As Meta abandons third-party factchecking in an ostensibly political move, the future of facts elsewhere remains murky
Factcheckers had no doubt about the real audience for the news this week – delivered via Mark Zuckerberg’s medium of choice, the awkward video message – that, starting in the US, Meta would abandon professional, third-party factchecking across its networks in favor of the user-powered “community notes” model used on X.
“This is all intended to curry favor with Trump,” one factchecker wrote as soon as the news dropped, on the private WhatsApp channel where the community gathered to vent. Their public responses made the same point a little more diplomatically.
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