Meta ends fact-checking programme for Facebook

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has announced that it will be ending its fact-checking programme in the U.S. Instead, Meta will introduce a “Community Notes” system, similar to the one used on X (formerly Twitter).

The new model will allow users on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads to highlight posts that may be misleading and require additional context, shifting the responsibility away from independent fact-checking organizations and experts.

“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Meta explained that biases and perspectives of experts influenced their fact-checking decisions, which sometimes led to censorship rather than providing information.

The fact-checking programme, which began in 2016, involved third-party fact-checkers, including mostly news organizations, who verified and responded to posts on Meta’s platforms. One such partner was Dubawa, a Nigerian non-profit part of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development.

Meta said its content management efforts had grown to the point of causing too many mistakes, frustrating users, and hindering free expression.

The company plans to roll out Community Notes in the U.S. over the next few months and improve the system throughout the year. Additionally, Meta will stop demoting fact-checked content and will instead use labels to notify users of additional information related to posts, replacing the current method of full-screen warnings.

“We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias,” the company said.

The company did not say it will end the programme elsewhere, including Africa, yet. Meta said it has no plans to end fact-checking in the EU, according to POLITICO.

What Meta said:

When we launched our independent fact checking program in 2016, we were very clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth. We made what we thought was the best and most reasonable choice at the time, which was to hand that responsibility over to independent fact checking organizations. The intention of the program was to have these independent experts give people more information about the things they see online, particularly viral hoaxes, so they were able to judge for themselves what they saw and read.

That’s not the way things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how. Over time we ended up with too much content being fact checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. Our system then attached real consequences in the form of intrusive labels and reduced distribution. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.   

We are now changing this approach. We will end the current third party fact checking program in the United States and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program. We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.

• Once the program is up and running, Meta won’t write Community Notes or decide which ones show up. They are written and rated by contributing users. 
• Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings.
• We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information.
• People can sign up today (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) for the opportunity to be among the first contributors to this program as it becomes available. 

We plan to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact checked content and, instead of overlaying full screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it.