The fact-checking partners say they were blindsided by the decision to axe them
The Global Impact of Mark Zuckerberg’s Misinformation on the Meta-Analytic Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and the X-Style Community Notes
Duke was disappointed to hear that Mark Zuckerberg accused the organizations in Meta’s US third-party fact-checking program of being politically biased. “Let me fact-check that. Lead Stories follows the highest standards of journalism and ethics required by the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles. We fact-check without regard to where on the political spectrum a false claim originates.”
“Meta didn’t owe fact-checkers anything, but it knows that by pulling this partnership it’s removing a very significant source of funding for the ecosystem globally,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped establish the first partnerships between fact-checkers and Facebook between 2015 and 2019 as director of the International Fact Checking Network.
The news organizations who had partnered with Meta to tackle the spread of disinformation on the platform from 2016 are scrambling to figure out how this change will impact them.
Duke says Lead Stories has a diverse revenue stream and most of its operations are outside of the US, but he claims the decision would still have an impact on them. Some experienced journalists will no longer be paid to research false claims found on Meta platforms because of this.
“We were blindsided by this,” Jesse Stiller, the managing editor of Meta fact-checking partner Check Your Fact, tells WIRED. His organization started working with Meta in 2019, and it has 10 people working in the newsroom. “This was totally unexpected and out of left field for us. We weren’t aware this decision was being considered until Mark dropped the video overnight.”
Meta partners with dozens of fact-checking organizations and newsrooms across the globe, 10 of which are based in the US, where Meta’s new rules will first be applied.
The news that Meta was no longer planning on using their services was announced in a blog post by chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan on Tuesday morning and an accompanying video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the company plans to rely on X-style Community Notes, which allow users to flag content that they think is inaccurate or requires further explanation.
It seems like the cautionary tale is X, rather than a North Star for Meta CEO. Advertisers and users have fled in droves because of Musk. Timelines are increasingly filled with far-right debate-me edgelord accounts that post a constant churn of misinformation. That’s just the owner. Meta made clear that this is the future it wants.
It seems less about commitment to ideals than it is a concerted effort to make nice with the conservatives, which is why Meta decided to abandon its efforts to counter claims of bias. If you don’t have any referees, you can’t work them.
Kaplan wrote that the fact-checking program had expanded to the point where they were making too many mistakes and getting in the way of free expression. We hope to fix that, and return to a fundamental commitment to free expression.
