In an even more startling development, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the company was discontinuing the use of outside organizations that monitor and fact-check content. However, unlike Facebook, Meta is going to rely on an internal model resembling Twitter under Elon Musk where users themselves are far more involved in content moderation. This change is one of the changes launched in a broader vision that seeks to open Meta’s plat form to the users themselves.
Meta's Shift: Could Facebook Become a Rumor Mill?
Though it may appear that this decision was made in the interest of increasing the freedom of speech, the same effectively opens up space for fake news to circulate. Said risk is especially significant given that the target platforms have hundreds of millions of users, such as Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp. This could alter Meta’s applications, shift them into places where fake information might spread as they were prior to being outlawed in several countries.
It came as a shock to many people among them some firms in the fact-checking industry, which had no prior knowledge of the move before its disclosure. For instance, Alan Duke the head of “Lead Stories” was surprised to discover that his contract with Meta which was renewed recently will expire in March. Such a move has created confusion and uncertainty within both contractors and meta’s content verification support from the firms that hired contractors.
It was in contract work which for many fact-checking organisations included Meta that they used to earn good revenues. For instance, Politifact for its part depended on the Meta partnership for about 5% of its annual revenue, and other companies, such as “Lead Stories,” had employed dozens of people to check the content in different languages. Since Meta’s decision is slowly being realised among these organizations, some have began seeking other opportunities on other platforms, including TikTok.
Meta’s decision that is presented as a transition to the more permissive policy announced in contrast to the rather limited approach that the company has adopted more recently. But, the absence of explanations on why Zuckerberg made this decision, alongside the possibility of skyrocketing disinformation problem, has many asking if the Meta platforms are prepared for this level of user-formulated content moderation. It remains to be seen how the conclusion of this verdict will work in the consideration of increasing fear about the diffusion of information.
Meta’s Shift: Freedom or a Breeding Ground for Misinformation?
During the video that accompanied the announcement, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the new approach means the company can expect more fake news appearing. But he presented that decision as being made for the sake of users who will be able to be more creative and, yes, that is a price that a company should be willing to pay. This indicates a new shift at the Meta organization, shedding off the extreme content moderation in favour of free speech.
This model was adopted in consultation with the expected new coming Trump administration this would imply political involvement. The coincidences of Zuckerberg meeting Trump in November, the $1 m donation to the Trump campaign, and the promotion of the Republican-executive at Meta, Joel Kaplan, all sets specific strategic and political agendas. All these actions indicate that Meta might be headed towards a regime of more conservative policies within its top management.
Since these changes have been made when Trump was occupying the presidency, Meta’s change seems to replicate the model Musk has adopted at Twitter (now X). Zuckerberg’s decision to leave management of content within the platform to its communities and the recent response to decreasing external fact-checking corresponds with Musk’s vision of a completely free and unmoderated space. This has raised more discussions of whether the platforms owned by Meta will similar to what Twitter is experiencing under Musk.
Some of Meta’s platforms, especially, Facebook and WhatsApp are significantly more used globally as compared to X, especially in the Global South where platforms like WhatsApp are ubiquitous. This prompts questions about what happens if more moderation relaxes, given that misinformation may adversely impact millions of prospective users with questionable credibility of the supplied information.
A research conducted by an Indonesian polling firm in 2019 revealed that fakes and fake news widely spread through the application of the WhatsApp, where many of the application users and the elderly believed those fakes and forwarded it. In particular, considering the fact that Meta’s platforms are popular in the regions that suffer from the problem of fake news, there is a growing backlash that this change may intensify the problem and increase the set of difficulties that the company has to face in terms of managing billions of users.
Meta's Shift: A Path to Freedom or a Misinformation Crisis?
In fact, the whatsapp has also been a massive contributor to the fake news where users exercise sharing the content with no verification across different large groups. The freedom that the platform offers to spread information within a short span of time makes it a fertile ground for harbouring this information, rumors, falsehood and misleading information. This issue has emerged while Meta had been trying to integrate fact-checking procedures in the past.
It does so because even under the previous fact-checking system, which was in place before the company rebranded as Meta, a high rate of misinformation was already apparent. The problem of deleting external fact-checking contractors increases the probability of misinformation as the boundaries between facts and fake news blur.
If external content moderation is eliminated in areas that Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram utilize a lot, for example, the Arab world, it is going to get worse. These sites could turn into hubs of scammers,_meshveshqi dal, egregious content, political campaigns and potentially pose a threat to millions of users.
However, the new system could also provide new incentives for the users to report truth, which has been concealed. For example, the Palestinian cause has been suppressed on Meta’s platforms: accounts focusing on it get blocked quite often. Due to freedom of content it might be easier to express opinions on such topics.
Nevertheless, the bigger picture is whether Meta will sacrifice all of the banned content restrictions or limit it to some extent, for the benefit of some other interests? Although it has potential of offering more free speech, the change could also present more difficulties in protecting the company’s reputation and making sure the platform does not deteriorate into full of misguiding or endangering content.
