Why Meta’s fact-checking removal could harm democracy and public trust
In what was a tumultuous week of news for social media networks, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta will be shutting down its independent fact-checking program in order to cut down on the “censorship” that the program’s implementation allegedly promoted.
Unfortunately for most of its users, Meta’s decision to distance itself from its independent fact-checking program will allow misinformation to fester and divide its platform — the exact opposite of what Meta is trying to achieve.
The decision, at least to popular speculation, is an attempt to both appease the incoming Trump administration and to limit the potential regulation that Trump might try to enact against Meta. It is important to note that Trump has feuded with Zuckerberg in the past, but has complimented Zuckerberg for closing Meta’s fact-checking program in a recent press conference.
In general, Meta’s removal of its fact-checking program is a win for conservatives, who have long criticized Zuckerberg for his alleged censorship against Meta’s right-wing users. This supposed idea that right-wing accounts get censored more is because right-wing accounts are often responsible for more misinformation than their left-wing counterparts, leading to the politically asymmetrical enforcement of Meta’s rules.
One thing is evident regardless of whether Zuckerberg intended to extend an olive branch to the Trump administration. The people who will be harmed by Meta’s actions will be marginalized groups.
Another change made to Meta’s policies is the removal of restrictions regarding figures of speech that were considered harmful, with the changes mainly affecting speech that can be directed at women, immigrants, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. This change was another clear concession to the Trump administration, with the content guideline changes eerily similar to the moderation policies of X, owned by Trump cohort Elon Musk.
This change in Meta’s moderation policy only hurts its users, not helps. There is no needed reason for someone on Meta to share hate speech about transgender people’s or women’s lifestyles. Meta’s guideline changes will only create further division and will again put marginalized communities at risk.
Meta proposes replacing his fact-checking program with X’s community notes model to help limit its supposed political bias and censorship. Meta and Zuckerberg fail to realize that the community notes' users will be just as biased, if not more so, than the independent fact-checkers.
The community notes system has some other blemishes, too. Regarding fact-checking content outside the US, the community notes system is typically unreliable and takes longer to appear under viral posts than independently sourced fact-checking. The evidence that the community volunteers normally cite for their fact-checks comes from the same independent fact-checking organizations that Meta just cut.
The only positives of a community notes system? It is cheap.
Indeed, the community notes system is less expensive than outsourcing contracts for independent fact-checkers. Still, as a multi-billion dollar company with an obscene amount of influence in American politics and abroad, Meta has to be responsible and understand that they need to spend money to protect its users.
A lot of questions arise when thinking critically about this situation. Why have we, as a society, decided that truth is censorship? Why is fact-checking misinformation under a post called censorship but promoting hate toward the gay community an unfortunate but necessary process of American free speech? How does it help Meta’s users eliminate barriers to hate speech? These questions have easy solutions but will sadly never be answered due to the political pressure on Meta.
While Meta has broken the trust of its users with Meta’s most recent actions, the best remedy would be the easiest option. Meta should keep its independent fact-checkers and reverse its changes to its content guidelines. It is not too late to do the right thing.