Meta cancels its fact-checking system

Meta the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced today (Tuesday) a dramatic change in its content policy – the cancellation of the fact-checking system on social networks. The move, according to the American media, reflects an ideological change at the top of the company as well as a significant rapprochement between Mark Zuckerberg and the incoming Trump administration.

What is Meta’s fact-checking system?

Since 2016, and among other things following the fear of foreign interference in the American elections, Meta has operated an array of independent fact-checkers – journalists and recognized media organizations whose job it was to examine viral content and mark incorrect or misleading information. When a post was flagged as “false” or “misleading,” the platform limited its distribution and displayed a warning next to the content. Now, the company will move to a “community commenting” model, similar to the existing system on Elon Musk’s social network X.

In a video published today, the “Wall Street Journal” quotes Zuckerberg as saying: “We’re going back to our roots.” According to CNN, he added that “the current system has become too politically biased. What started as an attempt to protect users from false information has become a tool to silence legitimate opinions.” Similar words were also voiced by Kaplan, who said in an interview with Fox that the partnership with the fact-checkers “was initially well-intentioned, but was too politically biased.” The criticism of “political bias” echoes the claims of Trump, who over the years has accused social networks of “censoring” conservative voices.

Critics of the move warn that the cancellation of the fact-checking system could lead to a flood of false information and conspiracy theories on social networks. According to the CNN report, Zuckerberg himself admits that the new policy could lead to the appearance of more harmful content on the platform. “It’s a compromise,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying. “We will catch less problematic content, but we will also reduce the number of innocent posts that are accidentally blocked.” The company clarified that it will continue to enforce policies against illegal content such as terrorism, exploitation of minors, drugs and fraud.

The change in the fact-checking policy joins a number of steps from recent weeks that indicate a rapprochement with the Trump administration, according to a report in the “Wall Street Journal”. Among them, the fact that at the end of November Zuckerberg and Trump met for dinner at the Mar-a-Lago Club, and recently Meta donated a million dollars to the President-elect’s inauguration fund. At the same time, according to CNN, the company appointed Joel Kaplan, a senior Republican, to the position of head of the global affairs department, and added Dana White, president of the UFC and an avowed supporter of Trump, to the company’s board of directors. In addition, Meta decided to move the trust and safety teams from California to Texas, a move that Zuckerberg said was designed to “build trust in places where there is less concern about bias.”

“Pale Shadow of X”

The Israeli Internet Association responded: “potentially dramatic damage to users’ information security – to the point of possible shocks in democratic countries; It is possible that Facebook is on its way to becoming a pale shadow of X – and a fertile ground for spreading disinformation and offensive content.’

VP of Community at the Israel Internet Association, Idan Ring, and Nitzan Yas’or, Director of Disinformation at the Internet Association, explain: “The dramatic decision by the Meta company to abandon the important cooperation with professional fact-checking bodies and move to a mechanism of user comments, as has been customary on the X network for the past year, is very disturbing and endangers the safety of the information and users of meta platforms around the world and in Israel. In light of past experience, there is concern that this move actually constitutes Meta completely disclaims responsibility for the safety and reliability of the content distributed on the platform and throws it exclusively into the hands of the users without giving them real tools to do so.

“Instead of insisting on safety and reliability, Meta may become a pale shadow of X. The X network under Musk has become a more extreme, violent and inciting place – and much less safe for users. The fear now is that the announcement of the change in safety policies on Facebook and Instagram – which are much more popular in the world from X – will also turn them into less safe and less reliable environments and a fertile ground for spreading disinformation and offensive content that will shock many democratic countries”.