Beginning on Monday, fact-checking on Meta platforms in the United States will officially conclude. Joel Kaplan, recently appointed as the chief of global policy, announced this deadline on Friday via a post on X.
Kaplan stated, “By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, with no penalties attached.”
In early January, shortly before President Trump commenced his second term, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook, Instagram, and Threads would discontinue their fact-checking program in favor of Community Notes, similar to a model used by X. Zuckerberg justified this shift in content moderation by stating that the fact-checkers were too politically biased and had eroded more trust than they had built.
Meta’s new approach is intended to uphold free speech and address political censorship. However, civil rights and digital policy experts have expressed concerns that this change could lead to an increase in propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation on Meta platforms. This crowd-sourced method resembles the one introduced by X under Elon Musk. Nevertheless, following Musk’s takeover, there has been a noted increase in misinformation and hate speech on X.
Meta has initiated beta testing for Community Notes and is inviting users to register as contributors. To qualify as contributors, individuals must be over 18 years of age, have an account older than six months, and be in “good standing.”
It is reported that Community Notes will not apply to paid advertisements on Meta platforms, indicating that individuals or entities can pay to promote potentially controversial or offensive content. Coinciding with the fact-checking termination, Meta also discontinued its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and relaxed its policies on hate speech.
