Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the United States and replacing it with a system similar to “Community Ratings” on Elon Musk-owned X, Facebook’s parent company announced Tuesday.
The new model will allow users of Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads social media sites to flag posts that are potentially misleading and require more context, rather than putting the onus on independent fact-checking organizations and experts.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to CBC News that the changes will not apply to Canada or elsewhere outside the United States at this time.
“We are starting by deploying community notes in the [U.S.]and we will continue to improve it over the year before expanding it to other countries,” the spokesperson said.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s director of global affairs, wrote a blog post explaining the change.
“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This was reflected in the choices some made about what to verify and how,” Kaplan wrote. “A program intended to inform has too often become a tool of censorship.”
Kaplan added that its efforts over the years to manage content on its platforms have expanded “to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often hindering the freedom of expression we wish to enable.”
Changes due in part to Trump’s victory
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that the changes are partly triggered by political events, including Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.
“The recent election also appears to be a cultural shift toward a new priority on speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
The company said it will begin phasing in community ratings in the United States over the coming months and will improve the model over the course of the year.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X, where they allow their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and require more context,” Kaplan said in the blog post.
Meta will also stop demoting verified content and use a label alerting users to the presence of additional information related to the post, instead of the company’s current method of displaying full-screen warnings that users must click before even consulting the publication.
