Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checkers

Meta is abandoning the use of independent fact-checking organizations on Facebook and Instagram, opting instead for a “community notes” feature similar to that of X, where users comment on the accuracy of posts. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stated in a video and blog post on Tuesday that third-party auditors were “too politically biased” and that it was now time to “return to our roots of free expression.”

This move comes as Zuckerberg and other tech executives seek to improve relations with US President-elect Donald Trump, who is due to take office later this month. Trump and his Republican allies have criticized Meta’s fact-checking policies, calling them censorship of right-wing voices. Following the announcement of the changes, Trump stated at a press conference that he was impressed with Zuckerberg’s decision and believed that Meta had “made a lot of progress.”

When asked if Zuckerberg was “directly responding” to past threats made against him by Trump, the incoming US president replied, “Probably.” Meta’s head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, is taking over from Sir Nick Clegg. Kaplan wrote that the company’s reliance on independent auditors was “well-intentioned” but often led to over-censorship.

Campaigners against online hate speech have expressed dismay at the change, arguing that it is effectively motivated by a desire to appease the Trump administration. “Zuckerberg’s announcement is a blatant attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration, which will have harmful effects,” said Ava Lee of Global Witness, which describes itself as dedicated to holding big tech companies accountable. “The claim to be avoiding ‘censorship’ is a political move designed to evade responsibility for the platform’s encouragement and amplification of hate and disinformation,” she added.

Meta’s current fact-checking program, launched in 2016, submits posts that appear false or misleading to independent organizations for credibility assessment. Posts flagged as inaccurate may have labels attached, providing more information to viewers, and are demoted in users' feeds. This mechanism will now be replaced by community notes, initially in the US. Meta says it has “no immediate plans” to drop its third-party fact-checkers in the UK or the EU.

The new community notes system is copied from X, which introduced it after being bought and rebranded by Elon Musk. It involves people with differing viewpoints agreeing on notes that add context or clarify controversial posts. “That’s cool,” Musk said of Meta adopting a similar mechanism. Following concerns raised about self-harm and depression content, Meta clarified that “the way we treat content that encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders will not change.”

Full Fact, a fact-checking organization involved in Facebook’s post-verification scheme in Europe, said it “refutes accusations of bias in its profession.” The agency’s chief executive, Chris Morris, described the change as “a disappointing and retrograde step that could have a chilling effect globally.” In addition to content moderators, fact-checkers sometimes call themselves the internet’s first aid service. But Meta executives have concluded that they were intervening too much.

“Too much harmless content was being censored, too many people found themselves wrongly in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we were often too slow to react when they were,” wrote Joel Kaplan on Tuesday. But Meta appears to acknowledge some risk in this – Zuckerberg said in his video that the changes mean “a trade-off.” “It means we’ll catch less bad stuff, but it also means we’ll remove less posts and accounts of innocent people by mistake,” he said.

The move also goes against recent regulations in the UK and Europe, where large tech companies are being compelled to take more responsibility for the content they publish or face hefty fines. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that Meta’s abandonment of this regulation is limited to the US, at least for now. Meta’s blog post stated that it would also be “winding down mission creep on rules and policies.” “It is unfair that things that can be said on TV or in the halls of Congress cannot be said on our platform,” it added.

Meanwhile, tech companies and their executives are preparing for Trump’s inauguration on 20 January. Some chief executives have publicly congratulated Trump on his return to office, while others have travelled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to meet the incoming president, including Zuckerberg in November. Meta has also donated $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund. “The recent election also feels like a cultural turning point, again prioritizing free speech,” said Zuckerberg in his video on Tuesday.

The New York Times reported that Meta had informed Trump’s team of the policy change before it was announced. Kaplan’s replacement of former Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick as the company’s president of global affairs is also being interpreted as a signal of the company’s shift in attitude towards moderation and its changing political priorities. The company also announced on Monday that Dana White, a close ally of Trump and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, would be joining its board.

Kate Klonick, an associate professor at St John’s University School of Law, said the changes reflected a trend “that has seemed inevitable over the past few years, particularly since Musk’s acquisition of X.” “The private governance of speech on these platforms is increasingly becoming a political issue,” she told BBC News. She added that where companies had faced pressure in the past to build trust and safety mechanisms to deal with harassment, hate speech, and disinformation, “there’s now a radical shift in the exact opposite direction.”