Meta’s scrapping of fact-checking program in US: Reactions, analyses, opinions

1 month ago 19

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Reactions, analyses, opinions

Make sense of Meta’s decision and its impact on democracy and the spread of disinformation through these stories

MANILA, Philippines — On January 7, social media company Meta Platforms scrapped its fact-checking program in the United States. The policy reversal comes as US President-elect Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated on Monday, January 20.

The move was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the company’s new global policy affairs chief and prominent Republican Joel Kaplan in a blog post and a video posted on social media. The fact-checking program will be replaced by a “Community Notes” model, with the changes to be applied on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in his video.

Meta’s scrapping of its fact-checking program caught its partner organizations by surprise, including the International Fact-Checking Network, which challenged in an open letter Zuckerberg’s characterization of its members as “politically biased” and fact-checking as a “tool to censor.”

Rappler, which is working with Meta as a partner in its fact-checking program in the Philippines, said in a statement that the move “is an ominous sign of more perilous times in the fight to preserve and protect our individual agency and shared reality.”

Need to know more about Meta’s decision? Here are some stories from Rappler you could read and watch about the end of the fact-checking program in the US.