Meta is set to discontinue its fact-checking program across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads on Monday, replacing it with a user-driven “Community Notes” system, marking a significant shift in the company’s approach to content moderation.
This decision follows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s January announcement that the company would reduce censorship and prioritize “free speech” on its platforms. The new system will allow users to add context to posts, similar to X’s model, without the risk of content suppression or penalties that came with the previous fact-checking system.
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“By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over,” Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, announced on X. “That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program & removing penalties. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached.”
The move comes after years of criticism, particularly from conservatives, who accused Meta’s third-party fact-checking partners, including organizations like PolitiFact and Lead Stories, of ideological bias and collaborating with government agencies to suppress dissenting viewpoints. Critics cited instances of censorship related to topics such as COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and election integrity.
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Zuckerberg has defended the shift to Community Notes, arguing that it will improve accuracy and reduce censorship errors. “Changing the content filters to have to require higher confidence and precision is actually going to be the thing that reduces the vast majority of the censorship mistakes that we make,” Zuckerberg stated in a January interview with Joe Rogan. “Removing the fact-checkers and replacing them with Community Notes is a good step forward — like, a very small percent of the content is fact-checked in the first place … I think it’ll be a positive step.”
Meta has been testing Community Notes and plans to begin rolling out the feature across its platforms, with notes appearing without algorithmic throttling, takedowns, or warnings.
However, Meta will continue to utilize its existing fact-checking framework outside of the U.S., according to the company’s website.
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