The news: Meta will end its fact-checking program and shift to a community-based model for content moderation that's similar to X’s.
Scaling back: Meta recently admitted that its content moderation policies have been over-enforced and are prone to errors. It’s now saying that its third-party moderators are biased.
The company said its systems, shaped by social and political pressures, have “gone too far” and hinder free expression. “Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, said.
Threat dodged: Amid a contentious 2024 US election, all eyes were on social media platforms to see how they would manage deepfakes, foreign interference, and AI-generated misinformation.
Meta reported AI content represented less than 1% of election-related misinformation last year. Now the election is over, the company could be looking to scale back resources and align itself with President-elect Donald Trump’s antiregulation agenda.
What’s the risk? After Elon Musk purchased it in 2022, X replaced its fact-checking efforts with a community notes program. The platform has since hemorrhaged users and ad spending: Twenty-six percent of marketers plan to cut back ad spending on X this year, per Kantar, and only 4% currently believe that X provides a safe environment for their ads.
Content notes have contributed to rising misinformation on X, an issue that may now be passed down to Meta.
Our take: Loosening its content moderation policies could boost misinformation, and adding more political content to its platforms may alienate some users or create an echo chamber. And while advertisers will need to reassess Meta platforms' reliability and safety for brand messaging, there are few alternative social platforms to turn to.
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