Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with Community Notes written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Starting in the U.S., Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.
Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
[…]Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms has “gone too far” and has made “too many mistakes” by censoring too much content.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes are in part sparked by political events including Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
The remnants of the fact-checking team are being moved from California to Texas, just so Zuck can be more of an Elon.
A Ghost to Most
Fight fascism. Kill ALL your social media.
UncleEbeneezer
Socialism won’t save us:
Old School
I’m not on Facebook or Instagram, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of their fact-checking program.
Did Jackals think it did a decent job?
eclare
Beautiful photo. It makes me ache.
Raoul Paste
Eliminate fact checking and flood the site with phony accounts. That gets you more engagement, but in the form of a lot of animosity between users. Profit!
Suzanne
I have never seen a FB fact-check. Literally didn’t even know it existed.
I will say that “Community Notes” on X is sometimes hilarious. Dry and sarcastic.
gene108
One thing I noticed with the small to medium sized business owners I’ve dealt with professionally is a good many of them are transactional in their business dealings. There’s very much a “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” attitude to getting deals done.
I wonder what Zuckerberg or Bezos expects to get from Trump by “obeying in advance”?
Every billionaire jockeying for Trump’s attention has something they hope to gain.
NobodySpecial
I only use three forms of social media: BlueSky, Reddit, and Discord. BlueSky is so far on the side of the angels, Reddit I only use for limited circles involving topics I’m interested in and not news, and Discord loses Bezos money.
Betsy
Res ipsa loquitur, or, as we say in English, “Speaks for itself.”
UncleEbeneezer
Major wind-storm here for the next 24 hours. Cats are NOT HAPPY about being stuck inside :(
zhena gogolia
From what I heard during the presidential campaign, it would be hard to Facebook to be even more of a force for evil than it already is.
Betsy
@gene108: They’re not “obeying.” The problem with that phrase is that it’s inapplicable to these folks, because there is no coercion involved or implied.
They’re carrying out his mission with him, because it’s what they want, too.
NobodySpecial
Oh, hey, Marine Le Pen died. Stonks.
Suzanne
@NobodySpecial: I think it’s Jean-Marie Le Pen. Not Marine. Don’t get too excited.
twbrandt
I dumped FB years ago and was never on IG, but I wonder if this plus all the AI crap I read about being forced on users will cause a mass exodus such as happened with twitter when Elon enshittified it.
Ella in New Mexico
Facebook used to be a place I got to keep up with friends and family members. You could shape your feed to focus on them or topics you cared about. Now, for every post from people you want to hear from, there are like 50 advertisements and junk content that I could care less about. Facebook hasn’t been working for a long time, and has been only barely tolerable.
Suckerturd just gave it the “X death penalty”.
frosty
This timeline is shitty all the way down.
Elizabelle
Zuckerberg is a psychopath, as is Musk. This is cruel and inflammatory, but I hope they both have Luigis in their future. And sooner rather than later.
Any ideas on how Europe will deal with Zuckerfuck’s latest business devolution? Canada? Don’t they have stronger protection and standards?
Eolirin
This sounds a lot like we feel it is now safe to cut costs and place the burden of misinformation moderation on our users because the PR hit and increased regulatory scrutiny won’t be significant enough to cause us problems.
Kay
I just want everyone to remember who the anti woke, “free speech” liberals were and never take them seriously again.
They didn’t give any of it any thought.
scav
While we’re here, it’d be good to mention Apple’s embrace of pushing garbage as product.
BBC Apple urged to withdraw ‘out of control’ AI news alerts
Ok, so let’s not fix the product, just label it as random shit, transfer responsibility and harm to the end-user and move on. Profit!
The BBC is not the only news organisation affected.
Well, there’s a detail that’s entirely expected.
And, in a vague archaic nod to fairness, Google’s not far behind in shoveling out random artificial shit and claiming it’s “generally working well.”
frosty
@Ella in New Mexico: Same thing has happened to me. 50:1 ratio of FB crap to friend’s posts. And most of those friends are HS classmates I don’t care about.
RinaX
@NobodySpecial: Her father. theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/07/jean-marie-le-pen-french-far-right-leader-dies
Ramalama
@Elizabelle: I can’t post anything political (to family and high school friends) on facebook while I live in Canada. Once I forwarded something from Rick Perlstein (historian) and … it just disappeared.
I am not aware of any fact checking ever going on.
Suzanne
@Kay: The “free speech warriors” out there have always been about free speech for themselves and not for anyone else. Real free speech also entails freedom of association, and they hate that part.
sentient ai from the future
i’d like to point out that this is an especially big fuck-you to any employees of that department with trans kids.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: Musk and Zuckerberg are garbage as are their products.
bjacques
I’ve lately used Facebook for shitposting, but I don’t mind a bit of shitmoderating on the side.
Le Pen is dead. We’re in right now Paris and it’s massive nees, obvs.
One day, Trump, Thiel, Musk, etc. will be also.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
One thing I find with FB is the very noticeable difference between accessing it via a PC and accessing it via a mobile device.
All of the horror stories people relate don’t seem to happen when I’m on it via the PC. I’ve curated the hell outta it over the years and while everything’s public (that’s come back to blow up in my face in terms of local activism and criticism but even that pissed off the people it needed to piss off), I don’t experience the crap I constantly hear about…
Until I use it on my phone, then it’s an entirely different story. It’s very garbage-ey.
I’m assuming Twitter operates the same way. I’ve never actually accessed it via an app, purely thru Firefox on my PC.
Kay
@NobodySpecial:
Bluesky doesn’t feel accessible to normies for me. We need a site that is an entry point for newly politically engaged Democrats.
Mark Cuban sort of referenced it yesterday. He asked Bluesky users to get friends and family to join. It feels cliquish and insular to me. Maybe that’s fine and that’s the niche but then we need a different site for the masses.
Kay
@NobodySpecial:
We need a site for liberal – curious :)
opiejeanne
@RinaX: About time.
Oh, is that too mean?
UncleEbeneezer
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: This tracks for me as well. I’ve never used FB or Twitter much on phone, always on Mac. With pretty tight controls set (I quickly block any problematic friends-of-friends, my posts aren’t public etc.) it’s always been mostly fine. The only time I see shitshows are if I step into the comments of someone/org that famous.
oldgold
Trump’s press conference today was one for the ages. He was completely unhinged.
Of all the crazy stuff he sputtered this will probably be the lede: “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring.”
Trump’s remarks concerning Greenland and the Panama Canal were even worse. In particular, he refused to rule out the use of our military to achieve his goals in regards to Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@frosty: I’m not on FB but my sister was and she deleted her account early 2024 because she was getting so much scammy stuff that she was worried about being hacked, identity theft etc. Anyway, she was getting fake accounts of her FB friends. which is what really got her to delete the account. These weren’t famous or popular people. They were just regular people with not any crazy high number of friends. FB is really a cancer. I blame FB partly for Latinos’ turn against the Dems. I know several Hispanics where FB is their thing. Not insta or Twitter but FB.
different-church-lady
DRAWING OF GOOSE: “WHAT’S THE REASON WE NEED THAT?”
DRAWING OF GOOSE CHASING ZUCKERBERG: “WHAT’S THE REASON WE NEED THAT, MOTHERFUCKER?”
different-church-lady
@A Ghost to Most: Ig-ZACT-lee.
Jeffro
if this whole “move MAGA to Texas” thing becomes a trend, well…lemonade out of lemons, I say! =)
different-church-lady
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
Been saying it here for years, but too many people won’t listen.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
@Kay:
Freedom’s just another word for “Who gives a fuck about truth?”
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: Yeah. They’re free to engage in assholic speech and I’m free to point out that they’re being assholes (and 99% of the time, liars). Oh, that’s not what they meant? Tough shit.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: Hannah Arendt definitely nailed that aspect of things.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Kay: bluesky is pretty new. It’ll get there. I think Twitter is close to 20 years old. Bluesky is doing pretty damn good and I think their trust controls will work better than Twitter’s. Granted Truth Social is a tfg product but bluesky surpassed Truth Social last month.
different-church-lady
“If the electorate doesn’t give a fuck about truth and facts, then why should I?”
Old School
RevRick
@A Ghost to Most:
I am of the contrary opinion. I remain on those platforms in order to not let them become complete cesspools of misinformation. I don’t do battle with every knucklehead, but I believe it’s important to be a disrupter.
Elizabelle
@Ramalama: Interesting. Thank you.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
this is true
gene108
@Betsy:
I know.
But “obeying in advance”, to me, serves as a catch all term which includes the powerful people doing things to curry favor with Trump in the hopes of getting something on return.
Trump can be bought and people like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos have the money to meet any price Trump demands.
Jeffro
@oldgold: I heard he’s also “looking into” the possibility that it was actually Hezbollah that rioted (on his instructions?) on Jan 6th???
I know their brains are elastic beyond belief, but at least a few MAGA heads are gonna crack wide open at the thought that it was actually Hezbollah trying to fight its way into the Capitol that day and disrupt the transfer of power. After trumpov gave a speech on the Ellipse asking “Americans” to do just that, for the benefit of trumpov.
even morons can only follow the bouncing ball for so many bounces…
Elizabelle
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: Yes. I think a lot of Hispanics are being disinformed by social media, and it is frightening.
Steve LaBonne
@oldgold: The new official language of San Marcos is Swedish. Everyone has to change their underwear every half hour, and you have to wear it on the outside so we can check.
Trollhattan
Becoming a billionaire in order to
rule the worldfight to be the richest toady, seems counterproductive.Also, the richer one becomes the less they comprehend what freedom of speech means. ‘Tis a mystery.
NobodySpecial
@Suzanne: Tired brain is tired, fighting a sinus infection trying to become bronchitis makes me loopy. Thanks for the correction.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: An aspect of the current media environment that I think we are having a hard time adjusting to/countering is that all kinds of content is so mixed up together. Social media creates this weird feed with political content alongside lifestyle, health, sports content, etc. It’s not like watching a news program or even reading a newspaper.
We’ve beat the Joe Rogan horse to death around here, but the important thing about it is that there’s political content, mixed up with all this other crap. Aliens and supplements and fashion and how to approach women and on and on. It makes misinformation really difficult to counter.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne:
…for now.
Suzanne
@NobodySpecial: No worries. I also would not blame you if you thought you heard about Marine Le Pen leaving this mortal coil and looking on that with great pleasure.
different-church-lady
@Old School: Maybe Aileen Cannon can enjoin it until Trump takes office.
Old School
@Steve LaBonne: Remember – in the event of a snake bite, you need to suck out the poison.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Real free speech means they get to be criticized, and that’s what they aren’t having any of.
Kay
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
Good. I think it would be intimidating for a newly political reader.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: Agreed, and that kind of coordinates with a point I made a couple of days ago (I think) that in addition everyone’s “feed” is individualized, so we don’t have one front, or set of fronts, to push back on.
different-church-lady
Additional point: it’s also another example of offloading the work onto the customers. Zuck has to pay fact checkers, so ditch them and make “the community” do it themselves.
Soprano2
@Old School: It’s crazy, we’re going to spend millions and millions of dollars to imprison about 10 people there until they die because we’ve built them up in people’s minds to have superpowers. I recommend that everyone listen to the Serial podcasts about Gitmo. Many of the families want them to make a deal with the ones who were instrumental in planning 9-11, because part of the deal is that they have to tell everything about what they did and how they did it. That entails taking the death penalty off the table.
different-church-lady
You take one look at the front page of WaPo’s site right now and you can really see the War on Facts is accelerating exponentially.
Baud
@Old School:
Obama tried to close Gitmo on Day 1 and both Dems and Republicans in Congress would not have it.
NobodySpecial
@Soprano2: That deal would be too dangerous for the Saudis.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay
The place has turned into a our very own Nuremberg Prison, only with no Nazis. Oh wait, it’s about to be run by Nazis.
Wow, the links on that site take you down a rabbit hole. Gitmo’s not the only place where we’ve got turrists imprisoned. This story is a doozy:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aafia_Siddiqui
Trollhattan
World’s secondmost evil corporation has its fee-fees hurt, sues Cali AG.
Cry me a waaambulance.
Trollhattan
@Baud:
Remember the freakout when he was having detainees brought into the States for trial? They were afraid of their superpowers being unleashed right here in the Homeland™.
Like, literally thinking 24 is a documentary.
E.
@oldgold: I know most people here are of the opinion that Trump will be a monumentally bad president who will do lasting damage to our nation, and I respect that, but when I look with an objective eye at how this is playing out so far, I have to wonder if it will in fact be quite a bit worse than that.
different-church-lady
@E.: Democracy Dies in
DarknessBroad Daylightcatclub
X is obviously still very popular with journalists and high level politicians – even the Harris Campaign could not avoid it. I think your ‘mass exodus’ is overrated.
X has lost advertisers, but not enough, in my view.
Trollhattan
@E.:
Just read Trump wants to change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Meanwhile, Jr. is being “just a tourist” in Greenland.
The Great Unhinging has removed the pin and is currently unscrewing the mount plates.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: The lack-of-monoculture is definitely an issue. I also think it creates these weird semiotic associations that aren’t predictable, and that break the “tribes” down more, like, the Punisher or Dilbert. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have had any idea that a literal comic character would be a signal of a political alignment. But I do now, man.
scav
Delivering a reliable safe product is sooooooo analogue, sooooooo pre-MBA, get with the reborn American capitalism: it’s socialism to impose consequences or expectations of service on corporate persons!
Sloegin
Moving the safety team to TX: “We’re ensuring that any Meta LGBT employees and women of childbearing age won’t move because the state of TX is actively hostile and dangerous for them.”
Steve LaBonne
@E.: That is a definite possibility. So far it’s difficult to see where any effective restraints might come from.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
Admittedly, that doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Geminid
@Old School: The eleven prisoners transferred to Oman are from neighboring Yemen.
In recent years Oman has played a quiet and constructive role in regional diplomacy. They brokered the 2023 ceasefire deal between Saudi Arabia and Yemen that halted the decade-long civil war in Yemen.
They have also hosted secret deconfliction talks between the U.S. and Iran. It helps that Oman has stayed neutral in the various regional conflicts.
karen marie
@scav: I learned today that if you add -ai to the end of your search term, it strips out ai results. With a small test of two searches, it seems to work.
Trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yet another reason to get that Eff One Fiddy instead of the Camry. Big ol’ bumpers.
JustRuss
I am old, and not hip to “massive nees”. Googled it, and autocorrect informed me it’s “massive news”. Using it’s power for good. For once.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I’m turned off by the fact that it seems like you need to actually be a member of Bluesky to view the links that people post here.
FelonyGovt
As a certified Old Lady, I remain on Facebook to keep up with friends and acquaintances, but like others said it’s showing me more and more ads and garbage and urgently pointing me to posts I don’t care about.
I don’t get right-wing crap because I’ve blocked the hell out of it, and I never post there. But this is really making me think I should pull the plug.
Captain C
@scav:
As long as it errs towards the correct, Sulzberger-approved slant, the FTFNYT probably doesn’t care.
karen marie
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: What I glean from the criminal matters I transcribe, FB is very popular in the Hispanic community because of the text and video messaging functions.
scav
@JustRuss: Auto wetware suggests “a knees up” which works and is more fun provided one has the archaic British module installed.
Steve LaBonne
@FelonyGovt: Same with me. The algorithm figured out that I don’t want right-wing crap, but my page is inundated with every other kind of crap, so I go there less and less.
bjacques
@JustRuss: Oops.
Anyway, leave his corpse out in the sun three days to bloat up, then float it down the Seine so the people can pay their respects with dead cats and rotten cabbages. Park the Dave Matthews Band tour bus on the Pont Au Change.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
It’s an open the poster can set.
FelonyGovt
@Steve LaBonne: I don’t know, the more the Orange Pustule ruminates publicly about invading Greenland and annexing Canada and changing established geopolitical names, I start remembering that he is lazy and stupid and has the attention span of a gnat. Maybe distraction will save us.
cain
@UncleEbeneezer:
Whiny men upset that they don’t get the privs that their fathers and grandfathers got.
Steve LaBonne
@karen marie: I use Messenger a lot myself. Probably the main reason why I don’t delete my FB account.
p.a.
You mean if I post Zuck fucks goats there’s no one source to say no, and the post would depend on which Community could flood the zone first?
Baud
@Captain C:
I wonder if the AI made the alerts fair to Dems.
different-church-lady
@karen marie:
And there’s the explanation we’ve been looking for.
Steve LaBonne
@FelonyGovt: I don’t know what else would, so I hope so.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: ??
different-church-lady
@p.a.: Oh no no no, there’s still content reviewers. It’s just that they’re not going to check any of the content for facts.
Baud
different-church-lady
@Baud: Oh good, the suspended slap-on-the-wrist can go forward!
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
The blue sky used can decide whether their posts will be viewable by people who are not signed into blue sky.
scav
@Baud: C’mom Baud, the FNFYFT didn’t object, so no. Actually, if the AI ever gets reliably erroneous, they’ll just replace the rest of the staff.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
The court should have obeyed Trump so we could be even more cynical.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I think I’m freebasing cynicism at this point…
Captain C
@Baud: Now that would piss of the FTFNYT.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: ah. I guess the ones that I’ve been wanting to view have all been private. So I have pretty much given up even bothering with them.
Captain C
@different-church-lady: I really hope the Judge surprises everyone and sentences him to several years in jail, suspended until he either leaves office or January 21, 2029, whichever comes first.
p.a.
@Baud: Like Peak Wingnut ™!
p.a.
What’s the First Amendment/Political Speech take on pissing on graves?
Asking for a friend…
scav
Didn’t know it would actually become the playbook.
catclub
@scav: I was expecting an ‘Idiocracy’ link.
Steve LaBonne
@p.a.: The used beer has to end up somewhere.
ryk
@karen marie: I tried that using duck duck go and it actually gave me articles about AI. Not sure if those articles were “written” by AI though.
different-church-lady
@ryk: pretty sure the “-ai” trick is Google only
oldgold
From TPM
On dubious authority, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order Tuesday purporting to block the public release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s closing report by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Cannon’s order — which blocks Garland from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice” — does not distinguish between the two volumes of Smith’s report, potentially stretching her already strained authority even further, to the Jan. 6 case in which she’s never been involved. (Emphasis Supplied)
Citizen Alan
@JustRuss: Thank you! I had assumed that “massive nees” was some incredibly obscure idiom for “celebrating in the streets” or something.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: Youtube is useless to me unless I’m looking for a specific video because, instead of amusing clips or songs I might like, the algorithm floods me with ScienceManDan debunking flat earthers and clips of MAGA fools being made to look as stupid as they are. At this point, I just don’t want to be reminded of how many morons there are in the world.
pika
@Old School: Years ago during FB’s supposed content moderation heyday (and when I still had a FB and other social media accounts), there was a Rochester NY page that took all local Black politicians and put them in a “zoo” as “monkeys.” I filed a complaint and received a response that the page did not violate any community guidelines or FB TOS. In other words, it never worked very well, at least when it came to things that I found important