On January 7, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will end its partnership with third-party fact-checking organizations on its social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
Third-party fact-checking organizations are independent groups that verify whether information shared online is factual to prevent the spread of misinformation. They work together with platforms to review content and provide accurate information. Now, however, fact-checking will fall to ordinary citizens through a feature called ‘Community Notes.’ The shift to the ‘Community Notes’ feature is similar to X’s decision to enforce user-driven content rather than using third-party fact-checking organizations. Concerns have arisen about how effective the Community Notes system would be, as users have expressed concerns about those who appear to be fact-checking actually promoting false information.
Tate Lam (III) reflects, “I thought that this [choice] could be both good and bad because Meta’s fact-checking algorithm has not been the most accurate, but ending it would allow more harmful things like hate speech and propaganda to happen. If they were to switch to Community Notes, [it would be] a good way to limit false information, but it does not completely get rid of the problem of false information.”
Zuckerburg claims that the election was a major influence on his decision to part ways with fact-checking on his social media platforms, resulting from his frustration with the Biden administration’s censorship of content. He believes that fact-checking organizations are biased when choosing what to moderate, and by getting rid of them, he hopes to ensure freedom of speech for everyone on his platforms.
This decision partially stems from Meta’s desire to avoid being regulated by the Trump administration, who often critiqued social media platforms’ fact-checking softwares for suppressing conservative speech.
Boston Latin School Classics teacher Mr. John Kerpan states, “A lot of pressure and scrutiny is going to be put on media and social media by Trump and his team. The fact that some of the richest Americans are trying to curry favor is revealing.”
The end of fact-checking on Meta platforms will leave a long-lasting impact, and as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more relevant, the distinction between truth and lie will start to fade. While it is currently still possible to tell the difference between AI and real images and videos, the evolution of AI will soon make the two indistinguishable. Without fact-checkers, people will have a harder time finding information that has not been altered.
Questions of uncertainty are raised by many. Tobias Damon (II) wonders, “Without systems in place to monitor false information, how will I know what to trust?”