Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently posted an announcement that the company will be ending the use of fact-checkers and adding community notes to its platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
The tech giant currently hosts about four billion users across multiple platforms like Instagram and
Facebook, which means many people get a large amount of information regarding politics from Meta-owned apps. According to a poll by PEW Research Center, nearly one in five adults get their information from social media.
The ability for billionaires to be able to buy social media sites (which many people use for news), and say that they are not going to fact-check posts anymore is dangerous. Massive influencers can now make claims to their millions of followers without fact-checking of their statements; this opens up the possibility for many to be misinformed.
Zuckerberg made the announcement by stating, “We are going to get rid of fact-checkers,” replacing them with, “Community notes similar to X.” This massive shift aligns with a broader trend among social media CEOs to reduce regulation and instead place it into the hands of users.
Zuckerberg also claimed that the company’s old method of moderation was “censorship” of users’ freedom of expression which is an idea that is also commonly brought up by President-elect Donald Trump on the topic of fact-checking information.
CEOs such as Elon Musk and Zuckerberg are beginning to enstate significant shifts in platform moderation policies which concerns many. A teacher at Oly who asked to remain anonymous commented on this connection, “I feel like the new age short form media is slowly being shifted into the control of the Republican Party which is unsettling to me.”
While this change aims to make moderation more democratic, this increases the chance for misinformation to be spread, as seen with X. On X, any user with an account that is at least six months old and has no recent infractions can contribute community notes; these loose requirements allow anyone to leave false or misleading information in a community note.
OHS Sophomore Bryce Byers remarked, “I get a lot of news from Instagram, so this new change worries me” Especially around election topics, misinformation is almost always going to be shared which is concerning for the people who get their news from Instagram.
As social media continues to shape beliefs and ideas, the debate of if fact-checking impedes on peoples’ right to freedom of speech remains a hot topic. With major social media companies shifting their content
moderation policies, the topics of misinformation and political control of social media are more significant than ever.
