META HAS ANNOUNCED the end of its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States, a move that rolls back attempts to stop misinformation on its platforms.

The company said this morning that it will discontinue the programme, in which third-party groups label false or misleading content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, over the coming months.

Experts and fact-checkers have warned that the move will only enable more misinformation to flourish on Meta platforms, and suggest the move is being taken to appease incoming US president Donald Trump.

It’s also understood that the company will continue the programme in the European Union for the time being.

Meta’s fact-checking programme has been running since 2016, and the company has acknowledged that it helps “fight the spread of misinformation and provide people with more reliable information”.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning that the company will instead move to the model of Community Notes used on X, where individual users label posts and those labels are approved once a consensus is reached that they are useful. 

“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US,”  Zuckerberg said in a post on social media.

He repeated many of the misleading talking points made by X owner Elon Musk about fact-checking, suggesting that it is a form of censorship that stifles free speech.

He said that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US”.

Despite Meta championing of fact-checkers for their efforts to help the company reduce misinformation on its platforms, the company’s announcement also claimed that fact-checkers were working too subjectively and applying too many labels.  

“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact-check and how,” read a post by Meta’s new head of public affairs Joel Kaplan.

“Over time, we ended up with too much content being fact-checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate.”

The post also claimed that “too much harmless content” on Meta is being “censored” and that the company’s approach to content moderation has “gone too far”.

Kaplan, a Republican stalwart, was named last week as the replacement for Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister, in what was seen as a gesture to appease incoming US president Donald Trump.

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 president-elect was removed from Facebook following the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.

Meta said that the move would only affect the United States for now, though its statement also said it would end the fact-checking programme by “starting in the US”.

The programme is run in conjunction with more than 90 organisations, including The Journal Fact Check, who work in more than 60 languages across the world.

Journal Media Managing Editor Susan Daly described the move as “disappointing”.

“The Journal FactCheck, along with other European fact-checking organisations, will continue to fulfil its work under the programme until the end of 2025,” she said.

“We have not been informed of any decision by Meta to terminate the programme beyond that date in Europe but expect it to follow the developments announced in the US.

“The Journal FactCheck has been a member of the 3PFC programme since 2017, with its fact-checks surfaced by Meta to users across all their platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, in order to improve the quality of information available there.

“This is work we primarily distribute on The Journal, as one of the main online news sources in Ireland, and will not be affected by any commercial decision taken by a third-party tech entity.”

The head of the International Fact-checking Network Angie D Holan also hit back at Meta and Zuckerberg, saying their decision would hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information.

“Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracy theories,” she said.

She explained that Meta’s third-party fact-checkers, who must be registered with the IFCN, follow a code of principles requiring non-partisanship and transparency around their work.

Holan claimed that the decision was being made in the wake of political pressure from the incoming Trump administration in the United States, and that those attacking fact-checking were claiming bias against them because they feel they “should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction”.

Dr Eileen Culloty, Deputy Director at the DCU Institute for Media, Democracy and Society and a co-ordinator of the European Digital Media Observatory’s Ireland hub said that Meta’s announcement was an attempt to gain favour from Donald Trump.

She also claimed that the move demonstrates why online platforms “are inherently untrustworthy” because they “always prioritise their profits over the public interest”.

“This is a key issue for Ireland. Our country has made a point of being friendly to corporations that are now turning their backs on basic principles of democracy. They are also attacking EU efforts to regulate online harms,” Culloty said.

“Like Musk, Zuckerberg appeals to free speech to justify his actions, but people should not be fooled by this rhetoric.

“It’s particularly galling for Zuckerberg to claim that fact-checkers have just been too politically biased.

“The fact-checkers Meta worked with were required to comply with international standards and transparency rules.”