Meta Will Continue Fact-Checking Outside the US

Meta’s use of fact checkers will reportedly continue, at least outside the U.S.

The social media giant has decided to phase out fact-checking in the U.S. in favor of a community notes system, but wants to see how that changes goes before determining how to proceed in other regions, Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business, told Bloomberg News in an interview Monday (Jan. 20).

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently that he was reserving the company’s almost decade-old fact checking policy as its systems were making “too many mistakes” and unfairly censoring users.

The Bloomberg report noted that this change would be more difficult outside the U.S., where there are tougher laws governing how platforms handle misinformation. For example, the  European Union’s Digital Services Act requires large platforms to remove deceptive political content and disinformation or face heavy fines.

“We’ll see how that goes as we move it out over the years,” Mendelsohn said. “So nothing changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world.”

Some parts of the world aren’t happy with Meta’s decision. For example, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed grave concern with the change earlier this month, calling the move “extremely serious.” Lula said he would hold a meeting with government officials to discuss the implications of this decision, which has triggered backlash in Brazil.

Speaking to reporters in Brasilia, Lula stressed the importance of holding digital platforms to the same standards as traditional media outlets when it comes to accountability.

“I think it’s extremely serious that people want digital communication to not have the same responsibility as someone who commits a crime in the written press,” he said.

Meanwhile, last week saw reports that the European Commission was reconsidering its investigations into U.S. tech giants such as Meta, conducting a review that could see those cases being scaled back.

According to a report by the Financial Times (FT), the change was brought about by the election of Donald Trump the the U.S. presidency. One EU official told the FT the review had to do with “tech oligarchs” being close to Trump — Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs attended the inauguration Monday – a situation that creates “a whole new ballgame.”