Meta Platforms will end third-party fact checking on its social media platforms in the US, letting users comment on posts’ accuracy with a community notes system it said will promote free expression.
Content moderation systems across the company’s platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads, have “gone too far” and are blocking users’ free expression too often, Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in a blog post on Tuesday.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail’, and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” said Kaplan, a former adviser to the George W Bush White House who was named head of global affairs this month. The company will also make it easier for people who want to see more political posts to get additional content on their feeds.
The move to remove the system that was set up in 2016 to combat viral hoaxes aligns Meta more closely with Elon Musk’s X, which also relies on user notes to police accuracy on the site. US President-elect Donald Trump, who was temporarily banned from Facebook in the wake of the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot, has called the platform “an enemy of the people” and accused the tech company of censoring conservative voices. Trump’s account was reinstated in 2023.
Fact checkers’ biases showed up “in the choices some made about what to fact check and how” and too much legitimate political debate was muted, Kaplan said. One or two out of every 10 posts removed last month may have been taken down in error, he said in the post.
Read: Nick Clegg is stepping down at Meta
It may be more risky to remove fact checkers in the rest of the world, particularly Europe, where Meta is subject to European Union regulations requiring it to combat misinformation. The EU requires large platforms to actively cull deceptive political content and disinformation or risk heavy fines under the Digital Services Act. — Amy Thomson, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP
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