The controversial decision of Meta to remove fact-checking for posts in its social media sites like Facebook and Instagram in favor of a community notes system that X, formerly Twitter uses might be relegated in its domestic market for now.
Speaking in the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Meta Platforms’ head of global business Nicola Mendelsohn told Bloomberg Television that international fact-checking arrangements would remain in place while the company assesses the impact of the US rollback.’
“We’ll see how that goes as we move it out over the years. So, nothing is changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world.” she explained.
Meta’s fact-checking program was established to combat the wide and numerous disinformation campaigns that plagued its platform in the past few years, but CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has rolled that program back, at least in the US, for a community notes system that rival X uses. Zuckerburg has said that some, but not all, of the fact-checkers were politically biased, and that the move was a step towards freedom of speech.
Meta’s decision to forego the fact-checking program may not fly in territories and countries that have tighter checks and balances on disinformation, political or otherwise. The European Union’s Digital Services Act for example make fighting political disinformation campaigns a duty for platforms like Facebook and Instagram, or else face heavy fines.