The next stage of Meta’s shift away from third-party fact-checking is now in effect, with Community Notes now beginning to appear across its apps.
As you can see in this example, the first of Meta’s Community Notes are now being displayed on selected posts, as it gradually rolls them out across its platforms.
As per Meta:
“Starting today, we’re ending our third-party fact checking program in the United States, and Community Notes will start to appear on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. This means that we will no longer show new fact check labels on content in the United States. Instead notes, written and rated by the growing community of contributors, will be published gradually as we continue to test our algorithm and internal systems in the coming weeks and months.”
Meta’s Global Affairs Chief Joel Kaplan flagged the coming change last Friday, announcing on X that:
“By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the U.S. will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers.”
Which was seemingly a key request from President Donald Trump, that Meta has seemingly adhered to in a bid to win favor from the commander-in-chief.
The reasons for that are varied, with Meta hoping that Trump will be able to help it push back against various fines and penalties in other nations, while also fending off regulation within AI development.
The next four years will be crucial in this respect, and by aligning with Trump, Meta’s making a business decision to ensure growth and expansion, even if that does increase the risk of misinformation and harm via its apps.
Which it is going to do.
Various reports have shown that Community Notes on X have continually failed to address many misleading claims. The main impediment on this front is that X’s Community Notes require agreement from people of opposing political perspectives in order for a note to be approved for display, which, for many divisive and misleading issues, simply will not happen. As such, many contested claims are allowed to remain unchallenged in the app, causing more confusion and angst.
And Meta’s also adopting that exact same approach, with measures in place to ensure cross-political consensus.
That particular element is a key reason why 85% of the Community Notes created on X are never displayed, which is a massive discrepancy in its contextual system.
It’s hard to see it working any better in Meta’s apps, and with 5x the overall audience reach of Elon Musk’s social app, it could end up being a much bigger problem at Meta’s scale.
But again, Zuck and Co. have made a business decision, and Community Notes are now being rolled out.
In four years’ time, we’ll probably be talking about what a mistake it was, but right now, Meta’s moving ahead.
