Meta Replaces Fact-Checkers with Content Moderators

The social networking technology giant will stop utilizing third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to postings. President-elect Trump and his supporters are probably going to like it and this is coming just as Trump’s election has been certified in readiness for him to take power on the 20th of January. 

Meta said on Tuesday that it was ending its longstanding fact-checking program, a policy instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps, in a stark sign of how the company was repositioning itself for the Trump presidency and throwing its weight behind unfettered speech online.

Citing a changing political and social scene and a commitment to support free speech, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, made a number of significant changes to the company’s moderation policies and practices on Tuesday.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said it would now allow more speech, rely on its users to correct inaccurate and false posts, and take a more personalized approach to political content. It described the changes with the language of regret, saying it had strayed too far from its values over the previous decade.

In a video announcing the changes, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression.” “It’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he continued, referring to the company’s fact-checking mechanism.

According to Zuckerberg, Meta will discontinue its program of fact-checking with reliable partners and switch to a community-driven mechanism like X’s Community Notes. He also went ahead to acknowledge that the choice will result in more “bad stuff” on the platforms. “This is a trade-off in reality,” he stated. “It means that we will catch less bad stuff, but we will also take down fewer posts and accounts belonging to innocent people by accident.”

According to Zuckerberg, the business is also reversing modifications that decreased the quantity of political content in user feeds and modifying its content control guidelines regarding political subjects.

Few large corporations have made as much of an effort to win over Donald J. Trump since his election in November. During his first presidency, Trump accused social media platforms of stifling conservative viewpoints. In reaction to what Mr. Zuckerberg referred to as a “cultural tipping point” signalled by the election, Meta has made a number of statements during this presidential transition period that significantly alter its approach.

Following their November dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Trump received a $1 million donation from Meta to help fund Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Joel Kaplan, the top Meta executive most closely aligned with the Republican Party, was promoted to the company’s highest policy position last week by Mr. Zuckerberg. Additionally, Mr. Zuckerberg announced on Monday that Dana White, the leader of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a Trump ally, would become a board member of Meta.

A source familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity claimed that Meta executives recently alerted Trump officials on the policy shift. At the same time as the fact-checking announcement, Mr. Kaplan appeared on “Fox & Friends,” one of Mr. Trump’s favourite shows, and claimed that Meta’s fact-checking program had “too much political bias.”

Mr. Trump claimed that Meta had “come a long way” and that he had seen Mr. Kaplan’s Fox appearance and considered it “impressive.” Mr. Trump added that the threats he had made on the firm and Mr. Zuckerberg was “probably” the reason behind Meta’s move.

Mr. Trump claimed that Meta had “come a long way” and that he had seen Mr. Kaplan’s Fox appearance and considered it “impressive.” Mr. Trump added that the threats he had made on the firm and Mr. Zuckerberg was “probably” the reason behind Meta’s move.

After observing “this approach work on X,” Meta said on Tuesday that it will likewise use a Community Notes program. Mr. Zuckerberg further stated that his business would operate its content moderation, trust, and safety operations in the United States from Texas rather than California “to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”

During his Fox appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Kaplan denied that anyone was influencing Mr. Zuckerberg’s decisions.

“There is no doubt that Mark is the source of everything that occurs at Meta,” said Mr. Kaplan. “I believe Elon has played a tremendously important role in advancing the debate and getting people refocused on free expression,” he said.

Researchers who study misinformation noted that Meta’s choice to stop fact-checking was extremely alarming. Mr. Zuckerberg is “reopening the floodgates to the exact same surge of hate, disinformation, and conspiracy theories that caused Jan. 6 — and that continue to spur real-world violence,” said Nicole Gill, a founder and executive director of the digital watchdog group Accountable Tech.

Following the incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Facebook banned Mr. Trump’s account for encouraging violence, but eventually allowed him to re-enter. Since then, numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of treatments like Facebook’s fact-checks in lowering the prevalence of misleading information being shared and decreasing belief in it.

However, Meta’s action delighted Mr. Trump’s conservative supporters, many of whom have disapproved of Meta’s habit of tagging dubious or misleading content with warnings or disclaimers. In a post on X, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, stated that Meta “finally admits to censoring speech” and referred to the move as “a huge win for free speech.”

Other Republicans didn’t believe it. In a post on X, Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn said that Meta’s move was “a ploy to avoid being regulated.”

Mr. Trump’s 2016 election victory served as the impetus for Meta’s fact-checking policy. Facebook was criticized at the time for allowing false information to spread unchecked over its network, including posts from foreign governments hoping to incite conflict among Americans.

Following intense public pressure, Mr. Zuckerberg enlisted the help of outside groups like ABC News, The Associated Press, and the fact-checking website Snopes, as well as other international groups approved by the International Fact-Checking Network, to review posts on Facebook and Instagram that might be inaccurate or misleading and determine whether they should be removed or annotated.

Over the following eight years, the firm invested billions of dollars, employed thousands of people, and committed vast amounts of technological resources to resolving content moderation difficulties. Mr. Zuckerberg hired over a dozen outside companies to assist with post policing, including a horde of contractors from companies such as Accenture to handle a large portion of the manual post review process.

Given that about half of the world’s population frequently posts to one or more of Meta’s applications, Mr. Zuckerberg again emphasized the significance of artificial intelligence in addressing many of these problems.

Given that about half of the world’s population frequently posts to one or more of Meta’s applications, Mr. Zuckerberg again emphasized the significance of artificial intelligence in addressing many of these problems.

However, according to two people close to the CEO, Mr. Zuckerberg became irritated over time with the lack of recognition the business received for its efforts to combat false information. They claimed that he believed the endeavour was yielding declining returns on the time and work Meta had invested in it.

In a 2019 lecture at Georgetown University, Mr. Zuckerberg voiced this displeasure, stating that he did not want his social network to act as “an arbiter of speech.” Facebook was created to offer people a voice, he added, and those who attacked the corporation for doing so were leading by example.

In a letter to Congress last year, Mr. Zuckerberg expressed his public remorse for the pressure the Biden administration put on him to remove content about COVID-19. Mr. Zuckerberg claimed in the letter that the administration went too far in its demands to remove content, “including humor and satire.” He claimed that in retrospect, Meta ought to have resisted the White House’s demands more.

As part of a broader corporate cost-cutting initiative, Meta started to whittle down some of its policy and content moderation staff by 2022. On a regular basis, the business keeps making strategic cuts.

The elimination of limitations on subjects like immigration and gender identity that Mr. Zuckerberg claimed were “out of touch with mainstream discourse” was one of the adjustments that were announced on Tuesday. Meta announced that, in response to user signals about what they wanted to see in their feeds, it would start rolling out more tailored political content.

Mr. Zuckerberg has also changed as a person. He has been closer to Mr. White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in recent years and has become fully submerged in the conservative world of professional combat. According to two people familiar with his thinking, he has grown weary of the ongoing criticism of him and his business and has found it frustrating to deal with Mr. Biden’s aggressive efforts to control the tech sector.

Above all, Meta is now able to escape the Sisyphean burden of keeping an eye on the billions of posts that pass through its applications because of the impending Trump administration and its emphasis on free expression.

On Fox, Mr. Kaplan stated, “We have a new administration coming in that is a huge supporter of free expression and far from pressuring companies to censor.” “It returns us to the principles upon which Mark established the business.”