Meta’s fact-checking program is coming to an end, after it was announced the company will be moving toward community notes similar to X.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on social media the company will “getting back to its roots on free expression” across its Facebook and Instagram platforms.
“There’s been widespread debate about potential harms from online content,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcement, “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political, but there’s also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there — drugs, terrorism, child exploitation — these are things that we take very seriously, and I want to make sure that we handle responsibly.”
Zuckerberg went on to say the company “built a lot of complex systems to moderate content,” but noted these systems can sometimes make mistakes, further pointing out there have now been “too many mistakes” and “too much censorship.”
According to Zuckerberg, fact-checkers will be replaced with Community Notes similar to X, and the roll out will begin first in the U.S., with the CEO noting legacy media wrote “nonstop” that misinformation is a threat to democracy and has done so since President-elect Donald Trump was first elected in 2016.
“We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said.
The community notes will be phased into the company’s systems, as well as a more simplified policies around content. There will be less restrictions on specific topics like immigration and gender, which Zuckerberg said was “out of touch with mainstream discourse.” Furthermore, in the companies quest to become more inclusive, Zuckerberg admits this has done the opposite and has instead shut down opposing opinions.
Filters used by the company to scan content, will also now focus more on illegal and “high severity” violations, while “lower severity” violations will have no action taken until it is reported directly to the company.
Meta’s U.S.-based Trust and Safety Moderation Teams are going to be relocated from California to Texas, and Zuckerberg said he will be working with Trump to push back against foreign governments who are going after American companies and pushing for stricter censorship.
“The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. … The only way we can push back on this trend, is with the support of the U.S. government,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg further said during the past four years under President Joe Biden, the government has been pushing the company to censor more content, and in turn, has emboldened other nations to also pursue more censorship.
“The bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people voice,” Zuckerberg said.
