Meta plans to end its third-party fact-checking programme, replacing it with Community Notes by contributing platform users.
This is the word from Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer at Meta, who says the systems to manage or gatekeep content have become increasingly complex over time.
“”They have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do.”
“We will end the current third party fact checking program in the US and instead begin moving to a Community Notes program,” he writes on the company blog. “We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.
“We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias.”
Once the program is up and running, Meta won’t write Community Notes or decide which ones show up – they will be written and rated by contributing users, will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives.
“We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information,” Kaplan says.
Community Notes will be phased in, debuting in the US within a few months, and will be tweaked over the course of the year, Kaplan says.
“As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact checked content and, instead of overlaying full screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it.”
Kaplan adds that one result of the new programme is expected to be less unnecessary censorship.