“Fact Checkers”

Image by Facebook.com: Screenshot of a Facebook "False information" warning.
By Scott Hamilton
I am sure everyone remembers during the COVID-19 pandemic we started seeing “Fact Checkers” appear on Facebook and Instagram. I am also sure I am not the only one who had posts fact-checked and taken down from the platform. The whole idea behind this mechanism was to avoid the spread of false information. The problem was that the fact-checkers all had a political bias. We all noticed it, even if we agreed with the bias. We would be lying to ourselves if we claimed we saw both sides of the story on any political topic.
Just last week, the truth behind the fact-checkers came out, directly from the mouth of Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta. It came about as part of the coming changes to both Facebook and Instagram, to the way the platform moderates and removes content. Notice here that Zuckerberg admits that the platforms do reserve the right to moderate content, and yet they receive immunity from civil liability for third-party content on their websites by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. I have a big issue with this regulation when it comes to these platforms, mainly because your local newspaper and local media stations do not receive the same immunity.
While I do not work for the newspaper, the fact that they print my articles makes them liable for the content, even though it is third party content. The difference is the claim that the newspaper has an editor who takes responsibility for the printed content. I struggle to see how that is different from fact-checkers on Facebook removing content. They are, in fact, acting as editors, and this leaves me with the opinion that they should be held liable for the third-party content published on their site.
In Zuckerberg’s own words, fact-checkers were “too politically biased” and as a result he wants to eliminate the fact-checker process and implement a community notes system like Twitter/X has already implemented, allowing the public to self-police the content. Zuckerberg also hopes to improve the Artificial Intelligence algorithm used for filtering content which is currently restricting speech on controversial topics like immigration and gender. Zuckerberg plans to work with President Trump to help social media promote free speech.
“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. So I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms. We have the opportunity to restore free expression, and I am excited to take it. It’ll take time to get this right, and these are complex systems that are never going to be perfect. There’s also a lot of illegal stuff that we still need to work very hard to remove. But the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focus primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing the stakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots on giving people a voice,” stated Zuckerberg.
While all this sounds like a step in the right direction, it is proof that things were heading in the wrong direction. Zuckerberg also made several statements claiming that he had received threats from the federal government of being shut down if he did not remove certain content. What concerns me most was his lack of speaking out when this was all happening. It really makes me wonder if we can trust Zuckerberg to really make the changes he claims are underway on the platforms. If we can trust him, we should see vast improvement in exercising our freedom of speech and freedom of the press on the platform. Hopefully it will keep people like me out of “Facebook Jail.”
The day after Zuckerberg promised to make these changes to the platform, he got the opposite of the praise I felt he deserved for finally deciding to stand up for free speech. A group of 71 fact-checking organizations sent a letter as part of the international Fact-Checking Network warning Meta not to move to crowd-sourced fact-checking, claiming it would be a “step backward” for accuracy. They made claims that “fact-checking is essential to maintaining shared realities and evidence-based discussion, both in the United States and globally.” Nearly 3.3 billion people (40 percent of the world’s population) used a Meta product every day in September 2024.
There are arguments on both sides of the fact-checkers, those that feel it is the only way to prevent social media platforms from becoming full of scams and hoaxes, and those that feel fact-checkers are too limiting on free speech. We will never reach an agreement on the best way to manage content, but you can see that it has a major impact on society, and any political slant to the moderation will have global impacts.
We saw it with our last two elections in the U.S. and it will continue to be a main source of information. It makes me wonder if maybe the Facebook community should not have a say in the selection of moderators. Maybe we should “elect” the fact-checkers to ensure they match the community standards. Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@te**********.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.