This week, Meta announced that it would be ending relationships with its vast global network of fact-checking partners – organizations like Factcheck.org, Politifact, and the Associated Press that have been flagging falsehoods on the platform since 2017. In making the announcement, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed these partners were making “mistakes” and engaging in “censorship” and that it was time to “restore free expression” across Meta properties.
Platforms, journalists, civil society organizations and regular folks have long relied on fact-checkers to debunk the falsehoods polluting our information ecosystem. These journalists are trained to research claims and report the facts in accordance with standards set by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and its European counterpart, the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN). All of Meta’s fact-checking partners were IFCN-approved; none took down content themselves.
So what went awry with what’s likely the world’s most robust fact-checking operation? Let’s examine Zuckerberg’s claims.
As with any system, mistakes – misguided shadow bans, for example – are inevitable by humans and Meta’s automated systems alike. Neither is perfect, and each has biases; the goal in fact-checking is to mitigate those biases as much as possible in researching content, with the help of training and proven approaches that are the purview of IFCN and EFCSN. If you want to verify something, trained fact-checkers are the best we’ve got.
Claims that conservative voices are being censored, meanwhile, have been hammering the platforms for years, especially after then-candidate Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram after the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. You’ll recall that Zuckerberg called the risks associated with Trump’s posts too great, writing, "The current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government." YouTube removed similar content at the time.
Politics were a factor when Meta’s content moderation program was established. Then-Facebook staffed it, hired external fact-checkers and set up its Oversight Board after the 2016 election, when it was revealed the platform was part of a Russian propaganda scheme to influence the race and a key vector in spreading misinformation about both candidates. An excellent read for context is the January 7 issue of Platformer, which also quotes Meta employees’ concerns, particularly about weakening restrictions on hate speech and shifting the reporting burden to users.
Content moderation is complicated, and platforms have learned lessons from the bans, yet the hand-wringing about censorship continues. It comes up in the workshops I lead and in conversations with conservative friends, who cite Zuckerberg’s testimonies or the debunked but still influential “Twitter Files” (see this Factcheck.org piece!)
I respond by saying that claims of censorship are convenient as they’re almost impossible to refute. They’ve been used to attack mainstream media, higher education, government agencies, and officials and even to erode our trust in one another. Rebuttal is weak or absent because no person or entity is 100 percent neutral, and there’s nothing like an accusation of discrimination to trigger a righteous response and deepen our divides. If you’re looking to dig dirt or scapegoat, censorship claims are gifts that keep on giving.
What matters is that Meta’s announcement mirrors Elon Musk’s blatant partisanship during the presidential campaign; it mentioned partnering with the Trump administration even as Zuckerberg claimed fealty to the First Amendment, which protects our speech from government involvement. It’s no coincidence that it came just after the four-year anniversary of the Capitol attack and vote certification or that the news broke on Fox and Friends.
Meta’s shift to a Community Notes-style function for fact-checking matters, too. If you sign up as a Community Notes contributor on X, as I have, you’ll see prompts on posts that are simply people’s opinions, not content that needs to be verified, thus morphing fact-checking into a crowd-sourced debate. To make the loss of resources worse, Zuckerberg didn’t just fire the fact-checkers (only the U.S.-based organizations, by the way). He discredited them – at a time when people were desperate for their help. When I reference the fact-checking outlets in my presentations, people scribble notes or take photos every time.
The clear partisan collusion among three of the most powerful individuals in the world – Zuckerberg, Musk, and Trump – is the epitome of bias. It eclipses any nudging about COVID misinformation by the outgoing administration. We see Musk’s political and ideological commentary all over X, aided by the algorithm he controls. Zuckerberg’s portfolio, used by the majority of the world, is at risk of being clogged with false and harmful narratives. Algorithmic bias toward right-leaning content seems likely – a problem since studies show more low-quality information is shared by the right at present. All three leaders have made a practice of attacking or downranking quality information sources. You can’t advocate for freedom of expression and against standards-based journalism; the First Amendment protects both.
We were brought up on the notion that checks and balances are good. Yet, now we have a U.S.-based trio that basically owns, literally and figuratively, the global communications infrastructure and, with their partners, will dominate the information ecosystem for generations to come – with one less system of checks and without the balance of nonpartisan media leadership. Simply canceling your Meta or X accounts won’t help the people who rely on Facebook groups for support, the organizations that do business there, or the municipalities that use them for rapid-response communication.
I’d like to celebrate a positive change in the announcement – reintroducing “civic content” – but am distracted by feeling like we’re headed toward a propaganda-producing oligarchy, like Russia has. Whether we reject or cheer this trio and their politics, we must ask – is that really the best thing for America and the world?
Deanna Troust is the founder and president of Truth in Common, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to restore fact-based decision-making and respectful discourse through community-based workshops, professional development, and advisory services for mission-driving organizations. Learn more at truthincommon.org.
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