By AFP
January 7, 2025
Image: — © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Michael M. Santiago
Anuj CHOPRA
Tech giant Meta’s shock announcement to end its US fact-checking program triggered scathing criticism Tuesday from disinformation researchers who warned it risked opening the floodgates for proliferating false narratives.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was going to “get rid” of its third-party fact-checkers in the United States, in a sweeping policy shift that analysts saw as an attempt to appease US President-elect Donald Trump.
“This is a major step back for content moderation at a time when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever,” said Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience.
Fact-checking and disinformation research have long been a hot-button issue in a hyperpolarized political climate in the United States, with conservative US advocates saying they were a tool to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.
Trump’s Republican Party and his billionaire ally Elon Musk — the owner of social media giant X, formerly Twitter — have long echoed similar complaints.
“While efforts to protect free expression are vital, removing fact-checking without a credible alternative risks opening the floodgates to more harmful narratives,” Burley said.
“This move seems more about political appeasement than smart policy.”
As an alternative, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, would use “Community Notes similar to X” in the United States.
Community Notes is a crowd-sourced moderation tool that X has promoted as the way for users to add context to posts, but researchers have repeatedly questioned its effectiveness in combating falsehoods.
“You wouldn’t rely on just anyone to stop your toilet from leaking, but Meta now seeks to rely on just anyone to stop misinformation from spreading on their platforms,” Michael Wagner, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.
“Asking people, pro bono, to police the false claims that get posted on Meta’s multi-billion dollar social media platforms is an abdication of social responsibility.”
– ‘Politics, not policy’ –
Meta’s new approach ignores research that shows “Community Notes users are very much motivated by partisan motives and tend to over-target their political opponents,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech.
Meta’s announcement represents a financial setback for its US-based third-party fact-checkers.
Meta’s program and external grants have been “predominant revenue streams” for global fact-checkers, according to a 2023 survey by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) of 137 organizations across dozens of countries.
The decision will also “hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions,” said IFCN director Angie Holan.
“It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of external political pressure from a new administration and its supporters,” Holan added.
Aaron Sharockman, executive director of US fact-checking organization PolitiFact, disagreed with the contention that fact-checking was a tool to suppress free speech.
The role of US fact-checkers, he said, was to provide “additional speech and context to posts that journalists found to contain misinformation” and it was up to Meta to decide what penalties users faced.
“The great thing about free speech is that people are able to disagree about any piece of journalism we post,” Sharockman said.
“If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror.”
PolitiFact is one of the early partners who worked with Facebook to launch the fact-checking program in the United States in 2016.
AFP also currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.
In that program, content rated “false” is downgraded in news feeds so fewer people will see it and if someone tries to share that post, they are presented with an article explaining why it is misleading.
“The program was by no means perfect, and fact-checkers have no doubt erred in some percentage of their labels,” Mantzarlis said.
“But we should be clear that Zuckerberg’s promise of getting rid of fact-checkers was a choice of politics, not policy.”
Meta announces ending fact-checking program in the US
By AFP
January 7, 2025
Alex PIGMAN
Social media giant Meta announced Tuesday a significant rollback of its content moderation policies, including the termination of its third-party fact-checking program in the United States.
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US,” Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on social media.
Zuckerberg said that “fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”
Meta’s announcement repeated many of the complaints made by Republicans and X-owner Elon Musk about fact-checking programs that many conservatives see as censorship.
The 40-year-old tycoon said that “recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.”
The shift came as Zuckerberg has been making efforts to reconcile with US President-elect Donald Trump, including donating one million dollars to his inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg also said Meta sites, including Facebook and Instagram, would “simplify” their content policies “and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg in recent years, accusing the company of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.
The Republican was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as he looks to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the presidential election.
In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Republican stalwart Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,'” Kaplan said in a statement, insisting that its current approach to content moderation has “gone too far.”
Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.
As part of the overhaul, Meta said it will relocate its trust and safety teams from California, where liberal views are commonplace, to more conservative Texas.
“That will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Additionally, Meta announced it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content across its platforms.
Instead, the company will adopt a more personalized approach, allowing users greater control over the amount of political content they see on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.
X’s ‘Community Notes’: a model for Meta?
By AFP
January 7, 2025
X, formerly Twitter, has relied on 'community notes' to alert to false or misleading posts since 2021 - Copyright AFP/File Jim WATSON
Tom BARFIELD and Daxia Rojas
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the group’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram would in future imitate rival X’s “Community Notes” feature rather than using professional fact-checkers.
The feature “empower(s) their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading” thanks to “people across a diverse range of perspectives,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.
Facebook’s fact-checking programme currently operates in 26 languages, partnering with more than 80 media organisations worldwide including AFP.
– What are Community Notes? –
When an X post has had a note appended, it is displayed to users with a small box titled “Readers added context”.
Usually short and factual, expanding on or contradicting the original post, most published notes also include a link to relevant source material.
Introduced in January 2021 under the name Birdwatch, Community Notes were boosted by Elon Musk after he took over Twitter in late 2022 and renamed it X, and they now appear to users in 44 countries.
The social network “needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world”, Musk posted at the time.
– Who writes Community Notes? –
Any willing X user can sign up to Community Notes.
Before writing notes of their own, they must first spend time rating other people’s suggested notes, contributing to the process that decides whether they are published.
Even once allowed to write notes, users can lose the right if others consistently rate them unhelpful.
X underscores that voting on notes is not by simple majority.
Instead, the company looks for agreement between raters who have disagreed in the past — a system it says “helps reduce one-sided ratings and helps to prevent manipulation”.
This has not stopped charges from politicians that highly motivated groups carpet-bomb posts they dislike with notes, hoping at least one will get through.
– What impact have Community Notes had? –
There is little conclusive scientific analysis available of Community Notes’ effectiveness.
One April 2024 paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that a sample of notes on misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines “were accurate, cited moderate and high-credibility sources, and were attached to posts viewed hundreds of millions of times”.
But the authors did not study the notes’ impact on users.
Meanwhile in a survey of notes posted on November 5 — US election day — Cornell University digital harm researcher Alexios Mantzarlis found that just 29 percent of “fact-checkable” tweets for which notes were suggested in fact displayed a note rated as helpful.
“If Community Notes had an impact on election information quality on X, it was marginal at best,” Mantzarlis wrote in an article for the Poynter Institute.
– What could come next? –
Some experts AFP spoke to were confident that Community Notes could improve information quality on Meta platforms.
“Community notes as such is a very, very effective tool in content moderation if applied in an equitable way, we can see that on Wikimedia or Wikipedia,” said Katja Munoz of the Berlin-based think-tank DGAP.
Nevertheless, “the crowd may say something correct, but there can also be ill-intentioned people who are there to spread disinformation,” said Christine Balaguer, a professor at France’s Institut Mines-Telecom who studies the phenomenon.
Eliminating fact-checking could set Meta up for a clash with the European Union if it expands the model outside the United States.
The bloc’s Digital Services Act encourages platforms to fight misinformation with tools including professional fact-checkers.
Zuckerberg’s move “is a major shock” that “announces the clashes that the tech platforms are going to be having with EU regulation in general”, Munoz said.
In his statement, Zuckerberg said fact-checking had been “a program intended to inform (that) too often became a tool to censor”.
“Fact-checkers weren’t censors,” said Bill Adair, a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University and co-founder of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).
Those working with Meta “were signatories of a code of principles that requires they be transparent and nonpartisan”, he noted.
IFCN chief Angie Drobnic Holan also defended fact-checkers’ work, writing on X that Zuckerberg had faced “extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters”.
Trump said Tuesday that Meta’s move had “probably” been in response to his threats against the company and Zuckerberg.
Meta Names UFC boss Dana White, a Trump ally, to board
By AFP
January 6, 2025
CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White (C) is a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, even speaking at his election night victory rally - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON
Social media giant Meta announced Monday the appointment of three new directors to its board, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally to US President-elect Donald Trump.
The new board members were announced as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been making approaches to the incoming Trump administration, including donating one million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as the 40-year-old tycoon looks to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the presidential election.
In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Republican stalwart Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg in recent years, accusing the company of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.
Trump was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
White has maintained a close friendship with Trump for two decades, dating back to when Trump offered his venues for UFC events.
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” White said.
Along with White, Meta is adding Exor CEO John Elkann, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst to the board, bringing the company’s board of directors to 13 members.
Elkann, scion to the Agnelli industrialist family in Italy, is the executive chairman of auto giant Stellantis and Ferrari.
The appointments came as Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, intensifies its focus on artificial intelligence and wearable technology development.
“Dana, John and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with AI, wearables and the future of human connection,” Meta CEO Zuckerberg said in a statement.
By AFP
January 6, 2025
CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White (C) is a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, even speaking at his election night victory rally - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON
Social media giant Meta announced Monday the appointment of three new directors to its board, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally to US President-elect Donald Trump.
The new board members were announced as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been making approaches to the incoming Trump administration, including donating one million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as the 40-year-old tycoon looks to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the presidential election.
In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Republican stalwart Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg in recent years, accusing the company of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.
Trump was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
White has maintained a close friendship with Trump for two decades, dating back to when Trump offered his venues for UFC events.
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” White said.
Along with White, Meta is adding Exor CEO John Elkann, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst to the board, bringing the company’s board of directors to 13 members.
Elkann, scion to the Agnelli industrialist family in Italy, is the executive chairman of auto giant Stellantis and Ferrari.
The appointments came as Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, intensifies its focus on artificial intelligence and wearable technology development.
“Dana, John and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with AI, wearables and the future of human connection,” Meta CEO Zuckerberg said in a statement.
Zuckerberg failed to 'get in on the ground floor' in his suck-up to Trump: analyst
Matthew Chapman
January 7, 2025
RAW STORY
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has introduced a huge list of changes and hires that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump — but it's unlikely to give him the mileage and goodwill he's hoping for, political strategist Chai Komanduri told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Tuesday's edition of "The Beat."
"What do you see in the politics here?" asked Melber. "Zuckerberg previously had different policies, he said he had frankly different views, so had Trump lost, had the vote swung a point and a half the other way, presumably, we would be moving past some of this."
"I think what happened was Mark Zuckerberg saw what happened with Elon Musk," said Komanduri. "Musk tied himself to Trump and became even richer and far more powerful."
That being said, Komanduri added, while Zuckerberg could be in an "ideal position" to provide "a whole lot of support" to Trump and his eventual ideological heirs, he probably won't reap the same benefits Musk did. "The problem, I think, for Mark Zuckerberg is he's not getting in on the ground floor, he's getting in on the top floor, and the elevator has only one way to go, which is down."
"What do you think, Chai, about the change in the normal corporate machinations?" said Melber. In the past, he noted, corporations relied on "lobbyists, intermediaries, a lot of executives like to have the distance, but Trump has demanded something different and he seems to be getting it," with Zuckerberg's video announcement of new policies, effectively begging the MAGA movement to support his company.
"This is beyond even simple greed," said Komanduri. "The innovation that Facebook had was the Like button. And if you watch the great movie 'The Social Network,' ... he was a guy who wanted people to like him. He was a guy who was basically pushed into lockers who looked a lot like Dana White, and rather than be a rebel and stay an outsider, or go full science nerd, which is what Bill Gates did, he said no, I want the guy who's pushing me in the locker to really like me. And he wants Trump and MAGA, the people who once bullied him and looked down on him, to like him. And that's what you see, a tremendous need and personal desire by Mark Zuckerberg to have the people who looked down on him once, to like him."
Matthew Chapman
January 7, 2025
RAW STORY
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has introduced a huge list of changes and hires that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump — but it's unlikely to give him the mileage and goodwill he's hoping for, political strategist Chai Komanduri told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Tuesday's edition of "The Beat."
"What do you see in the politics here?" asked Melber. "Zuckerberg previously had different policies, he said he had frankly different views, so had Trump lost, had the vote swung a point and a half the other way, presumably, we would be moving past some of this."
"I think what happened was Mark Zuckerberg saw what happened with Elon Musk," said Komanduri. "Musk tied himself to Trump and became even richer and far more powerful."
That being said, Komanduri added, while Zuckerberg could be in an "ideal position" to provide "a whole lot of support" to Trump and his eventual ideological heirs, he probably won't reap the same benefits Musk did. "The problem, I think, for Mark Zuckerberg is he's not getting in on the ground floor, he's getting in on the top floor, and the elevator has only one way to go, which is down."
"What do you think, Chai, about the change in the normal corporate machinations?" said Melber. In the past, he noted, corporations relied on "lobbyists, intermediaries, a lot of executives like to have the distance, but Trump has demanded something different and he seems to be getting it," with Zuckerberg's video announcement of new policies, effectively begging the MAGA movement to support his company.
"This is beyond even simple greed," said Komanduri. "The innovation that Facebook had was the Like button. And if you watch the great movie 'The Social Network,' ... he was a guy who wanted people to like him. He was a guy who was basically pushed into lockers who looked a lot like Dana White, and rather than be a rebel and stay an outsider, or go full science nerd, which is what Bill Gates did, he said no, I want the guy who's pushing me in the locker to really like me. And he wants Trump and MAGA, the people who once bullied him and looked down on him, to like him. And that's what you see, a tremendous need and personal desire by Mark Zuckerberg to have the people who looked down on him once, to like him."
- YouTube
'Surrender monkey': Analyst reams Mark Zuckerberg for new content policies to please Trump
Matthew Chapman
January 7, 2025
Matthew Chapman
January 7, 2025
RAW STORY
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries on Orion AR glasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo/File Photo
Meta tech tycoon Mark Zuckerberg was raked over the coals as a "surrender monkey" by The Bulwark's Jonathan Last on Tuesday over his new spate of changes at his company that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump.
This comes after Zuckerberg paid a visit to Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago, and as a number of tech billionaires are under fire — even from some Trump supporters — as their companies give millions to fund Trump's inauguration festivities.
"Yesterday Zuckerberg appointed Dana White to Meta’s board of directors. What are White’s relative qualifications for such a role? He, uh, manages Ultimate Fighting Championship? LOL no, obviously White’s qualification is that he is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends and top endorsers. He was literally all over the campaign stumping for Trump," wrote Last. Then, Zuckerberg's newly-appointed public policy strategist, former George W. Bush administration official Joel Kaplan, "went onto Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, and announced that Facebook is killing its fact-checking program and making its content moderation strategy more like Elon Musk’s Twitter/X regime. Because that has been such a success I’m Ron Burgundy?"
Zuckerberg is even announcing that the content moderation team will be moved to Texas to combat the impression that the operation is influenced by a liberal jurisdiction, Last noted.
What truly makes this so crazy, Last concluded, is the double standard of how tech CEOs treat administrations.
"In 2021 the Biden administration snubbed Elon Musk by not inviting him to a photo op. Musk was so outraged that he spent $44 billion to purchase a social media platform, and then used that platform to wage unrelenting war against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the entire Democratic party," he wrote.
By contrast, he said, Zuckerberg "preemptively gave portions of his company over as hostages in the hopes that Trump would let his business live in peace. Before the guy had even been sworn in. Tell me: What’s the point of being worth $209 billion if you can’t play offense against politicians who might target you and your business? Why is Zuckerberg acting like a surrender monkey instead of a titan of industry who has an infinite bankroll and ownership of key platforms?"
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries on Orion AR glasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo/File Photo
Meta tech tycoon Mark Zuckerberg was raked over the coals as a "surrender monkey" by The Bulwark's Jonathan Last on Tuesday over his new spate of changes at his company that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump.
This comes after Zuckerberg paid a visit to Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago, and as a number of tech billionaires are under fire — even from some Trump supporters — as their companies give millions to fund Trump's inauguration festivities.
"Yesterday Zuckerberg appointed Dana White to Meta’s board of directors. What are White’s relative qualifications for such a role? He, uh, manages Ultimate Fighting Championship? LOL no, obviously White’s qualification is that he is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends and top endorsers. He was literally all over the campaign stumping for Trump," wrote Last. Then, Zuckerberg's newly-appointed public policy strategist, former George W. Bush administration official Joel Kaplan, "went onto Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, and announced that Facebook is killing its fact-checking program and making its content moderation strategy more like Elon Musk’s Twitter/X regime. Because that has been such a success I’m Ron Burgundy?"
Zuckerberg is even announcing that the content moderation team will be moved to Texas to combat the impression that the operation is influenced by a liberal jurisdiction, Last noted.
What truly makes this so crazy, Last concluded, is the double standard of how tech CEOs treat administrations.
"In 2021 the Biden administration snubbed Elon Musk by not inviting him to a photo op. Musk was so outraged that he spent $44 billion to purchase a social media platform, and then used that platform to wage unrelenting war against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the entire Democratic party," he wrote.
By contrast, he said, Zuckerberg "preemptively gave portions of his company over as hostages in the hopes that Trump would let his business live in peace. Before the guy had even been sworn in. Tell me: What’s the point of being worth $209 billion if you can’t play offense against politicians who might target you and your business? Why is Zuckerberg acting like a surrender monkey instead of a titan of industry who has an infinite bankroll and ownership of key platforms?"
Big Tech rolls out the red carpet for Trump
By AFP
January 7, 2025
Four years ago, Donald Trump was kicked off Facebook -- this time around, Meta's policies are more likely to please conservatives - Copyright AFP Drew ANGERER
Aurélia END
Tech leaders continue to fall in line around Donald Trump, with Facebook’s announcement that it would end its US fact-checking program the latest victory for the president-elect and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk.
Facebook parent Meta’s move into fact-checking came in the wake of Trump’s shock election in 2016, which critics said was enabled by rampant disinformation on Facebook and interference by foreign actors, including Russia, on the platform.
It was long-criticized by conservatives who found themselves ensnared in its anti-disinformation work.
Its paring down comes days before Trump’s inauguration, and after several US tech barons have pushed for a comfortable relationship with the incoming president.
Since the November election, a stream of senior moguls have traveled to meet with Trump at his Florida estate, including Zuckerberg as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder and space tech executive Jeff Bezos.
Amazon and Meta have both announced $1 million donations to Trump’s inauguration fund, as reportedly has Apple’s Cook, in a personal capacity.
Musk, meanwhile, owner of influential social media platform X and the world’s richest person, is one of the president-elect’s closest advisors.
It’s all a far cry from when the Republican saw himself kicked off of Facebook and Twitter for the risk of inciting violence, following the storming of the US Capitol by supporters hoping to reverse the 2020 election results.
Four years later, tech companies are coming off a Joe Biden administration that shook up much of the sector with antitrust investigations — with the free speech, deregulatory outlook pushed by those in Trump’s orbit holding fresh appeal.
The fact-checking shake-up is “a decision that advances Zuckerberg’s business goals: fact-checking is difficult, expensive and controversial,” Ethan Zuckerman, a public policy professor who recently sued Meta over its algorithm policies, told AFP.
But for those in the right-wing tech sphere, the decision is a course correction.
“For those of us who have been fighting the free speech wars for years, this feels like a major victory and turning point,” investor David Sacks, set to take an artificial intelligence portfolio in Trump’s government, said.
He went on to thank the incoming president “for creating this political and cultural realignment.”
– ‘Probably’ a result of threats –
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to retaliate once back in office.
When asked by reporters if he believed the fact-check move was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg, Trump responded: “Probably, yeah.”
A rapprochement between Zuckerberg and Trump has been a long time coming: Meta also recently put Trump ally Dana White on its board.
That decision, and the move to slash the fact-checking operations, came after Trump’s Federal Communications Commission pick, Brendan Carr, accused Facebook, Google and Apple of “playing central roles” in a “censorship cartel.”
Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, has meanwhile sent his own signals to the incoming administration, telling conservative broadcaster Fox News in December he was confident Trump would keep the United States a leading player in the artificial intelligence sector.
His response to Musk’s influence in the incoming administration — which has sparked warnings of conflicts of interest — was also warm.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses,” Altman said, adding “I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing.”
– Musk signals approval –
Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller is not surprised that social media companies like Meta are walking away from fact-checking because political parties and social media companies thrive when there is division.
He adds, however, that “the saving grace may be that there are still a number of competitive social media outlets so that no single person or company controls all the flow of information, and that includes government.”
Facebook will be replacing its fact-checking program with a “community notes” style feature, similar to the one used on Musk’s X platform.
Musk quickly signaled his approval, calling the change “cool.”
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and Instagram.
By AFP
January 7, 2025
Four years ago, Donald Trump was kicked off Facebook -- this time around, Meta's policies are more likely to please conservatives - Copyright AFP Drew ANGERER
Aurélia END
Tech leaders continue to fall in line around Donald Trump, with Facebook’s announcement that it would end its US fact-checking program the latest victory for the president-elect and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk.
Facebook parent Meta’s move into fact-checking came in the wake of Trump’s shock election in 2016, which critics said was enabled by rampant disinformation on Facebook and interference by foreign actors, including Russia, on the platform.
It was long-criticized by conservatives who found themselves ensnared in its anti-disinformation work.
Its paring down comes days before Trump’s inauguration, and after several US tech barons have pushed for a comfortable relationship with the incoming president.
Since the November election, a stream of senior moguls have traveled to meet with Trump at his Florida estate, including Zuckerberg as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder and space tech executive Jeff Bezos.
Amazon and Meta have both announced $1 million donations to Trump’s inauguration fund, as reportedly has Apple’s Cook, in a personal capacity.
Musk, meanwhile, owner of influential social media platform X and the world’s richest person, is one of the president-elect’s closest advisors.
It’s all a far cry from when the Republican saw himself kicked off of Facebook and Twitter for the risk of inciting violence, following the storming of the US Capitol by supporters hoping to reverse the 2020 election results.
Four years later, tech companies are coming off a Joe Biden administration that shook up much of the sector with antitrust investigations — with the free speech, deregulatory outlook pushed by those in Trump’s orbit holding fresh appeal.
The fact-checking shake-up is “a decision that advances Zuckerberg’s business goals: fact-checking is difficult, expensive and controversial,” Ethan Zuckerman, a public policy professor who recently sued Meta over its algorithm policies, told AFP.
But for those in the right-wing tech sphere, the decision is a course correction.
“For those of us who have been fighting the free speech wars for years, this feels like a major victory and turning point,” investor David Sacks, set to take an artificial intelligence portfolio in Trump’s government, said.
He went on to thank the incoming president “for creating this political and cultural realignment.”
– ‘Probably’ a result of threats –
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to retaliate once back in office.
When asked by reporters if he believed the fact-check move was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg, Trump responded: “Probably, yeah.”
A rapprochement between Zuckerberg and Trump has been a long time coming: Meta also recently put Trump ally Dana White on its board.
That decision, and the move to slash the fact-checking operations, came after Trump’s Federal Communications Commission pick, Brendan Carr, accused Facebook, Google and Apple of “playing central roles” in a “censorship cartel.”
Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, has meanwhile sent his own signals to the incoming administration, telling conservative broadcaster Fox News in December he was confident Trump would keep the United States a leading player in the artificial intelligence sector.
His response to Musk’s influence in the incoming administration — which has sparked warnings of conflicts of interest — was also warm.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses,” Altman said, adding “I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing.”
– Musk signals approval –
Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller is not surprised that social media companies like Meta are walking away from fact-checking because political parties and social media companies thrive when there is division.
He adds, however, that “the saving grace may be that there are still a number of competitive social media outlets so that no single person or company controls all the flow of information, and that includes government.”
Facebook will be replacing its fact-checking program with a “community notes” style feature, similar to the one used on Musk’s X platform.
Musk quickly signaled his approval, calling the change “cool.”
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and Instagram.
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