Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the U.S. and replacing it with a system similar to the “Community Notes” on Elon Musk-owned X, the Facebook parent said on Tuesday.
The new model will allow users on Meta’s social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact-checking organizations and experts.
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to CBC News that the changes won’t apply in Canada or anywhere else outside of the U.S. for now.
“We are beginning with rolling out community notes in the [U.S.], and will continue to improve it over the course of the year before expansion to other countries,” the spokesperson said.
Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan wrote a blog post explaining the change.
“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,” Kaplan wrote. “A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.”
Kaplan added that its efforts over the years to manage content across its platforms have expanded “to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”
Changes partly due to Trump victory
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by political events, including Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
The company said it would begin phasing in community notes in the United States over the next couple of months and would improve the model over the course of the year.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context,” Kaplan said in the blog post.
Meta will also stop demoting fact-checked content and use a label notifying users there is additional information related to the post, instead of the company’s current method of displaying full-screen warnings that users have to click through before even viewing the post.
