New Delhi/Washington:
Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday that it is closing its third-party fact-checking (verification) program. Meta has taken this decision before the swearing-in ceremony of US President Donald Trump on January 20. In its place, a new program named ‘Community Notes’ will be started. This program will be written on behalf of the users, which will work like Elon Musk’s social media platform X (earlier Twitter). Meanwhile, Elon Musk has given his reaction on this decision of Meta.
Starting with the US, Meta will eliminate independent third-party fact-checking programs. The company said that it took this decision because even expert fact-checkers have their own biases. Therefore, now Meta will adopt ‘Community Notes’ model. X owner Elon Musk has called this decision of Meta a good step. Musk responded to Meta’s decision by writing, “This is cool.”
This is cool pic.twitter.com/kUkrvu6YKY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2025
Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Caplan informed about the end of the fact-checking program in a blog post. “We’ve seen this approach work at The company will now focus on illegal and ‘high seriousness violations’ such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.”
Complex system made ‘too many mistakes’
Meta also admitted that the complex system it had built to manage content had made ‘significant errors’. ‘A lot of content’ has been censored.
At the same time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that one of the reasons for these changes is Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. “The recent election feels like a cultural turning point, where expression is once again being prioritized,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
Let us tell you that Donald Trump had criticized Mark Zuckerberg during the US elections. He had claimed that the fact-checkers program had treated posts of conservative users unfairly.
After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections, Elon Musk’s stature has increased rapidly. Musk will handle the Department of Government Efficiency i.e. DOGE in the Trump government along with Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump and his associates are likely to be happy with this move of Meta, because they did not like the working system of the company.
