Meta is going to stop having fact-checked posts on Facebook and Instagram in the United States. Here’s what you need to know about it.
In late 2016, Meta, which was then still called Facebook, set up a program to ensure that outside experts started checking posts for truth. The idea was that that way fewer posts would appear on the company’s social media that contained things that weren’t true.
Meta reported yesterday that it is going to discontinue that system. This is because the company believes that experts have their own “biases and perspectives,” which too often would have led to errors. Moreover, it would interfere with freedom of expression on Meta’s platforms. Therefore, the company is taking a different approach from now on.
Meta took inspiration from X
Meta is now going to do pretty much the same thing as X, Elon Musk’s social medium. From now on, users can post so-called Community Notes to messages that may not be correct. This way it should still be possible to make it clear that messages are incorrect.
In a press release that Meta published about the new move, the company is very critical of itself. The previous system really doesn’t work well anymore, is the tone. Too much innocent content is censored, too many people are unfairly imprisoned in the “Facebook jail” and we often respond too slowly.”
Community Notes should start to fix it
Instead, the company is very positive about the new system with Community Notes. “We’ve seen that this approach works on X, where it allows users to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people with diverse perspectives decide what context is useful for other users to see.”
Meta writes that it plans to introduce Community Notes in the United States in the coming months. During the rest of the year, the company says it will continue to work continuously to improve the new system. We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.
