Dear Friend,

When Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that his Facebook and Instagram platforms would be cutting ties with fact checkers in the US, Full Fact’s CEO Chris Morris strongly refuted the charge of bias that was levelled against fact checkers. 

Then in March, Meta announced details of its plan for Community Notes; the  programme that, the company says, replaces the need for external fact checking. But the model relies purely on establishing consensus amongst non-expert users, rather than emphasising factual accuracy, and confirms that Meta won’t intervene to slow the spread of even the most blatantly misleading or false content that can go on to cause real harm.

Full Fact is a charity not reliant on any one source of funding. But in this new era of increasing hostility to fact checking, we will need to put effort into remaining creative and agile—both in our engagement with social media companies, and in our approach to fundraising. Our core group of monthly regular givers are a crucial part of that continued effort. Please join them today.