Tech giant Meta's shock announcement to end its U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Center 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 U.S. 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 -- 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."
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 U.S.-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 U.S. fact-checking organization PolitiFact, disagreed with the contention that fact-checking was a tool to suppress free speech.
The role of U.S. 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."
© 2025 AFP
35 Comments
Concerned Citizen
Bravo Meta!
TaiwanIsNotChina
Disgraceful. Now we can have no restraints on the public's ability to delude itself.
bass4funk
I’m so stoked about this! Great news!!! Just fantastic! Speech should never be controlled, people should be allowed to say whatever they want.
wallace
Ending fact-checking will cause chaos with the truth no longer known. I don't use Meta/Facebook.
bass4funk
So you’re saying the fact-checkers are honest and the purveyor of truth, honesty and dignity? If that’s the case, FB wouldn’t have made this move. In the end it was hurting their business period, they were losing subscribers, they really had no choice but to stop policing what a person can say or cannot say. Again, you should be allowed to say what you want. If you say the J6 prospers are criminals, I have the right to disagree and call them patriotic heroes. I should not be blocked or cancelled or silenced for saying or believing that.
Geeter Mckluskie
Had you used Facebook you would have noticed that factual information was censored during the pandemic and thus those of us who were desperate to find objective information before having our kids vaccinated were persuaded by a single narrative that proved false in the end...that vaccines prevented transmission and were harmless.
wallace
Ending fact-checking will cause chaos with the truth no longer known. I don't use Meta/Facebook.
Why were you using social networks to source vital information about your health matters? I discussed it with my team of qualified doctors during my post-cancer who advised me to wait before having the COVID-19 vaccine. After a two-year wait, I had the vaccine. If I had children, which I don't here, I would not have had them vaccinated.
gaijintraveller
I don't believe Facebook had any effective fact checking anyway. At least, it seems a lot of fake ads got through there fact checking, a lot of animal cruelty post got through, a lot of fake friend requests from fake people who post links to dodgy porn sites got through, and hardly any of them contravened Facebook's community guidelines. But then, it seems nothing that makes money for Facebook in any way goes against their community guidelines.
TaiwanIsNotChina
A quarter million deaths could have been prevented without the anti-vaxxer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10123459/
bass4funk
Well, I am just excited that now all sides will be heard and no one will be silenced and the people can choose what’s best for them or who they believe and trust. That’s how it should always be, Social media or the government should never control speech.
wallace
I would not trust any social network for vital information about my health which is why I haven't used any of them for more than 15 years.
Some dude
This is why it's useful to approach social media with the assumption that anything and everything posted on it is untrue until proven otherwise.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Social media was a mistake. This may be the final confirmation.
Geeter Mckluskie
Because there was misinformation being promulgated by governments and pharmaceutical comapnies (such as president Biden claiming if you got vaccinated you wouldn't get infected). Also, there were disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who warned about adverse effects from the vaccine. So, what is a person to do with conflicting information? What I did was contact my friends in Canada (which began vaccinations months before Japan) via facebook, all of whom have children to inquire about any adverse effects they may have experienced.
bass4funk
No, the mistake was for Social media to buckle under this administrations pressure to silence the right and its critics and experts and it totally backfired on them the way it should have.
Geeter Mckluskie
NIH (National Center for Biotechnolotgy Information)
This is their disclaimer:
So, the US government that mandated vaccines and lied to the American public (if you get the vaccine you won't get infected, President Biden) that promulgated false information is a contributor to the NIH information page.
Tokyo Guy
Social media was a mistake. This may be the final confirmation.
Just to play devil's advocate a bit here: while you're not completely wrong, I do think social media has one fundamentally vital role.
I think that it's important, especially for younger people who still don't have a great deal of life experience, to be aware of the gamut of humanity, so to speak.
To find the best of humanity, you can go out and make friends, join groups or clubs, volunteer, etc.
But it's also wise to sometimes observe humanity at its absolute worst, and for that we have social media.
Geeter Mckluskie
Geopolitical bias:
Critics claim CIR primarily targets disinformation campaigns originating from countries like Russia, potentially overlooking similar activities by Western powers, which could create a perception of selective reporting.
theFu
Just label/mark/tag non-credentialed journalists as "opinion, not factual" and be done with it.
Require credentialed journalists to follow journalistic standards for fact checking, timely corrections, and clearly labeling non-fact-based posts as opinions.
Social media is great between friends.
Social media is terrible for all other purposes.
This is purely a political move to make Trump happier. It is a business decision to avoid being hassled by Trump and MAGA people who don't actually care about facts.
virusrex
The information that was censored was false demonstrably, the same as the misrepresentation that you make, vaccines against covid were safe and effective, even reducing transmission. Pretending that anything in biology must apply in 100% of the cases, absolutely, or else be considered "false" is irrational, absolutely nothing in health would be safe or effective by this irrational approach, clean water, excercise, activity, etc. will always have examples where damage is produced.
Seeing twitter this is not the result, now Musk systematically censors reliable, corroborated information and supports demonstrably falsehoods. The only ones benefited were those that now can use the service to mislead and fool others for profit.
Irrelevant, there are countless sources of scientific information that are not companies nor governments. Health services, medical universities, big hospitals, etc. etc.
This in no way supports your criticism, if all the different sources coincide in the same conclusions you can't disregard that conclusion just because also a source you don't like supports it. This makes as much sense as having 10 expert doctors and one lawyer diagnose a patient with the same disease and thinking, "they all must be wrong because the lawyer is not a doctor"
Pretending the countless medical, scientific sources did not exist and use the declaration of a politician to say "everybody" was lying to you makes no sense. The same to disregard the validated consequences of a personal, irrational decision as if people should be able to put others at a higher risk without any consequence. A doctor can lose his job if he insist on doing surgery without gloves and washing his hands, even if he chooses to believe microbes don't exist.
Geeter Mckluskie
Quote where I've said "everybody was lying".
Thanks
Geeter Mckluskie
We were told that the vaccines prevented both infection and the transmission of Covid. So, according to such "reliable" sources ( i.e. Rachel Madow MSNBC News, Joe Biden, president of the United States of America) there were no risks to those who were vaccinated.
Can you tell us how many people were injured by the vaccines?
Thanks
Geeter Mckluskie
Was it? My son was injured from his 2nd Pfizer shot. That was 2 years ago. He still has Parkinson's like symptoms by which he can't write with a pen because he can't hold it properly without his hand shaking.
Would you like to come for a visit for a "demonstration"?
bass4funk
If you think so, that’s your right, don’t silence or block my free speech to challenge you.
All I can say is, thank god, none of this crap will happen anymore, now they will do like with X put a disclaimer for reference and that’s it. So good on Mark for coming to his senses.
Raw Beer
I'm glad than now we can watch on Meta's facebook content like the following:
https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=460503750352123
But I will miss the bright blue warning labels Facebook put on all "controversial" Covid content, which I interpreted as "you might want to check this content out".
Raw Beer
The difference between MSM and social media is that the latter does have some accurate and honest content.
virusrex
When you claim that what the scientific consensus says about the vaccines is false, but if you can accept they are not lying that means you also accept the consensus was not false.
How does this in any way demonstrates the typical information censored was not false? one thing is to say everything (including vaccines, surgeries, antibiotis, diets) have risks, that is true and was NOT censored. Another completely different is to say the risks from the medical interventions outweigh the benefits from those interventions, that should be censored because it is demonstrably false and can mislead people to making wrong decisions about their health.
A demonstration of what? hearsay from anonymous accounts? For your argument to be supported you would need actual evidence, for example a medical professional that says the problem happened because of the vaccine (not only after it) and principally an objective demonstration that this is so common that it completely outweigh the millions of lives saved because of the vaccines.
An easy way to understand it, what would you need from someone that says surgeries are a scam made for profit and that people are being fooled into thinking they should be operated? would one case of a patient having serious problems because of a surgery prove that claim?
The experts clearly said that the vaccines would reduce this, but that the main benefit was the much lower risk that comes from the disease. This is completely true, even more since the variants were projected to make the vaccines much less effective than what they actually resulted to be.
Try with actually reliable sources, experts, scientific and medical institutions. None of the sources you want to misrepresent as reliable have expertise in the field.
Since YOU are the one making a claim that requires this information you are the one that loses by not presenting it, the best experts in the world clearly concluded the vaccines risks are much much lower than the benefits, for you to be able to disprove them you need objective information of the contrary, do you have it?
That is a non sequitur, COIs (when actually important) do help explaining when something wrong is identified, but they do not replace actual findings that support your claim about the source being unreliable. If a fact check is supported with evidence than anybody can consult that actually proves this source is reliable.
No, that is a lie promoted by antivaxxer propaganda groups, there is zero evidence "many more deaths" come prove vaccines than from lack of them.
You would be the one censoring someone else when the argument that you have no evidence to support what you want to believe, while the information that was censored can easily be demonstrated false. Pretending that your freedom of speech requires people to stop saying that a claim you make can be demonstrated as false is self contradictory (and invalid).
There will always be people glad disinformation is made available, even from a source so repeatedly proved mistaken.
Both have, but social media makes it easier for anonymous sources to present falsehoods without taking any responsibility.
And of course for billionaires to censor accurate and honest content when it goes against their purposes, as it happened with twitter and is facilitated by meta.
wallace
I do not understand why anyone would trust what they read on social networks for important health decisions.
bass4funk
I don’t understand why anyone would trust Fauci, but that’s my personal opinion and I will always say and feel that until my last breath. If other people think that he’s great, then that is their opinion and I have no problem with that, I have my own.
wallace
I do not understand why anyone would trust what they read on social networks for important health decisions.
Fauci was an American director and a different country from where I live. I watched very little of him. I discussed my health problems with my qualified doctors who have kept me cancer-free for five years.
wallace
I wouldn't even believe posts on buying a second-hand car. Maybe on your sister or mother but probably fake photos. So many fake AI posts on all sites.
Tokyo Guy
To our republican and MAGA friends:
The 2024 election was fixed by Trump and Musk and Harris actually won all the swing states, but Musk hired hundreds of Russian hackers to swing the results for Trump.
There is no evidence of this at all, but it's my opinion and I am allowed to have it.
Therefore I refuse to refer to Trump as the President.
I assume you're cool with that? Please bear in mind that every time you come back and state that he is the president, I will just say "that's your opinion and I don't have to agree with it".
wallace
bass4funk
Fauci was an American director and a different country from where I live. I watched very little of him. I discussed my health problems with my qualified doctors who have kept me cancer-free for five years.
Why would you post a fake comment when I told you and you reposted that I didn't even follow him?
I don't oppose your opinions and have posted nothing on it.
I also told you the only doctors I consulted were my team of doctors dealing with my cancer. No internet searches or anything else.
My doctors told me to hold off on the vaccine for two years because my immune system was weak from the cancer. That is what I did.
Did your aunt consult with her doctor before the vaccine?
The rest of the comment makes no sense to me.
itsonlyrocknroll
Meta's unsubtle frankly disgraceful announcement to end its U.S. fact-checking program requires a lot more action than throwing a collective hissy fit.
the implications are terrifyingly obvious, opening the flood gates to all manner of skulduggery, misinformation, Ai fakery.
Donald Trump success 2024 US election was not fraudulent or fixed, The democrats need to do much soul searching. The democrat campaign was a shameful tin eared exercise in failure
Some dude
The Meta users are having an absolute ball with this.
I'm on Meta and now people are posting fake stories claiming that Zuckerberg is pregnant / is dead / was caught in a compromising position with Trump involving being on his knees, and pretty much anything else you can dream up.
I'm sure Zuck has set his account up so that he never sees anything resembling criticism, but this decision has really touched a nerve and it's quite fun to watch what happens as a result.