Meta Ends Fact-checking Program
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced via video changes in Meta protocol in the United States that effectively ends the company’s efforts at fact checking on platforms like Facebook.
Meta on Tuesday announced changes to its content moderation practices that would effectively end a fact-checking program instituted to curtail the spread of misinformation across its social media apps. Instead of using news organizations and other third-party groups, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will rely on users to add notes to posts that may contain false or misleading information.
The reversal of the years-old policy is a stark sign of how the company is repositioning itself for the Trump presidency in the weeks before it begins. Meta described the changes with the language of a mea culpa: Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly installed global policy chief, said in a statement that the company wanted to “undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement.”
Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a video that the new protocol, which will begin in the United States in the coming months, is similar to the one used by X, called Community Notes.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The company’s current fact-checking system, he added, had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
On the one hand, a lot of the “fact checking” that the media engages in is very flawed and almost comically absurd. During the Democratic convention, Harris had an attack line against tariffs and how they will raise the average American’s taxes/spending. The media had a “fact check” on how this requires context because even though tariffs are not a direct tax on people, companies often respond to tariffs by raising prices so the consumer pays.
If the media feels pathologically compelled to do this kind of fact-checking perhaps it should go. You also can’t fact check your way out of fascism/authoritarianism.
On the other hand, at least it was a nominal effort to keep right-wing propaganda and Trump’s never ending flows of lies and falsehoods in check and it is gone. Dana White, a MAGA MMA type is also on their board of directors and corporate overlords seem to be very quickly moving into trying to get rid of anything progressive or a pesky regulation that kept employment places decent.
“[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘n****(‘ and ‘k***’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. “-Achieving Our Country, Richard Rorty, published 26 years too early perhaps.Report
On the one hand, fact checking, in practice, has proven to be inaccurate. On the other hand, here’s some stuff comparing Trump to Hitler.Report
You are a miscreant troll who is too cowardly to admit he likes Trump so you continue your silly danceReport
I’m not so sure he likes Trump, who is aesthetically unappealing and, as we all know, Jaybird’s politics are almost entirely aesthetic, as that he dislikes the people who dislike Trump. Again, largely for aesthetic reasons.Report
This is almost too kind even if you note correctly JB dislikes people who dislike Trump. I think it is more that he cannot or will not take anything seriouslyReport
The other day, there was a public commentator that compared January 6th to the Holocaust.
Now here’s the play.
I ask you if you think that January 6th was as bad as the Holocaust.
When you respond that, no, you don’t think that January 6th was as bad as the Holocaust, I ask you why you support January 6th.
Do you think that January 6th was as bad as the Holocaust?Report
Random person on the internet speaks hyperbolically so any alarm raised against Trump can be discounted as being a chicken little is no way to live. But January 6 was nothing to sneeze at and I think you are underplaying how serious it was. I think Biden and Co. should have come down more quickly on them and Garland’s snail pace was wrong.
Maybe Trump’s second term will be just like his first which was pretty bad in my opinion but Democrats will get the midterms and 2028.
But I think there is a very real chance that Trump’s second term will be very, very bad. He is appointing unqualified hacks and charlatans to cabinet positions including a woman that Russian media calls “the girlfriend.” Do you think anyone is going to share intelligence with us if Gabbard is placed in charge of National Intelligence. Is Patel really someone you want at the FBI? There are a lot of valid criticisms of both the FBI and Intelligence but Patel and Gabbard are not reformers, they are chaos agents who will use the agencies towards for malicious ends.
At the very least we are going to see Teapot Dome levels of corruptions, probably much worse.
I get that too cool for school fake cynical viewpoints is cooler than being a cringe dork who thinks this stuff is important but ask yourself this, would Bezos and Zuckerberg be folding so quickly if Harris won? No.
What will it take to get you to admit you are a black pill or to erase the knee jerk low-grade always sarcastic response?Report
Random person on the internet
I pointed to a particular and specific person on network television.
As for “speaking hyperbolically”, I’m a fan of speaking hyperbolically, I’m just not a fan of basing policy on the hyperbole.
Maybe Trump’s second term will be just like his first which was pretty bad in my opinion but Democrats will get the midterms and 2028.
I’d tend to agree with that. Though I’d also say that a media landscape that doesn’t have Facebook and Twitter on its side will make some things about getting the midterms and 2028 tougher.
For one thing, Facebook and Twitter have been actively censoring Democrats who have been discussing the importance of changing the mindsets that got them here. The only takes getting through are the ones that say “we didn’t do anything wrong, Harris was perfect, she just didn’t have enough runway” and so on.
Do you think anyone is going to share intelligence with us if Gabbard is placed in charge of National Intelligence. Is Patel really someone you want at the FBI? There are a lot of valid criticisms of both the FBI and Intelligence but Patel and Gabbard are not reformers, they are chaos agents who will use the agencies towards for malicious ends.
If my choice is between the status quo and the rock being turned over and some ugly stuff coming to light, I think I’d prefer the rock being turned over and the ugly stuff coming to light.
You know those valid criticisms of both the FBI and Intelligence?
I’d like someone in power to make them this time. I’d prefer that to the status quo.
At the very least we are going to see Teapot Dome levels of corruptions, probably much worse.
This strikes me as being the status quo.
would Bezos and Zuckerberg be folding so quickly if Harris won? No.
I look at Zuck’s speech and don’t see a man “folding”. I see a man ceasing to fold. Unfolding.
As for Bezos, the WaPo took a handful of hits and he’s trying to regain credibility. Sometimes that’s painful.
Though I will say that censoring the (banal, if you ask me) cartoon was a bad look.
What will it take to get you to admit you are a black pill or to erase the knee jerk low-grade always sarcastic response?
An acknowledgment that we’re coming from two different perspectives rather than you being the good one from our shared perspective and me being the evil one from it.Report
“At the very least we are going to see Teapot Dome levels of corruptions, probably much worse.
This strikes me as being the status quo.
would Bezos and Zuckerberg be folding so quickly if Harris won? No.
I look at Zuck’s speech and don’t see a man “folding”. I see a man ceasing to fold. Unfolding.”
So much truth here Jaybird.Report
“Random person on the internet speaks hyperbolically so any alarm raised against Trump can be discounted as being a chicken little is no way to live. ”
It’s interesting that you didn’t recognize Whoopi Goldberg, but I guess they all look alike to you, eh?Report
I think the January 6th Attack on the Capitol is in form, function, and morality akin to the Beer Hall Putsch.Report
Yep.Report
Play stupid games. win stupid prizes.Report
We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much.Report
And we saw how that worked out.Report
Yeah, Trump got reelected and Facebook changed its moderation policies.Report
To be fair, he is touting Anschluss lately.Report
“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. ”
that’s an awful lot to lay on Facebook’s fact-checking programReport
The irony is that Facebook might still have its old fact-checking program if they didn’t force Facebook to censor its stories about the laptop.
Now, of course, Trump might have won in 2020 if that didn’t happen… but can you imagine what the country would look like if Trump kept office in 2020 through 2024?
He would have lost even *MORE* seats in 2022, and 2024 would have been a bloodbath!Report
He wouldn’t have been reelected in 2024, that’s for sure…Report
They?Report
The FBI. The House Judiciary Committee had a report about it.Report
That report doesn’t say what you think it says.Report
I’m willing to quote paragraphs from it at you if you’re willing to quote paragraphs from it at me.Report
Meta deciding to censor initial content regarding the laptop – which they quickly walked away from – to curry favor with an incoming Biden administration is EXACTLY the same thing as trying to curry favor with an incoming Trump administration by rolling back content moderation and fact checking. Its a business decision not forced on them by anyone beyond their shareholders.Report
So, no? No quoting from the report at each other?Report
Your link goes to a New York Post story the committee reposted – which doesn’t say that anyone forced Facebook/Meta to do anything, simply that Facebook looked at the initial laptop story and concluded it match the parameters of and FBI alert for campaign disinformation from Russia. That they couched it as aligning them with the Biden Administration is unfortunate, but not evidence of anything beyond misplaced political savvy.
Not sure why you think it lends any credence to the idea that Facebook was coerced/forced to do anything by anyone.Report
Here’s a link to the formal report, as if that matters.Report
Zuck’s announcement itself had a lot of easter eggs for those willing to sit through it.
They’re moving the Content Moderation team from California to Texas.
What will that mean in practice? I mean, if it’s the same group of people, I can easily imagine not much changing. If, instead, the argument is that the pool of people they’ll be hiring from will no longer be primarily San Franciscans but will now be Austinites, well, I can also easily imagine not much changing.
But if they’re coming out and saying “we’re moving from California-style content moderation to Texas-style content moderation”, we’re merely going to see different oxen getting gored.
But the line about moving from censorship to community notes is interesting. I prefer community notes to censorship. More speech == better speech.
I honestly think that Zuck was burned *BAD* by the Hunter Laptop “Misinformation” campaign and he actively censored stuff that ended up being true and that pisses him *OFF* to have had his trust abused like that. I think that there are a lot of people out there who are offended that stuff like the lab leak theory (or lab flapperdoodle) censored for being “misinformation” when there’s a good solid foundation for belief that the virus escaped from the lab rather than escaped from the bat soup and Zuck is appropriately squeamish when it comes to censoring things that have a good solid foundation.
The pendulum not only swung too far in one direction, but it hit targets inappropriately while swinging.
And we’re going to see the pendulum swing back.Report
Elon Musk has definitively proved the more speech is NOT even in the same galaxy as better speech. More hate speech is still more hate. And if the gobs and gobs of money Meta is making are “getting burned” I’d be happy to be thusly accosted.Report
I don’t think that Musk has proven that.
If you’d like to lay out the proof, I’d like to see it.
(I mean, I can understand how some people with some vested interests might prefer the old way… but that’s different from the proposition having been proven.)Report
The UK is preparing to enforce its Online Safety Act, which became law back in November. It will place relatively large requirements on a platform like Facebook to do transparency of its operations and verification of content. Unlike the EU’s Digital Services Act, the OSA doesn’t have a size cutoff (most of the DSA applies only to platforms with more than 45M EU users). Some modest-sized blogs in the UK have begun shutting down because of uncertainty about what penalties might be levied against them.Report
Zuck’s statement touches on this around 3:50.Report
Trump is apparently boasting that this happened because he threatened Zucks but somewhere a winemom was cringe and that is the real sinReport
Oh no! Wired has a story: Meta’s Fact-Checking Partners Say They Were ‘Blindsided’ by Decision to Axe Them
And there’s this paragraph way down near the bottom:
Report
This actually surprises you?Report
The way that being tickled does.Report
I wonder how their contracts are written – does that revenue instantly disappear? If so, not good from a budget pov for this to happen just after the 1st of the year.Report