Since Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise announcement that Meta would shut down its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in the U.S., the IFCN has worked to offer insight into the work of fact-checkers; what the end of the nine-year partnership means for the battle against falsehoods; and why fact-checkers everywhere merit continued support.
On Monday, director Angie Drobnic Holan criticized Meta’s plan to replace professional fact-checkers with a Community Notes-style model similar to that used on X. Speaking on the Poynter Report Podcast, she warned that the approach is unlikely to counter demonstrably false posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
“One of the things about community notes is that it depends on people of varying political views having agreement on the usefulness of the notes,” she said. “In a highly polarized time, that agreement doesn’t necessarily happen.”
On X, the platform owned and controlled by Elon Musk, less than 9% of proposed notes end up being shown to the public, and only a small fraction of those address harmful political and health misinformation.
“A lot of claims that are demonstrably false don’t end up getting tagged with notes,” Holan told veteran media writer Tom Jones, the podcast host. “And if Meta follows this path without strong standards of evidence, misinformation will only flourish.”
Earlier, fact-checking leaders refuted persistent claims that fact-checkers involved in the nine-year partnership censored content on Facebook. “Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracies,” Holan said in a statement, which was reported by The New York Times, Forbes, Reuters, Nieman Lab at Harvard, The Wall Street Journal and others.
Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, voiced the concerns shared by many fact-checkers in an article by WIRED: “Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything. And Meta always held the cards. It's time to quit invoking inflammatory and false language in describing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”
Holan added, “It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters… Fact-checkers have not been biased in their work — that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.”
Calling Zuckerberg’s remarks in the announcement video as “incredibly unfair,” Holan told The Verge that Meta’s billions of users will be the first to feel the impact of the company’s decision. “It’s going to hurt Meta’s users first because the program worked well at reducing the virality of hoax content and conspiracy theories.”
“In the long term,” she told the Associated Press separately, “I think it’s very uncertain what this will all mean.”
Days after Zuckerberg went public with the news — a move some U.S. fact-checkers described as not entirely unexpected — more than 130 organizations from 78 countries, all signatories to the IFCN’s Code of Principles, wrote an open letter to counter his claims of censorship and set the record straight. The letter, republished by dozens of organizations, warned that ending the program would be a setback for online accuracy and could lead to real-world harm, particularly in countries vulnerable to political instability and violence. The first open letter to Zuckerberg in 2016 led to the creation of the fact-checking program.
Holan and Dulamkhorloo Baatar, founder of NEST Mongolia spoke to the international community of the Society for Professional Journalists about the challenges of fact-checking around the world. Holan said that while she hopes Meta executives will eventually change their minds and resume the program in the long term, she expects fact-checkers to withstand the challenges posed by reduced funding for their work.
“On a brighter note, the fact-checking community is resilient,” Holan said on The Poynter Report Podcast. “We need to think about history and how we want to be remembered. Day to day, it can look very bleak, but I do think if you are pursuing truth, you’re going to end up on the right side of history. That’s what helps me get out of bed every morning.”
More coverage on Meta
- SEE Check: Tijana Cvjetićanin examines how politicians, propagandists, and conspiracy theorists in Southeast Europe are responding to Meta’s termination of its U.S. fact-checking program and the loosening of content moderation, highlighting potential threats to regional media integrity.
- Reuters Institute: Gretel Kahn reports that global fact-checkers in Brazil, Croatia, Italy, Nigeria, Ukraine, and the Philippines fear Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program will negatively impact their revenue and disrupt their news ecosystems amid ongoing war, attacks, and political turmoil.
- The Hill: MIT’s David Rand and Cameron Martel argue that Meta’s decision to replace professional fact-checkers with community-based content moderation is out of step with public opinion. Their research shows most Americans, including the majority of Republicans, support platforms reducing harmful misinformation and using independent fact-checkers over relying solely on user-generated systems like community notes.
- Tech Policy Press: Paul M. Barrett defends fact-checking against claims that it censors free speech, is biased, and ineffective, asserting its essential role remains crucial even as Meta discontinues its third-party fact-checking program.
- Axios: Sara Fischer reports that Google has informed EU officials it will not integrate fact-checks into its search results or YouTube videos, nor use them for content ranking or removal, despite new EU regulations requiring such measures.
- Rest of World: Ananya Bhattacharya highlights that fact-checking organizations in Pakistan, Argentina, and Brazil had already begun diversifying their revenue streams in anticipation of Meta ending its program, suggesting these groups may better withstand the impact of the withdrawal.
- New York Times: Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and Kate Conger report on “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era,” detailing how Zuckerberg ended the fact-checking program and relaxed content moderation policies after meeting with President Donald Trump. The decision, driven by the promotion of Republican ally Joel Kaplan to head global public policy, has caused internal division within Meta, with employees split over concerns about increased misinformation and the company’s alignment with Republican political interests.
- Prospect: Alan Rusbridger and Khaled Mansour, members of Meta’s oversight board, write Zuckerberg’s decision follows his alignment with Trump. They express concerns about the rise of misinformation and the challenges of maintaining consistent global content standards.
- Le Monde: Fabrice Fries, CEO of AFP, writes that Meta’s decision to stop fact-checking during times of massive disinformation is like dismantling the Los Angeles fire station during a major wildfire.
- Rappler: In her speech at the Vatican’s Jubilee Year celebration, Nobel laureate Maria Ressa emphasized the importance of fact-checking and criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end the program.
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