Meta will replace 'biased' fact-checkers with user moderation

Meta is ditching standalone fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style “community notes” where comments on a post's accuracy are left up to users.

In the video posted next to a blog post On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said third-party reviewers were “too politically biased” and “it's time to return to our roots of free speech.”

The move comes as Zuckerberg and other tech executives seek to improve relations with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office later this month.

Trump and his Republican allies have criticized Meta's fact-checking policy, calling it censorship of right-wing voices.

After announcing the changes, Trump told a news conference that he was impressed by Zuckerberg's decision and said Meta had “come a long way.”

Asked whether Zuckerberg was “directly responding” to past threats from Trump, the incoming US president replied: “Maybe.”

Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican Successor from Sir Nick Clegg Meta's head of global affairs wrote that the company's reliance on independent moderators was “well-intentioned” but often led to censorship.

Activists against online hate speech were dismayed by the change and said the real motivation for the move was to get on Trump's right side.

“Zuckerberg’s statement is a blatant attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration, which will have harmful consequences,” said Ava Lee of Global Witness, a group that says it seeks to bring big Tech companies take responsibility.

She added: “Claims to avoid 'censorship' are a political move to avoid accountability for the hate and disinformation that platforms encourage and enable.”

Meta's current fact-checking program, launched in 2016, submits posts that appear false or misleading to an independent organization to assess their credibility.

Posts marked as inaccurate can have labels attached to provide more information to viewers and be moved lower in user feeds.

“First in the U.S.” will now be replaced by community notes.

Meta said it had “no immediate plans” to get rid of third-party fact-checkers in the UK or EU.

The new community notes system is copied from X, which was launched after it was acquired by Elon Musk and rebranded.

It involves people with different views agreeing on annotations to add context or clarification to controversial posts.

“It's cool,” he said of Meta's adoption of a similar mechanism.

After concerns were raised about self-harm and depression content, Mehta clarified that “the way we treat content that encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders will not change”.

Fact-checking group Full Fact, which is involved in Facebook's plans to fact-check posts in Europe, said it “refutes accusations of bias against its profession”.

Chris Morris, the agency's chief executive, described the change as a “disappointing step backwards that has the potential to have a chilling effect around the world”.

In addition to content moderators, fact-checkers sometimes describe themselves as the internet's emergency services.

But Meta bosses concluded that they had interfered too much.

“Too much harmless content is censored, too many people find themselves wrongfully imprisoned in 'Facebook jail,' and when they do, we are often too slow to respond,” Joel Kaplan wrote on Tuesday.

But Meta does seem to acknowledge there are some risks – Zuckerberg said in his video that the changes will mean “trade-offs.”

“This means we'll find fewer bad things, but we'll also reduce the number of innocent people's posts and accounts that we accidentally remove,” he said.

The approach is also at odds with recent regulation in the UK and Europe, where big tech companies are being forced to take more responsibility for the content they carry or face stiff penalties.

So it's perhaps not surprising that Meta is limiting this regulatory scope to the United States, at least for now.

Yuan It would also “eliminate mission creep” in rules and policies, the blog post said.

It added: “It's not right that things can be said on television or in the halls of Congress but not on our platforms.”

Meanwhile, technology companies and their executives are preparing for Trump's inauguration on January 20.

Several CEOs publicly congratulated Trump on his return to office, while others traveled to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to meet with the incoming president, including Zuckerberg in November. Meta also donated $1 million Trump's inaugural fund.

“The recent election also feels like a cultural turning point, once again prioritizing free speech,” Zuckerberg said in Tuesday's video.

Meta briefed the Trump team on the policy change ahead of the announcement, According to the New York Times.

Caplan replaces former Lib Dem deputy prime minister Sir Nick as the company's global affairs president, also seen as a sign of a shift toward moderation and changing political priorities.

The company also announced on Monday that Dana White, a close Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship chairman, would join its board of directors.

Kate Kronick, associate professor of law at St. John's University School of Law, said the changes reflect a trend that “seems inevitable over the past few years, especially since Musk acquired X.”

“The private governance of speech on these platforms has increasingly become a political focus,” she told BBC News.

She added that companies had previously faced pressure to build trust and safety mechanisms to deal with issues such as harassment, hate speech and disinformation, but there was now a “complete shift in the opposite direction”.