Meta’s fact-checking is also at risk in Europe

Meta could decide to put an end to its fact-checking program also in the EU and there are no automatic mechanisms that could prevent it or impose immediate sanctions, even if the procedures envisaged by the Digital service act would almost certainly be initiated to verify that social platforms effectively counter the spread of misinformation. This is what Tommaso Canetta, deputy director of Pagella Politica and Facta news, the organization that has been responsible for fact-checking on Facebook since 2018, said. “The Digital Service Act considers the spread of fake news to be a systemic risk” he told Agi on the day in which Meta announced that, starting from the United States, it will abandon the fact-checking system of information shared on Meta’s platforms, “and Facebook’s own guidelines provide for a tool of this type. But nothing stops Zuckerberg from ending the collaboration he has in many European countries and later facing the consequences.”

The ‘community notes’ system similar to that of The words with which Zuckerberg announced the end of the program in the USA, says the deputy director of Pagella Politica, do not bode well for the future of those in Europe. “We have to expect the worst” he explains, “the fact-checking mechanism is in itself a guarantee that there is no risk of censorship and Reading Zuckerberg talking about censorship is shocking“.

But how does fact-checking on Meta work?

“If a content presents inaccuracies or things that are demonstrably false, an article is written with links to primary sources” explains Canetta, “and it is not removed but a label is applied that says that that content, evaluated by independent entities, appears to be misleading At that point the reader has the option to continue and read it or go fact-checking.” Canetta’s reading of Zuckerberg’s decision is obviously political: “Taken in the aftermath of the American elections, it demonstrates its desire to reposition itself“. “But beyond the decision itself” he adds, “the arguments it brings are also false and misleading”.

The fact-checker community is ready to react: the two main associations – IFCN and EFCSN – “operate on the basis of very high standards of ethics and method” says Canetta and “the vast majority of the public seems to have a positive attitude, as the numbers from Meta reports also show“. “It is true” he concludes, “that there is a noisy minority that has always attacked us and accuses us of being censorious and politically aligned. But they are accusations that come from every political party and that plague our work with insults and threats that in some countries can make the climate particularly difficult”.