Meta ends fact-checking programme on Facebook, Instagram

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on Tuesday announced a series of changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking programme instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media platforms.

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PREMIUM TIMES reports that the changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest social media platforms in the world, each boasting billions of users, as well as Threads.

Instead of using news organisations and other third-party groups for fact-checking on its social networking sites, Meta will now rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.

The New York Times reported that the reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for Donald Trump‘s presidency in the weeks before it begins.

Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.

“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

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“More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US.”

Mr Zuckerberg pointed to the election as a major influence on the company’s decision and criticised “governments and legacy media” for allegedly pushing “to censor more and more.”

He also said the systems the company had created to moderate its platforms were making too many mistakes, adding that the company would continue to aggressively moderate content related to drugs, terrorism and child exploitation.

“We built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes,” Mr Zuckerberg said. “Even if they accidentally censor just 1 per cent of posts, that’s millions of people, and we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

Beyond the end of the fact-checking programme, Mr Zuckerberg said the company will eliminate some content policies around hot-button issues including immigration and gender, and refocus the company’s automated moderation systems on what he called “high severity violations” and rely on users to report other violations.

Mr Zuckerberg then conceded that there would be more “bad stuff” on the platform as a result of the decision. “The reality is that this is a trade-off,” he said. “It means that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”

Multiple studies have shown that interventions like Facebook’s fact-checks were effective at reducing belief in falsehoods and reducing how often such content is shared.

A study published last year in the journal Nature Human Behaviour showed that warning labels, like those used by Facebook to caution users about false information, reduced belief in falsehoods by 28 per cent and reduced how often the content was shared by 25 per cent.

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Meta introduced its fact-checking programme in 2016 as part of an effort to curb misinformation. The initiative was launched in response to criticism over Facebook’s role in spreading false claims during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

A 2023 statement from Meta said the fact-checking programme had “expanded to include nearly 100 organisations working in more than 60 languages globally.”