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Introduction
NEW YORK, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said on Tuesday it's scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk's social media platform X. Starting in the United States, Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties.
Reason for Change
The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact-checked. Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model. "We've seen this approach work on X, where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context," Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post.
Policy Shift
The social media company also said it plans to allow "more speech" by lifting some restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discussion in order to focus on illegal and "high severity violations" such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, and drugs. Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms had "gone too far," made "too many mistakes," and censored too much content. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by Donald Trump's presidential election.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the shift from fact-checking to Community Notes by Meta marks a significant change in how social media platforms handle misinformation. By empowering users to flag potentially misleading content, Meta aims to strike a balance between free speech and curbing harmful content.
U.S. Meta, Fact-Checking, X-Style, Community Notes
