Facebook Fact-checkers, Facing Doom, Call Urgent Meeting
One possible interpretation is that Zuckerberg was as afraid of these freelance censors as anyone else and saw a chance to neutralize the threatYesterday, we noted that Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he was going to lighten up on censorship at Facebook and Instagram.
The decision caught Facebook’s contracted censors/fact-checkers/moderators by surprise, according to David Gilbert, Wired’s writer on “disinformation, online extremism … with a special focus on the 2024 US presidential election:”
“Meta didn’t owe fact-checkers anything, but it knows that by pulling this partnership it’s removing a very significant source of funding for the ecosystem globally,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped establish the first partnerships between fact-checkers and Facebook between 2015 and 2019 as director of the International Fact Checking Network.
Meta’s partners were also angered by Zuckerberg’s allegation that fact-checkers had become too biased.
According to [Alan] Duke, it is disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta’s US third-party fact-checking program of being “too politically biased.” “Let me fact-check that. Lead Stories follows the highest standards of journalism and ethics required by the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles. We fact-check without regard to where on the political spectrum a false claim originates.”
“Meta’s Fact-Checking Partners Say They Were ‘Blindsided’ by Decision to Axe Them,” January 7, 2025
The Twitter files tell a different story about how the industry actually works.
According to Pranav Dixit, Business Insider’s Meta correspondent, the International Fact-Checking Network called an urgent meeting, because Meta was a cash cow for them:
The meeting is expected to draw between 80 and 100 attendees from the IFCN’s network of fact-checkers, which spans 170 organizations worldwide. Not all the expected attendees are Meta fact-checking partners, though many of them have a stake in the program’s future and its global implications.
The IFCN has long played a crucial role in Meta’s fact-checking ecosystem by accrediting organizations for Meta’s third-party program, which began in 2016 after the US presidential election that year.
“Meta fact-checkers call an emergency meeting after Mark Zuckerberg pulls the plug,” January 7, 2025
One possible interpretation is that Zuckerberg was as afraid of these freelance censors as anyone else and saw a chance to neutralize the threat.
The legacy media response as “beyond parody”
The iconic New York Times rushed a piece into print yesterday: “Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False,” noting that “Fact-checking groups that worked with Meta said they had no role in deciding what the company did with the content that was fact-checked.”
Thus the Times, while firmly on the side of the fact-checkers, inadvertently advertised the huge problem with the entire system it is defending: Fact-checkers could take refuge in being “independent” while casting doubt on and obliterating information that was unpopular with Top People— but was in fact true. That happened often during the COVID meltdown:
Alexander Hall commented yesterday evening at Fox News,
“Fact-checkers fact-check claim that fact-checkers are the problem. Real headline from the NY Times,” civil liberties attorney Laura Powell noted. “How can anyone produce satire when the legacy media has become so ridiculous?”…
“This is amazing. Meta says fact-checkers were the problem Fact-checkers rule that false,” Analytics Miami founder Ana Bozovic said in a post. “Rounding off the absurdity: this is the NYT reporting.”
“Internet roasts NYT headline about fact-checkers ruling Meta criticism of fact checks ‘false:’ ‘Beyond parody’,”
But in the worldview of typical New York Times readers today, perhaps that’s what should happen: Top People have the correct information by definition, by virtue of being Top People, and they impose it on the rest of us for our own good.
How censorious are these “fact-checkers” in general?
Satire site The Babylon Bee was a frequent target and offers some examples:
- CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication This was fact-checked by Snopes, and Facebook threatened us with suppression and demonetization for sharing false information. A classic.
- Ocasio-Cortez Appears On ‘The Price Is Right,’ Guesses Everything is Free Everything Is Free Thank you to the brave fact-checkers at Snopes for calling us out on this one. Otherwise people might have been fooled. Fact check: FALSE.
- Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg USA Today, another one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners, helpfully pointed out that this was satire.
Here are a number of further examples as well.
To those who wring their hands over where a world without fact-checkers will lead us (“‘I really think this a precursor for genocide,’ a former employee tells Platformer”), Bee spokesman Seth Dillon offers a thought: “The concern here is fake. The goal isn’t to eliminate misinformation — it’s to eliminate dissent. If you make it illegal to be wrong, you make it impossible to challenge preferred narratives.”
You may also wish to read: Zuckerberg: Facebook to lighten up on censorship. He wants to move away from moderation and more towards a Community Notes approach. While some think he is merely placating Trump, we may well ask why he should WANT to impose government censorship on the social medium he had built up himself.
