Meta will remove third-party fact-checkers from its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms as it wants to embrace free speech. They intend to replace fact checkers with the accuracy of messages being monitored by user-generated community notes. Meta's current fact-checking program, introduced in 2016, refers to posts that appear false or misleading to independent organizations to assess their credibility.
In a recent video, Meta’s Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were "too politically biased" and that it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression." He said that removing some restrictions on content on topics such as gender and immigration would “make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.” According to Zuckerberg, the focus of filters that scan posts for policy violations would be shifted to only tackling illegal and high-severity violations with Meta, relying on users to report lower severity violations before it acts.
“By dialing them back, we’re going to reduce the censorship on our platforms dramatically,” he said. “We’re also going to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence before taking down content. The reality is that this is a tradeoff. It means we’ll catch less bad stuff but also reduce innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.” This move coincides with Elon Musk and other notable technology business leaders scrambling to improve relations with the US
President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office later in January.
Following the recent exit of ex-British Deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg, Meta's new Global Affairs Chief, Joel Kaplan, wrote that the company's reliance on independent moderators was "well-intentioned" but had too often resulted in censoring. Donald Trump's Republican party allies have criticized Meta for its fact-checking policy, calling it censorship of right-wing voices. Trump said at a news conference that after these changes were announced, he was impressed and that Meta had "come a long way".
This is in marked contrast to the Chinese-owned TikTok platform, which faces an imminent ban in the US, where it has 170 million users unless it finds new ownership.
Meta's current fact-checking policy refers to posts that appear false or misleading to independent organizations to assess their credibility. Posts flagged as inaccurate can have labels attached, offering viewers more information and being moved lower in users' feeds. That will now be replaced "in the US first" by community notes.
The new community notes system has been copied from X, which introduced it after being bought and renamed by Elon Musk. Meta also plans to adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations, which it says have resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.”
The systems will now focus on checking only for illegal and “high severity” violations, such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud, and scams. Users will have to report other concerns before the company evaluates them. The company is also removing content restrictions on specific topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and reducing the amount of politics-related content users see in their feeds.
In 2023, the NGO Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Meta of “silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights.” The group said it documented more than 1,000 takedowns of posts “unduly suppressed” on Meta platforms between October and November of that year.
Meta says it has "no immediate plans" to eliminate its third-party fact-checkers in the UK or the EU. With the enforcement of Online Harms legislation in Britain and the heightened focus on social media in the UK and EU countries following recent inflammatory comments made by Elon Musk on X, it seems likely that Meta's content policies in the US and overseas will diverge.
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[1] https://www.cybersecurityintelligence.com/blog/facebook-and-instagram-remove-fact-checkers-8171.html
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