Earlier in January, Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced that its fact-checking program is coming to an end in an effort to “restore free expression” on Facebook and Instagram. According to him, the social media company will transition to a community notes model, similar to X (formerly Twitter).
In a video posted on January 7, Zuckerberg said that the presidential elections in the United States “felt like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
“After [Donald] Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” he said. “We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” he explained. “I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms.”
A March 2024 survey by public opinion polling firm Publicus Asia revealed that the internet and TV are leading political news sources for Filipinos. Among 1,500 respondents, 61 percent said they access Facebook to get their news.
Meta has not yet announced when it will roll out its new community notes feature in the Philippines, but future elections will be affected by the eventual removal of third-party fact checkers from the social media platforms.
Election campaigns have increasingly relied on social media over the years to reach millions of users and citizens — from the alleged employment of trolls that aided in Rodrigo Duterte’s win in the 2016 presidential polls, to the widespread use of Instagram Reels and TikTok as campaign materials.
Fact-Checking v.s. Community Notes
Meta launched its fact-checking program in 2016, partnering with the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).
With the program, fact-checkers and experts identify hoaxes online or receive potential misinformation to verify and report on. While Facebook and Instagram do not remove content on the basis of information accuracy, they apply warning labels, notify users when the content they engage with is false, and provide links to verified articles. The platforms also reduce the content’s distribution so less users see it.
On the other hand, X’s community notes program is community-driven and relies on users — unpaid contributors — to provide more information on potentially misleading content. A user may submit a note regarding a post, which will be voted on by other users, who are selected based on an algorithm’s understanding of their political leanings. X waits for a similar number of users from the political right and left to approve the note, so that it appears at the bottom of the flagged post.
With the abolition of the fact-checking program, Rappler CEO and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa warns of “dangerous times ahead” for journalism, democracy, and social media. She tells AFP, “Journalists have a set of standards and ethics. What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform.”
Ressa also said that the switch from the fact-checking program is motivated by profit. “Mark Zuckerberg says it’s a free speech issue. That’s completely wrong,” she said. “Only if you’re profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that.”
In an article for the London School of Economics and Political Science Impact Blog, Tom Stafford, a professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, said that the deployment of community notes on X was part of Elon Musk’s efforts to cut costs when he bought the social media platform. Stafford writes, “The skeptical readings of Community Notes are legion: that is a cost effective smokescreen for neglecting responsibility for combating misinformation.”
On Reddit, Filipino users on the subreddit r/Philippines have also expressed their thoughts on Meta’s switch to community notes and how it would affect interactions online. Many welcomed and even celebrated the move.
One Redditor said, “If this is true, I can’t wait to see if the community notes are biased or not. So far, most of the tweets that I see on Twitter that got ‘community noted’ are unbiased and true. And imagine the comment section. LOL.”
“[Duterte-allied] vloggers getting community notes left and right is gonna be fun to watch,” said another.
However, another Redditor pointed out that while the community notes model is effective on X, it may not work so well on Facebook. “Tambayan ng fake news peddlers, trolls, bots, at mga baliw ang Facebook. With actual fact-checkers, topics like the shape of the Earth, the effectiveness of vaccines, the evils of Nazism, etc. are not contentious issues. Without them, even topics like these might get community noted,” they said.
Agreeing, another user said, “Community notes might initially work and gain credibility, but if they subtly support semi-fake information and people believe it due to their established credibility, it could be worse than the current situation.”
Reading is Fundamental
In its statement, the IFCN said that other countries that use Meta’s fact-checking program are “highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide.”
“If Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places,” said the IFCN. “This moment underlines the need for more funding for public service journalism.” The statement furthermore calls on the philanthropist sector to increase its investment in journalism at a critical time. But what can the everyday readers and social media users do?
Google still has the Fact Check Explorer. Through its search tab, you can look up any topic — from something you saw on Facebook, to a claim that a politician made — and see how a fact-checking site rates it. The search results also include links to articles that you can read to get more information.
Many local and international media outfits also still run their own fact-checking programs, putting out articles and posts about the incorrect and deceptive news bits you see online. Often, these articles’ headlines already include “fact check,” making them easier to look up if you need to verify information on a topic. Reading and sharing fact-check articles doesn’t only help you and your network make sense of the information you see, it also lets the news outlets know that their fact-checking programs are valuable.
Think tank Sigla Research Center’s Disinformation Hub also has a host of resources one could look through to learn more about navigating local news, which is even more important now that midterm election campaigns are happening.
In today’s internet landscape, social media’s fact-checking models should be able to service dwindling attention spans as well as uphold the truth. But as social media users, the exercise of reading and developing our own fact-checking habits are crucial to forming well-informed opinions and combatting disinformation, which compromises free speech.
