Meta to get rid of fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram

On By Littum

Meta wants to get rid of fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram.

The company will instead rely on its users to report false stories and misleading information through a “Communities Notes” system like the one used on X/Twitter, it said.

It will also allow people to share more kinds of political content, such as posts about inflammatory topics. And it said it would no longer proactively look for policy violations on those topics, instead waiting until users report them.

The changes would allow for more “freedom of expression” on Facebook and Instagram, the company claimed.

It claimed its attempts to crack down on misleading stories on social media were “well-intentioned” but had “gone too far” and it claimed people were being falsely banned from posting as a result.

Meta also said it expected to take far fewer political posts than it has in the past. It would adjust its systems so they don’t proactively detect political posts and so those posts are less likely to be demoted on news feeds.

Since 2021, Meta has been working to reduce the amount of political content that appears in users’ feeds, pointing to feedback from users that they want to see less of it. Now Meta has called it a “pretty blunt approach” and said it would start pushing that content back on Facebook and Instagram.

It will start treating the political content like any other content in the feed, it said. As such, if users like or see political posts, then they will be more likely to see more of them while scrolling, it said.

Some of the changes will take “a few weeks” to be fully implemented, Meta said.

The change was announced by Joel Kaplan, who takes over from Nick Clegg as the company’s head of global affairs. Mr. Kaplan is a prominent Republican and former adviser to George W Bush, and some commentators have suggested his appointment is an attempt to make Meta more amenable to the incoming Trump administration.