Facebook As A Speed bump in the Way of False Information: The Facebook Boss’s Takedown of the Facebook Misinformation’ Campaign
Meta is shifting responsibility to users to weed out lies on Facebook and other platforms, which could make it easier to spread misinformation about climate change, clean energy, public health risks and communities often targeted with violence.
The Facebook boss blamed the media for the moderation policy changes that were put in place after the election. “After Trump first got elected in 2016 the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg said. Even though we tried to address those concerns, the fact checkers have become too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created.
Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped set up the first partnerships between fact-checkers and Facebook between 2015 and now, says that Meta doesn’t owe them anything, but it is aware that pulling this partnership is removing a very significant source of funding for the community globally.
Poynter owns PolitiFact, which is one of the fact-checking partners Meta works with in the US. Holan was the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact before stepping into her role at IFCN. Holan says the fact-check program serves as a “speed bumps in the way of false information.” Content with a screen placed over it to let users know that the claim may not be right, asks whether they want to see it.
That process covers a broad range of topics, from false information about celebrities dying to claims about miracle cures, Holan notes. There was growing public concern about the potential for social media to amplify false rumors, like the pope endorsing Donald Trump in the presidential election, that year.
Zuck, Facebook, Meta: Disinformation is Harassing a Black and Transgender Leader: An Analysis of the Musk Effort at Meta
“Zuck’s announcement is a full bending of the knee to Trump and an attempt to catch up to [Elon] Musk in his race to the bottom. The implications are going to be widespread,” Nina Jankowicz, CEO of the nonprofit American Sunlight Project and an adjunct professor at Syracuse University who researches disinformation, said in a post on Bluesky.
Before Musk took over, the company launched its community moderation program called Birdwatch. Musk, who helped bankroll Trump’s campaign and is now set to lead the incoming administration’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” leaned into Community Notes after slashing the teams responsible for content moderation at Twitter. Hate speech — including slurs against Black and transgender people — increased on the platform after Musk bought the company, according to research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. (Musk then sued the center, but a federal judge dismissed the case last year.)
The announcement today says that it will get rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity that are the subject of political discourse and debate.
The changes at Meta are also being watched by scientists and environmental groups. “Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to abandon efforts to check facts and correct misinformation and disinformation means that anti-scientific content will continue to proliferate on Meta platforms,” Kate Cell, senior climate campaign manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement.
“I think this is a terrible decision … disinformation’s effects on our policies have become more and more obvious,” says Michael Khoo, a climate disinformation program director at Friends of the Earth. He points to attacks on wind power affecting renewable energy projects as an example.
Community Notes has been likened to fossil fuel industry marketing of recycling as a solution to plastic waste. In reality, recycled plastic isn’t really recycling and the pollution it causes is worse than we thought. The strategy also puts the onus on consumers to deal with a company’s waste. “[Tech] companies need to own the problem of disinformation that their own algorithms are creating,” Khoo tells The Verge.
Comments on a Change in Meta Rules to Openly Discuss Discrimination and Political Bias in the US: A Comment from Meta CEO Joel Kaplan
In a blog post announcing the news, Meta’s newly-appointed chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan said the decision was taken to allow more topics to be openly discussed on the company’s platforms. The change will affect moderation in the US.
Kaplan did not mention what topics would be covered by the new rules, though he promised to allow more speech by lifting restrictions on topics that are part of mainstream discourse.
New policies will make it easier for Meta to show more political content returning to people’s feed, as well as posts on other issues that have made a difference in the US culture wars over the last few years.
Ahead of last year’s high profile elections across the globe, Meta was criticized for taking a hands-off approach to content moderation related to those votes.
Kaplan criticized fact checkers for their “biases and perspectives” which resulted in over-moderation, and he also wrote about how too much content was fact checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate.
However WIRED reported last year that dangerous content like medical misinformation has flourished on the platform while groups like anti-government militias have utilized Facebook to recruit new members.
In a bid to remove bias, Zuckerberg said Meta’s in-house trust and safety team would be moving from California to Texas, which is also now home to X’s headquarters. “As we work to promote free expression, I think that will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Lead Stories has a diverse revenue stream but Duke claims it would still be affected by the decision. “The most painful part of this is losing some very good, experienced journalists, who will no longer be paid to research false claims found on Meta platforms,” Duke says.
The news organizations who had partnered with Meta to tackle the spread of disinformation on the platform from 2016 are scrambling to figure out how this change will impact them.
Meta partners with dozens of fact-checking organizations and newsrooms across the globe, 10 of which are based in the US, where Meta’s new rules will first be applied.
The news that Meta was no longer planning on using their services was announced in a blog post by chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan on Tuesday morning and an accompanying video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the company plans to rely on community notes, which allow users to flag content they think is incorrect or requires further explanation.
Alan Duke is the editor of fact-checking site Lead Stories and he claims that he heard the news the same way as everyone else. There was no advance notice.