Facebook fact-checking to be replaced with X-style community notes
FILE - The Facebook application on the Apple Inc. App Store arranged on a smartphone in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the U.S. and replacing it with a Community Notes model similarly used on Elon Musk’s X.
Meta said in a blog post that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, "has gone too far."
"Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in "Facebook jail," and we are often too slow to respond when they do," Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said.
Meta is pivoting to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
Meta had been using independent third-parties for fact checking but said the program is ending because the experts had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.
"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.
Community notes will be solely written and rated by users.
The model will be phased in the US first over the next couple of months, Meta said.
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Additionally, Meta is rolling back restrictions on some political speech that would have gotten flagged previously.
"We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate. It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms," Kaplan said.
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 Source: Information in this article was taken from a Jan. 7, 2025, Meta blog post. This story was reported from Detroit.