Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, ends its fact-checking program in the United States

Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, ends its fact-checking program in the United States
Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, ends its fact-checking program in the United States

Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced that it was ending its fact-checking program in the United States, a few days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, marking a major setback in content moderation on social networks. , according to specialists.

“We are going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting with the United States,” said the group’s boss, Mark Zuckerberg, in a message published on Facebook.

Instead of calling on independent organizations to fight disinformation, Elon Musk, owner of X, set up these famous notes, written by users when they believe that information requires recontextualization.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, “the fact-checkers have been too politically oriented and have done more to reduce trust than to improve it, particularly in the United States.

Meta’s announcement comes as Elon Musk and many Republican elected officials have for years accused fact-checking programs of “censorship” against conservative voices.

Meta and Facebook “have made a lot of progress,” Donald Trump responded on Tuesday during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida.

Asked about this announcement, the president-elect responded “probably” to a journalist who asked him if he thought Mark Zuckerberg had made this decision because of threats he had made in the past.

The Republican billionaire was suspended from Facebook after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 for inciting violence. His account was reactivated in early 2023, but he never stopped attacking Meta.

“It’s cool,” Elon Musk commented on X, publishing at the same time a screenshot of an article titled: “Facebook fires fact-checkeurs in an attempt to “restore” freedom of expression.”

“Cultural turning point”

For Mark Zuckerberg, the recent elections mark a “cultural turning point once again giving priority to freedom of expression”.

The Californian group plans to review and “simplify” its rules regarding content on its platforms and “abolish a certain number of limits concerning subjects such as immigration and gender, which are no longer in dominant discourse”.

But for many observers, this radical change in policy opens the doors to a flood of disinformation and interference in electoral votes.

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“This will harm users who seek accurate and reliable information to make daily decisions,” reacted Angie Holan, director of IFCN, the international fact-checking network, which brings together more than 170 organizations around the world. .

“The journalism of fact-checking has never censored or removed posts. THE fact-checkeurs add information and context to controversial claims, and debunk hoaxes and conspiracy theories,” she said, “following non-partisan and transparent principles.”

For Clara Jimenez Cruz, president of the EFCSN (European counterpart of the IFCN), Meta’s decision “seems more politically motivated than based on evidence.”

“Reduce worries”

Several leaders of tech giants, critics of Donald Trump during his first term, began to court him during the campaign and especially since his victory in November.

Mark Zuckerberg has multiplied his gestures: he had dinner with him in November at Mar-a-Lago, donated a million dollars to the fund financing his inauguration ceremony on January 20 and named several supporters of the Republican to high positions.

“Too much harmless content has been censored, too many people have been unfairly locked up in ‘Facebook prison,’” Joel Kaplan, a Donald Trump loyalist and now head of International Affairs at Meta, said last week.

Meta also wants to move its content moderation teams from California, one of the most progressive US states, to the much more conservative Texas.

“This will help us build the necessary trust and reduce concerns about bias within our staff,” said Mark Zuckerberg.

In 2021, he wanted to reduce political content on his platforms. But now it wants to give users more control over how much of that content they want to see on Facebook, Instagram or Threads.

A member of the IFCN, the AFP participates in more than 26 languages ​​in a program of fact-checking developed by Meta, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their “ fact-checks » on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

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