Meta ditches third-party fact checking on Facebook and Instagram, goes the Elon Musk way with Community Notes

Meta

Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta has announced that it is ending third-party fact checking program on Facebook and Instagram. In a blog post, Meta said that “Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.” Meta said that the model will be expanded to other regions but hasn't given any specific timeline.

Community Notes model is the one which has been made popular by Elon Musk-owned social media platform X. Meta Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer, at Meta said, “We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.”

How will Community Notes work on Facebook and Instagram?

According to Meta, it will not write any Community Notes or, for that matter, decide which ones will show up. Similar to what X does, these notes will be written  written and rated by contributing users. “Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings,” Kaplan said.

Meta said that it wants “to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information.”

The tech giant’s move comes days before Donald Trump returns as the president of the United States.  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had recently met Trump over dinner at the Mar-a-lago resort.

Kaplan also said that Meta had reduced the political content on its platforms but it’s about to change. “We are going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads with a more personalized approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can,” he added.