The News that Meta is Turning It Off: A Case Study in Deciding to Shut Down a Social Media Platform for Fact Checking

Alexios Matzarlis, director of Cornell University’s Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative and founding director of the International Fact-Checking Network, says he was expecting Meta to axe this program for years. It’s not in this manner and with this timing, it’s political.

“Meta didn’t owe fact-checkers anything, but it knows that by pulling this partnership it’s removing a very significant source of funding for the ecosystem globally,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped establish the first partnerships between fact-checkers and Facebook between 2015 and 2019 as director of the International Fact Checking Network.

The news organizations who were partners with Meta to tackle the spread of fake news are scrambling to figure out how this change will affect them.

Duke claims the decision will still have an impact on them, as most of their operations are outside of the US. The most pained part of this is that experienced journalists will no longer be paid to investigate false claims on Meta platforms.

“We heard the news just like everyone else,” says Alan Duke, cofounder and editor in chief of fact-checking site Lead Stories, which started working with Meta in 2019. “No advance notice.”

Meta partners with dozens of fact-checking organizations and newsrooms across the globe, 10 of which are based in the US, where Meta’s new rules will first be applied.

The news that Meta was no longer planning on using their services was announced in a blog post by chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan on Tuesday morning and an accompanying video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the company plans to rely on X-style Community Notes, which allow users to flag content that they think is inaccurate or requires further explanation.

X seems like it should be a cautionary tale rather than a North Star for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Advertisers and users alike have reportedly fled in droves since Musk took. There are many far-right debate me edgelord accounts on timelines. That is just the owner. This is the future that Meta wants.

It may soon be hard to tell the difference. Meta this week said it would torpedo its fact-checking partners in favor of X’s “community notes” model (a comparison Meta chief global policy officer Joel Kaplan made directly in a blog post yesterday) and used the fig leaf of “free speech” to make alarmingly permissive changes to its Hateful Conduct policy. It elevated Kaplan, who is entrenched in Republican circles, last week, after appointing Donald Trump’s friend and best friend Dana White to its board.

But at what cost? Well, potentially plenty. Fact-checking is not beyond reproach, and community notes can be effective as part of a broader moderation system. The announcement of the changes and video accompanying it gave no indication of whether or not this will be an upgrade.