Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is killing a fact-check program in favor of a community-based flagging system.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced they will do away with a fact-check program designed to combat misinformation. When they replace those third-party fact checkers, they’ll turn to their users. Meta plans to implement a user-driven flagging system similar to what X is using.
Why not? If you were going to select any social media platform to emulate, wouldn’t X be the obvious choice? (Insert eyeroll here.)
The change comes just days before President-Elect Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated. Is this really a time to end fact-checking?
Slate points out that there’s more than the end of independent fact-checking going on. For one thing, Meta plans to tweak content-moderation filters remove less harmful speech and focus instead on more “illegal” use cases. Those illegal cases would include things like child sexual abuse and terrorism. But speech that’s harmful, though not as harmful, may get more of a presence now.
It’ll also roll back rules defining what’s acceptable on hot-button topics. That change, Meta says, will align the rules with “mainstream discourse.” There was a time when segregation and Jim Crow were considered acceptable to the mainstream. So this isn’t necessarily good news, either.
It depends on whom you ask
To hear conservatives tell it, social media platforms are out to stifle anything conservative. Even fact-checkers have it out for them, apparently, and no matter how much research they present, it’s all a conspiracy to push some radical liberal agenda.
Liberals, however, are raising some different questions. Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund in December, and Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, all in what looks like an attempt to get on Trump’s good side. Trump himself praised the decision, but when asked if he thought the change came because he threatened legal action against Meta, Trump said, “Probably.”
Could it all be coincidence? Sure.
Some people just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, it was just a business move.” Fine. But let’s call it what it is. Let’s not try to portray it as an “improvement” when you’re rolling back restrictions that might make bad situations worse. Call it a gesture designed to keep the company afloat, not some grand sweeping gesture to allow more freedom of speech.
It’s not about freedom of speech. It’s about truth and decency. There’s a reason you can’t yell “Fire” in a crowded theater and cause a panic that injures others and then expect to hide behind free speech without suffering consequences.
You also have to ask this: If voters elected Harris instead of Trump, does anyone think Meta would suddenly be scrapping its fact-check program?
Anyone?
So what does ‘community-driven flagging’ accomplish?
I was more likely to read notes from third-party fact-checkers than from members of the same community that produces the misinformation to begin with. After all, there are people who somehow find the time to spend all day — hours at a time — on social media platforms trolling others. Everything they post, even on the most innocent topics, comes out negative.
I guess they do it for attention. Maybe they feel like acting like an ass is perfectly justified if it gets them a little attention.
I find myself growing tired of just watching it happen. I can’t even imagine having the strength to be that level of troll.
But is it even possible to trust community-driven flagging to figure out what’s true and what isn’t? Meta wants to do it the way Elon Musk’s X is doing it. Some of X’s users, The Washington Post reports, describe the system as a game of “Whack-a-Mole.” One user claimed to spend 10 to 20 hours per week debunking false claims. But as soon as he’d debunked one, another would appear moments later.
That should surprise no one. Those who want to spread misinformation will do so no matter how much others debunk it. That’s because they know there’s always someone gullible enough to fall for their claims, no matter how ridiculous you or I might see them to be.
But since non-professional fact-checkers carry no real authority, that means that those who want to hide the truth could try to fight off honest posts by calling them fake. Then it’s not about truth at all but rather who has the most convincing argument. (And in some cases, if we’re honest, it’s less about that as who yells the loudest.)
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the continual game of “Who do you trust?” on these platforms. Any plan that potentially makes it easier for false information to gain a foothold is a bad plan…no matter who you’re trying to impress on Pennsylvania Avenue.
There are already people threatening to leave all of Meta’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — over the change.
No matter which side of the political spectrum you live on, if you can be honest and objective, I hope you’ll involve yourself even more with debunking falsehoods. If you really care about truth, you’re the kind social media needs now more than ever.
