Meta Confirms It’s Ending US Fact-Checking Program
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Summary: Meta’s global policy head, Joel Kaplan, has confirmed that the fact-checking program will end by Monday afternoon in the U.S. Besides that, Kaplan says that Community Notes will start appearing across its social media platforms soon. Notably, Meta still relies on its fact-checking program in other regions.
In January, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced major changes to the company’s content moderation policies. The removal of the fact-checking program was one among them. Now, Meta has finally announced that it will end the U.S. fact-checking program soon.
Meta has confirmed that it will end the fact-checking program in the U.S. very soon
Meta will officially end its U.S. fact-checking program by Monday afternoon, April 7. The news comes via the company’s global policy head, Joel Kaplan, who said in a post on X, “By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the U.S. will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program & removing penalties.”
Notably, this change will apply across Meta’s major social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. For the uninitiated, Meta will replace the fact-checking program with Community Notes. The company’s CEO confirmed this back in January when he detailed new content moderation policies.
Multiple reports surfaced at the time suggesting that many people, including Meta’s internal staff, were unhappy about the policy changes. Anyway, the company first started testing the Community Notes for Threads in January. In the following month, Meta even started inviting people to contribute to the program.
While the company initially said that it wouldn’t publicly publish the notes, Kaplan has some good news for those waiting eagerly for the Community Notes. A part of yesterday’s X post also mentions, “the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached.”
The company still relies on fact-checking in other regions
It should be noted that Meta still relies on its third-party fact-checking program outside of the U.S. Moreover, the company plans to roll out Community Notes in favor of fact-checking in other countries down the line.
