Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies

Republished from The Contrarian with permission from the author, Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and author of the New York Times bestseller Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.   As a legal analyst, her work has appeared in The Washington PostForeign PolicyLawfareJust SecuritySlate, and National Public Radio, and she has been quoted in The New York TimesTimeNewsweekPolitico, and other publications.

As false information about wildfires in Los Angeles rages online, Mark Zuckerberg is fanning the flames of disinformation.

Last week, the Meta CEO announced that the company would stop fact-checking posts on its social media sites. Meta will move to a community notes model, similar to that used by the X platform, relying on users to flag false claims rather than using professional fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact. While conceding that more “bad stuff” will appear on Meta’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram and Threads — Zuckerberg said the change was necessary to prevent “too much censorship.”

Disinformation now identified as the greatest global threat

At a time when the World Economic Forum identifies disinformation as the greatest global threat, Zuckerberg is burning down the defense system of a social media company with 3.5 billion users worldwide. What could possibly motivate a move that will certainly lead to more chaos and upheaval in society?

The answer comes in Zuckerberg’s remarks. “The recent elections,” the billionaire tech owner said, “feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” In other words, Donald Trump’s return to the presidency is influencing a change of heart for Meta, which once banned the former and now future president from its platforms following his use of social media to falsely claim that Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election, which led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. At the time, Trump accused Facebook of “censorship.” But that was before Trump’s electoral victory in 2024. Elections have consequences, even online.

It’s no secret that Meta has ponied up $1 million for Trump’s inauguration. Zuckerberg was one of the subjects of the political cartoon over which Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes recently resigned from the Washington Post when the editor refused to run it. The cartoon depicted Zuckerberg, along with Post owner Jeff Bezos and other tech and media moguls, laying bags of money at the feet of a statue of the president-elect. Zuckerberg also plans to host an inaugural party for Trump.

Perhaps Zuckerberg has truly had a change of heart over fact-checking. Or maybe his move is designed to fend off regulatory oversight in the new administration. Perhaps he just wants to save the money it costs to assure quality control. But whatever the motive, the results will be disastrous.

Barbara McQuade

One need only look to the X platform to see what happens when fact-checkers are replaced with community notes.

My personal feed has become a toxic wasteland with real-world consequences. Last month, Elon Musk, the platform’s owner and a close advisor to Trump, pressured lawmakers to kill a budget bill that would have prevented a government shutdown. According to the Associated Press, Musk’s posts included false claims about funding for congressional salaries, a new football stadium, for the NFL’s Washington Commanders and bioweapon labs.

Disinformation online has other dire consequences

As fires rage in Los Angeles, posts containing false claims about looting, suspected arsonists and even the government’s use of lasers to intentionally start the fires have appeared on social media platforms. Responders say disinformation makes their jobs harder because it sows distrust in government and its employees. In October, false claims about relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Helene forced FEMA to post a page on its website to debunk multiple false rumors, including one that the agency had run out of money and another, conveniently placed, about their spending money to support immigrants.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg said he did not want Meta to be the “arbiter of truth.” But he seems to conflate political opinion with verifiable facts. Certainly, people can debate policy issues and the virtues of candidates, but fact-checking is another matter. There is such a thing as truth. After all, Meta’s fact-checking policy was launched in response to Russia’s use of its platforms to spread disinformation about the 2016 presidential election. The Internet Research Agency was indicted for setting up fake accounts posing as Americans to disparage political candidates, undermine confidence in elections and sow discord. In response, Meta invested billions of dollars into fact-checking, using outside firms like Snopes and Accenture to reduce false content.

Since 2016, the threat of disinformation has not abated. In fact, it has only grown more sophisticated. During the past election cycle, the U.S. Department of Justice seized internet domains operated by a Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog–colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger”–to spread disinformation by using artificial intelligence to replicate the web pages of the Washington Post and Fox News and fill them with false content. According to the Justice Department, Doppelgänger’s goal was to weaken support for Ukraine in the war with Russia and influence voters in the U.S. presidential election. Russian operatives posed as Americans and posted links to the counterfeit websites on social media.

Earth’s richest man, Elon Musk, posted disinformation on his platform, X, to help elect Trump

In July, Musk posted on X a deepfake video montage of Kamala Harris campaigning for president. The video contained the sound of Harris’s voice saying she was the “ultimate diversity hire,” so if you criticize her, “you’re both sexist and racist.” The voice, however, was generated with AI. Musk later called the video “parody,” but his post carried no warnings to that effect, presumably leaving online users to believe that Harris herself had uttered those words.

One of the goals of disinformers is to cause people to become skeptical of everything, leading them to become exhausted and cynical until they disengage from politics altogether, right where an authoritarian wants them.

In light of the dangers to public safety and democratic institutions, abandoning fact-checking at any moment in time seems like a reckless move for Meta. Doing so just as Trump is about to take office threatens to burn it all down.
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  9 comments for “Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies

  1. People like Anne and McQuade think that Americans need to be “guided” into having the correct opinions. They’re also very afraid that people won’t be able to tell when something is a parody. Maybe that’s because they don’t do a lot of independent thinking or don’t have an understanding of humor.

    Then they clutch their pearls and accuse Trump of being an authoritarian.
    Grow up!

  2. Your title should be, ” Can anyone understand this shit” aka. “Does anyone believe this shit” also works for your demented ramble too.

  3. Imagine that, an idiotic leftist hates that meta is taking away institutional control of fact checking and is leaving it up to the people. It’s like you cretins are allergic to truth or something.
    I’m sure you still believe the fine people hoax, Trump colluded with Russia, sandman was a racist kid, the chiefs fan was wearing blackface, etc etc. You should be celebrating truth being exposed, but instead you’re deathly afraid of all of the democrat lies being exposed. You people are the lowest form of humanity.

    • Seriously? You wanna talk LIES?

      “As California attorney general, (Kamala Harris) redefined child sex trafficking, assault with a deadly weapon, and rape of an unconscious person as a totally nonviolent crime.”

      ““They’re still counting the (2024 election) vote in some areas.”

      “In Lancaster, Pa., “We caught them with 2,600 votes. We caught them cold, 2,600 votes. … And every vote was written by the same person.”

      “When Haitians go to school in Springfield, Ohio, they “take the place of our children in school” and “each one will have a private interpreter.”

      ““I’m not allowed to testify” because of a gag order.”

      All…LIES

      https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?category&ruling=false&speaker=donald-trump

      But who are we kidding? You’ll gobble up whatever Trump tells you to, won’t you?

      • The point, Seamus, is that both sides lie. We all need to have the curiosity and skepticism to seek the truth. It takes time and vigilance and it’s stupid to rely on and trust fact checkers.

        Grow up!

        • Don’t try that “both sides” bit, you spineless wonder; every times someone calls you out on your Trump propaganda, you slither back into your mewling, “b-b-but both sides” bit.

          You’re only against fact checkers because they tend to stand on the side of, you know, FACTS; which are like kryptonite to Trump and his fans, whose only defense is to cry, “Fake News!” at anything they don’t like, as if it’s a magic phrase to change reality. It only works on those with room-temperature IQ’s.

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