose? Or maybe there is a fear of missing out on the far right and their influence online. It can be all of these and also trying to dominate the next generation of Large Language Models by ensuring inbuilt toxic views and biases. After all, Meta said they used to moderate less than 1% of content – it seems odd to change their business model over such a small percentage!

The stark truth is, we are at the precipice of a very real crisis of truth, decency, and accountability online. Which is directly affecting democracies around the world. There are currently organisations who boast of being able to win elections through online manipulation of content.  I believe that the right-wing are trying to destroy all the principles that we need to protect ourselves from being manipulated by mis and disinformation online, all under the guise of ‘free speech’.

We have also seen certain publications that are aligned with right-wing political views push misleading or sensationalised narratives, especially during election periods. It can lead to the normalisation of prejudice, hatred and misinformation in our politics.

In some way the right has been smart as there has been a cold calculation of what is needed to manipulate a whole generation of people and systems. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, bad people are uniting.

How many times have we heard right-wingers talking about ‘lefty lawyers’ in recent years? Whether it was during Brexit, or when standing up for the rights of migrants. There are also regular efforts to undermine the Human Rights Act, which could erode our fundamental rights, including protections against hate speech and abuse, holidays and working hours.

So how can we tackle this dangerous rise, it can not be by facts alone because, many of the people who promote and believe the lies are not interested in the truth. Readers may remember the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election, falsely claiming of a paedophile ring at a restaurant backroom linked to members of the Democratic Party. One man even turned up there with a gun and fired at the shop! It shows the very real-life risks of disinformation. The pizza place did not even have a backroom.

We must arm our children with wisdom. It was extremely welcome that Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, launched a review of the curriculum in secondary schools last year to embed critical thinking and arm children against conspiracy theories.  without critical thinking, children won’t be able to dissect what they are seeing online and work out what is truth from fiction.

We need to make clear there is nothing wrong with being ‘woke’ (which means being alert to injustices and discrimination). Imagine someone tells a man they are entitled to be paid the most in their organisation, just because they’re a man. That’s wrong, unjust, and misogynistic – but if a young man has not been taught about fairness and equality, they may fall into the trap of thinking they are being hard-done by.

And we need to talk about the risks of unlimited ‘free speech’. Because hate speech is not free speech, no one has the right to abuse someone online. When you let people do whatever they want with no limits, you create a dangerous environment where mis and disinformation get treated as truth.

So, when social media companies fail to tackle hatred and abuse, and fail to censor fake news and conspiracies, there is a risk of creating a group of people who are bad actors who can put people in danger. This includes Incels, who are an ever-increasing threat online and real-life to women.

The right-wing wants to destroy all of the principles we have in place to ensure we have a friendly, warm, informed and inclusive society – all under the guise of free speech and expression. We cannot allow it to happen, and I will do my part to fight against it. The antidote is always positivity and kindness.

And in the meantime, I encourage others to join me by supporting those new and growing social media companies, that take their social responsibilities seriously and clamp down on hate. And let’s not forget that these platforms scrape people’s data and use it to build AI models.

We can stop this if we move away from dangerous platforms, or if you can’t leave, flood it with kindness.