Meta to scrap fact-checking program before Trump’s inauguration, CoHNA lauds move

iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-

Ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, social media giant Meta has said it is going to stop using fact-checkers. Meta said that this move is to “restore free expression” and rely on Facebook and Instagram users to add notes or corrections to posts, which is similar to the system that exists in Elon Musk-owned X. The move has been lauded by Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA)

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on social media: “We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US.”

Zuckerberg said that the company is also making some changes to its content moderation policies regarding political topics. These changes will affect billions of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users.

In a video shared on Facebook, Zuckerberg said: “We have reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech, so we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

“The third-party fact-checkers have been ‘too politically biased’ and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S,” he added.

AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking programme, in which Meta pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Tech billionaire Musk’s social media platform X has relied on community notes to flag misleading posts on its platform.

Trump had railed against Zuckerberg during the elections, claiming the fact-checking feature treated posts by conservative users unfairly.

Meta’s move is likely to please Trump and his allies as they disliked the company’s practice.

Meanwhile, the new development received praise from Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), who welcomed the new policy from META in favor of “More Speech” and less censorship. CoHNA also asked META to “ensure its Community Notes model does not get co-opted by entrenched majoritarian voices, the way its “fact checking” operation was”.

“As the leading organization for grassroots activism and education for Hindus in the US and Canada, we have spent much of our efforts in the past few years trying to get past institutional biases that silence Hindu voices that go against the established narrative pushed by privileged gatekeepers,” it said.

“Just this past fall, student-led accounts like Hindus on Campus, found their Instagram handle blocked after their posts educating on the atrocities against Bangladeshi Hindus went viral.

“Similarly, Hindu Samata, a popular content creator, found their handle suspended, when they succeeded with attempts to ask for justice for Jaahnavi, a Hindu student who was killed by a police car in Seattle.

“There were many other such cases, especially if we consider Hindu individuals who spoke against the prevailing popular narrative.

“We also encourage META to use this opportunity to look beyond the confines of ivory tower academics and privileged DEI practitioners and include truly diverse and grassroots voices as they move to a Community Notes model instead of ideologically biased fact checkers.

“We trust the new model will have checks and balances to ensure that numerically superior and institutionally entrenched voices do not come to unfairly influence the conversation and silence dissenting voices as we saw in recent years,” it said.

(Photo courtesy: IANS)

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