“World without facts”
Meta announced Tuesday that it was ending its fact-checking program in the United States and replacing it with a context note system, similar to that used by X. Instead of calling on independent organizations to fight against 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 confidence than to improve it, particularly in the United States.
For years, Donald Trump has harshly criticized Meta, accusing the giant of bias towards him, and threatening to take retaliatory measures against his boss once he was inaugurated at the end of January. The president-elect, who promised during his first post-election press conference to “straighten out” the “corrupt” American press, seems to have taken an example from Rodrigo Duterte, according to Maria Ressa. “Journalists have a set of standards and ethics” to respect, she recalls. “What Facebook is going to do is get rid of this and allow the lies, the anger, the fear and the hatred to infect every person on the platform,” and these measures could lead, ultimately, to a “world without facts.”
“Pivotal year”
Maria Ressa’s Rappler site as well as the AFP, like more than 90 other organizations fact-checkingare paid by Meta to fact-check articles that potentially contain false information. More specifically, the AFP participates in a program of fact-checkingin more than 26 languages, developed by Facebook, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their fact-checks on its platform, on WhatsApp and on Instagram.
Content considered “fake” is then relegated to information feeds so that fewer people see it and if one of them tries to share such a message with other users, the latter receive a article explaining why it is misleading. According to a 2023 study by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), an international network of 137 fact-checking organizations fact-checking of which the AFP is a part, the Meta program constituted “significant sources of income” for players in the sector.
Rappler nevertheless indicated in a statement its intention to continue working with Facebook “to protect Filipinos from manipulation and the dangers of misinformation”. “This is a pivotal year for the survival of journalism” and “what happened in the United States is only the beginning,” warns Maria Ressa.
