Meta Abandons Third-Party Fact-Checking for Type X Community Ratings. Some Claim It’s Become “Full MAGA”
In a movement seen by some like an olive branch to the president-elect Donald Trump, Meta said Tuesday it would remove the third-party fact-checking program that was in place since 2016 in the United States in favor of a Community Notes initiative, similar to that used on X (formerly Twitter).
Joel Kaplan, who was promoted to director of global affairsthe company’s top political job last week, replacing outgoing Nick Clegg, said in a blog post that the goal is to provide context from “people with a wide range of perspectives.” Community Notes will be written and rated by contributing users, with Meta having no part in the process or determining which ones appear. The blog post details other changes to how the platform handles high and low severity violations.
“The reality is this is a trade-off,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an accompanying video. “This means we’ll detect fewer bad things, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally delete.”
“I think it’s safe to say that no one predicted this Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter would become a trend that other technology platforms would follow, and yet here we are,” Damian Rollison, director of market research at artificial intelligence platform SOCi, told ADWEEK. “We can see now in retrospect that Musk set a standard for a newly conservative approach to relaxing online content moderation – an approach that Meta has now adopted before the new Trump administration. »
Meta is also removing restrictions on civic content on topics like gender, gender identity, and immigration on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, as well as limiting changes the company introduced in 2021 to reduce amoYount political content that users see.
The Trump effect
Reactions within the industry directly link Meta’s policy change to Trump’s election victory.
Journalist, podcast host and political commentator Saagar Enjeti said Zuckerberg’s video: “I highly recommend watching it in full, because tonally it’s one of the greatest indications that ‘elections have consequences’ I’ve ever seen.”
“The move will please conservatives, who have often criticized Meta for censoring speech, but it will scare many liberals and advertisers, showing just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go to get Trump’s approval,” Jasmine Enberg said. senior analyst at Emarketer, in an email.
This shift began nearly a year before the vote, when Meta lifted its ban on ads questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in which current President Joe Biden delayed Trump’s candidacy to a second term.
Kaplan debuted the Zuckerberg video during an appearance on Fox News’ Fox & Friends, The New York Times reported, adding that officials in the new administration were alerted to the changes before Tuesday’s announcement.
In the weeks following Trump’s victory, Zuckerberg met Trump and potential Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida; donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund; Promoted Republican Party ally Kaplan; and added a Trump ally Dana WhiteCEO of the UFC, on the company’s board of directors.
The Real Facebook Oversight Boardan accountability organization unaffiliated with the company, said the changes announced Tuesday represent Meta’s move toward “full MAGA” and “political pandering,” adding in a statement: “Meta’s announcement today is a retreat from any sensible and safe approach to content moderation. »
Too many mistakes
However, Kaplan argued that the motivation behind the move was to reduce errors when content is mistakenly removed or when users find themselves in “Facebook jail” with little recourse and slow response times. Kaplan noted that although Meta removed “millions of pieces of content every day” as of December 2024, representing less than 1% of posts on its surfaces each day, he now estimates that “one to two in 10 removals” were errors.
Kaplan said the goal of launching independent third-party fact-checking in 2016 was a desire by then-Facebook to avoid being “the arbiters of truth,” and it was the best solution at the time, but experts “have their own biases and perspectives,” which led to fact-checking of too many legitimate political speeches and debates.
People can sign up via Facebook, Instagram and Threads to be part of the first group of contributors to Community Notes, which Meta plans to gradually introduce over the next two months in the United States.
The big picture
The policy changes will be a blow to researchers working to hold platforms accountable for what they host, said journalist Jane Lytvynenko, who currently works in kyiv, Ukraine, for the Wall Street Journal. posted on Bluesky.
But don’t expect an exodus of X-type advertisers.
Enberg added: “The massive size and power of Meta’s advertising platform somewhat insulates it from a Exodus of Type X users and advertisers. But any significant drop in engagement could hurt Meta’s advertising business, given the intense competition for users and ad dollars.
