Castro-Rodríguez, Meta (Facebook): lots of fake news and misinformation

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running dogs of imperialism, gone full MAGA
Hustlers gone full MAGA, running wild. Graphic by geralt — pixabay.com.

A turn for the worse

by Manuel Castro-Rodríguez

Meta  the company that operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp  announced on Tuesday it was ending third-party fact-checking. In a video, the company’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said fact checking had led to “too much censorship”.

In a statement reacting to Meta’s decision, the head of the International Fact-Checking Network, Angie Drobnic Holan, said (emphasis is mine):

This decision will hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family. 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 conspiracy theories. The fact-checkers used by Meta follow a Code of Principles requiring nonpartisanship and transparency. It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters. Factcheckers 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.

Meta launched its independent, third-party, fact-checking program in 2016. It did so during a period of heightened concern about information integrity coinciding with the election of Donald Trump as US president and furor about the role of social media platforms in spreading misinformation and disinformation.

As part of the program, Meta funded fact-checking partners  such as Reuters Fact Check, Australian Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and PolitiFact  to independently assess the validity of problematic content posted on its platforms. Warning labels were then attached to any content deemed to be inaccurate or misleading. This helped users to be better informed about the content they were seeing online.

Facebook to ditch fact-checking: what do researchers think?

Meta’s planned shift away from third party fact-checking in favor of a crowdsourced approach has perplexed those who study the spread of misinformation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00027-0

Could Meta ending fact-checking lead to rise in health misinformation?

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/meta-ending-fact-checking-lead-rise-health-misinformation/story?id=117480644

Calling women ‘household objects’ now permitted on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/tech/meta-hateful-conduct-policy-update-fact-check/index.html

Under Meta’s relaxed hate speech rules, users can now post “I’m a proud racist” or “Black people are more violent than whites.”

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/

Meta scraps fact-checking, brings back political content in latest Trump-friendly move

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/07/meta-eliminates-third-party-fact-checking-moves-to-community-notes.html

No more fact-checking for Meta. How will this change media — and the pursuit of truth?

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-politics-trump-verification-misinformation-00bc57b4a3c348a1363610c1cbbfd8ca

Mark Zuckerberg’s geopolitical free speech gambit

The Meta CEO’s US political changes will have complicated global consequence.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/10/mark-zuckerberg-meta-fact-check-hate-speech-trump/

Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/why-did-mark-zuckerberg-end-facebook-instagram-fact-checking

Mark Zuckerberg’s MAGA makeover will reshape the entire internet

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/media/mark-zuckerberg-meta-fact-checking-analysis/index.html

Facebook owner Meta kills DEI in latest nod to Trump and MAGA movement

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/10/meta-cancels-dei/77598458007/

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s sprint to remake Meta for the Trump era

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/technology/meta-mark-zuckerberg-trump.html

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