It’s a wild world out there on the internet. There’s no denying that. Sometimes, it’s wild in an awesome way, where people’s weird and wacky dreams can come true. But the truth is that determining fact from fiction on the internet has become incredibly difficult. And now, it’s about to get a little bit more tangled. Following on the heels of the model set by Elon Musk’s Twitter (we guess, if there were a time to call it X, it would be now), Meta has announced that it will remove its fact-checking systems from Facebook and Instagram and replace them with Community Notes.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the complicated fact-checking system Facebook had in place, which utilized independent third parties, made “too many mistakes,” had “too much censorship” and was “too politically biased.”
The Community Notes system will be slowly phased into the US over the next months as Fact Checking is phased out of Meta. Meta explains, “We plan to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact-checked content, and, instead of overlaying full-screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it.” Basically, though Community Notes will appear on content, they will not largely feature in a post. And also, the notes will be provided not by independent experts, but… by the community, whomever that might be.
Of additional note, a post from Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer at Meta, shares that in addition to the fact-checking updates, Meta will be “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.” Additionally, Meta’s trust and safety and content moderation teams will now shift from California to Texas, which mirrors Musk’s move of Twitter’s headquarters to the same state.
Make of all this what you will. And spend your time on the internet in places that make you feel safe and happy.
