The fact-checking group that has worked with Meta for years wrote Mark Zuckerberg an open letter on Thursday, warning him about the company’s move toward crowdsourced moderation in the US.
“Fact-checking is essential to maintaining shared realities and evidence-based discussion, both in the United States and globally,” wrote the International Fact-Checking Network, part of the nonprofit media organization Poynter Institute.
The group said Meta’s decision, announced Tuesday, to replace third-party fact-checkers with crowdsourced moderation on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US “is a step backward for those who want to see an internet that prioritizes accurate and trustworthy information.”
Meta told the IFCN about the end of its partnership less than an hour before publishing the post about the switch, Business Insider reported. The change could have serious financial repercussions for the fact-checking organizations that rely on Meta for revenue.
The organization and the letter’s 71 signatories, representing groups from the US to Syria, said Meta has fact-checking partnerships in more than 100 countries.
“If Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places,” IFCN wrote. Meta has not announced plans to end the fact-checking program globally.
Meta said it plans to build a crowdsourced moderation system this year similar to the community notes used by Elon Musk’s X, where people can weigh in on posts ranging from the serious to the mundane. Musk laid off hundreds of X’s trust and safety workers after he bought the company in 2022, and X has since been slow to act on some misinformation, BI previously reported.
IFCN wrote that community notes could be used in conjunction with professional fact-checkers, a “new model” for collaboration.
“The need for this is great: If people believe social media platforms are full of scams and hoaxes, they won’t want to spend time there or do business on them,” IFCN wrote.
Nearly 3.3 billion people used a Meta product every day in September, according to the company’s most recent financials — more than 40% of the world’s population.
Ad insiders who spoke to BI this week said they didn’t expect the changes to hurt the company’s business. Meta has more than a fifth of the US digital ad market — in second place behind Google, per data from BI’s sister company EMARKETER.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
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