Meta ends fact-checking programme on Facebook, Instagram

The Facebook’s parent company, Meta has 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.

Penpushing reports that this announcement was made known on Tuesday, and 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.

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

Penpushing further reports that record has it 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.

The Meta’s Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in a video explained that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States of America (USA) 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. 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’, Zuckerberg said.

Penpushing also reports that he 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, and said the systems the company had created to moderate its platforms were making too many mistakes,

The Meta’s Chief Executive explained that the company would continue to aggressively moderate content related to drugs, terrorism and child exploitation, with assurance to build a lot of complex systems to moderate content.

“We built a lot of complex systems to moderate content, but the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. 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’, he stated

Penpushing further reports that Zuckerberg said beyond the end of the fact-checking programme, 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.

“The reality is that this is a trade-off. 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’, Zuckerberg stated.

Penpushing also reports that 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, while 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.

The company introduced its fact-checking programme in 2016 as part of an effort to curb misinformation, while the initiative was launched in response to criticism over Facebook’s role in spreading false claims during the 2016 United States of America (USA) Presidential election.

Penpushing reports that a 2023 statement from Meta said the fact-checking programme had expanded to include nearly 100 organisations working in more than 60 languages globally, while it is also on record that the company’s current fact-checking system had reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

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