Meta announced this Tuesday the decision to end the data verification program and adopt a rating system similar to that of X on Instagram and Facebook. The celebration of Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, was not long in coming. “Isn’t that cool? “It’s exciting that when you think about community notes being good for the world, you think of it as a global collective conscience that keeps us all responsible, on a global scale and in real time,” Yaccarino said this Tuesday during a conference at CES, the world’s most influential consumer technology show, taking place this week in Las Vegas.
Community notes on X allow users to add context to tweets they consider misleading. They arrived in Spain in April 2023 in tests and since July they were opened to all users. To participate, it is necessary to register and be approved by the platform. Yaccarino has celebrated that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has realized that this “is the most effective and fastest way to verify the facts without bias.” In addition, he noted that this system inspires “great behavior”: posts containing notes from the community “are shared much less.” “That’s the power of notes. And we say: ‘Mark, Meta, welcome to the party!’” he commented.
To make this decision, Meta has argued that “it has gone too far” in content moderation due to “social and political pressure.” “A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor,” he said in a statement. But he didn’t always think the same. In another statement published in 2021, he boasted that the verification program served to address viral misinformation: “We know that this program works and that people find the warning screens we add to content after they have rated it useful an information verification partner.”
The European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) says it is “disappointed” by Meta’s decision to end its third-party fact-checking program and has condemned Zuckerberg’s statements that They link fact-checking with censorship. “This seems more like a politically motivated measure in the context of the incoming Donald Trump administration in the United States than a decision based on evidence,” said Clara Jiménez Cruz, president of the EFCSN and CEO of the foundation specialized in fact-checking. Damn.es.
Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism organization that owns the fact-checking portal PolitiFact, also says he is disappointed. For him, Zuckerberg’s statements “perpetuate a misinterpretation of his own program”: “Facts are not censorship. The fact checkers never censored anything. And Meta always had the upper hand. “It is time to stop invoking inflammatory and false language to describe the role of journalists and fact-checking.”
Laura Zommer, leader of Factchequeado, a verification portal aimed at the Latino community in the United States, positions herself along the same lines: “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context. We never advocate removing content. “We want citizens to have better information so they can make their own decisions.”
Freedom of expression or misinformation?
Although some experts believe that community notes have the potential to provide collective intelligence, they warn that adapting them to real-time information platforms like X is complicated and could turn them into a polarized and useless battlefield. Added to this is that the company does not control or verify community notes and lacks a system to verify the veracity of its content. Therefore, they may contain errors or be used in a biased manner.
Additionally, not all tweets containing misinformation have community notes. In the context of the 2024 US elections, Poynter found that these notes had a “marginal” effect in the fight against electoral disinformation, “at best.” Furthermore, an analysis by Maldita.es on misinformation surrounding the 2024 European Parliament elections concluded that X took no visible action in 70% of cases and that community notes appeared in only 15% of publications that were denied by independent fact-checkers.
Despite these limitations, for Yaccarino, the community’s notes embody a commitment to freedom of expression. The CEO of X insists that the fundamental value of the social network is precisely “to protect freedom of expression around the world.” “When freedom of expression is protected, democracies can be successful and prosper,” he said.
Criticism of “traditional” media
Yaccarino has also expressed his disdain towards “traditional media”, which he has accused of “offering filtered and unidirectional information, designed to make you think in a certain way.” “We know that the future of news is not in traditional media. These have almost become a specialized service to target niche audiences,” he indicated.
His intention is to turn X into “a great place for that journalistic curiosity to return.” “We want to ensure that we offer journalists a space where they can thrive, enjoy a generous revenue sharing program for creators and deliver on our promise to encourage them to contribute to a free and fair press, which citizens of the world are missing,” he said. insured.
The CEO of X affirms that the social network has become “the number one news application in many countries.” “All eyes were on X during three of the most important days for the platform,” he noted. Among the days of greatest global activity in November 2024.
