Meta Opts for Community Notes Over Fact-Checking

Meta announced that it’s swapping out its third-party fact-checkers with a community-notes model over the next few months in hopes of fighting back against alleged bias and censorship.

The Big Picture: Meta is once again changing with the tide. After nearly a decade of trying to thwart extremism, hateful speech, and misinformation on its platforms, the company has decided that there appears to be more public sentiment — and political clout — in letting the community police itself.

Behind the Changes: CEO Mark Zuckerberg and newly installed global affairs officer Joel Kaplan announced several big changes to Meta’s content moderation protocols.

• Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will change from using third-party fact-checkers (which multiplied headcount over the past eight years) in favor of a community-notes model that Elon Musk’s X uses.
• The company is also moving its trust and safety team from California to Texas to avoid the appearance of bias or over-censorship. (Fun fact: Musk also moved X to Texas.)
• The platforms will also adjust their automated moderation filters to only search for illegal content or “high severity violations,” giving users more freedom to discuss sensitive topics such as “immigration” and “gender.”
• Additionally, the platform will allow more political content to appear on users’ timelines. People can customize how much they want to see.

The Future: In announcing the changes, Kaplan wrote that Meta platforms have “become too restrictive over time […] including about those kinds of sensitive topics […] that people want to discuss and debate.” While many will take issue with that (or simply see it as a “kiss the ring” gesture), it goes to show how social media platforms ebb and flow with the changes of the political guard. Only time will tell how that changes engagement on the platforms.