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Meta platforms to rid of fact checking in search of free speech

SPECULATORY SCROLLING. Out of the Meta services, Devriese primarily uses Instagram; with the shift away from fact checking, though, he believes that the potential increase in misinformation will make enjoying the app harder: "I feel like it's going to be pretty frustrating to use," he said.
SPECULATORY SCROLLING. Out of the Meta services, Devriese primarily uses Instagram; with the shift away from fact checking, though, he believes that the potential increase in misinformation will make enjoying the app harder: “I feel like it’s going to be pretty frustrating to use,” he said.
Yassin Mokbel

CEO and co-founder of Meta Platforms Mark Zuckerberg, famously known for operating social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp made an announcement on Jan. 7: a move in the pursuit of true freedom of speech, Zuckerberg revealed that the company would shift away from their third-party fact-checking program to a community notes model.

After being involved in a fake news scandal during the 2016 election, Facebook introduced the fact-checking system in 2017. Since then, the site has consistently worked with fact-checking companies across the world to flag fake news and misinformation.

While the idea of complete freedom of speech seems lucrative, senior Caden Burns feels there are drawbacks to the prospect: “There are limits to the safety and effectiveness of free speech” he said.

Similarly, junior Johann Devriese doesn’t think that free speech will prevail: “I feel like the only thing it’s really going to be giving free speech to is more bigotry” he said.

Community notes have primarily been seen in use on one of Meta’s main competitors, X, previously known as Twitter, where the user-based model has been in use since 2023. Burns’ time on the platform has left him with a positive impression of the system: “There’ll be times when someone says an objectively false fact about a sports team or a player and the community is just like ‘this is what’s actually the case’,” he said, “they just seem effective for spreading the truth.”

Devriese sees that the shift towards community notes will just allow for hateful misinformation to spread: “If there’s a fact checking model, then [misinformation] can get checked before it’s posted,” he said, “[but] people have to write community notes, so it just makes it so that misinformation can stay out longer.”

In an open letter addressed to Zuckerberg after the announcement, the International Fact-Checking Network explicitly calls out the ineffectiveness of community notes, citing a dependance on “widespread political consensus rather than on standards and evidence for accuracy.”

Sophomore Yasmin Khan expressed a similar sentiment towards relying on users to mark misinformation, believing that community notes will not be as effective in keeping misinformation off social media: “Sometimes people don’t know what is misinformation, and then it’ll be difficult to see who decides what misinformation is,” she said.

A potential increase in misinformation on Meta services makes Devriese wary of using their platforms: “I feel like it might just become more of a propaganda machine,” he said, “Instead of seeing a funny video on an [Instagram] reels feed, you’re going to be seeing hate speech or misinformation.”

Whether or not Meta’s shift away from third party fact checking will be effective is yet to be seen. Meta will begin to implement community notes on their platforms over the next few months, beginning in the U.S.

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