Meta’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerbergis face subsequent criticism his recent announcement to reduce content moderation policies in the United States.
Zuckerberg said Meta will “get rid of fact-checkers” and replace them with community-based posts, initially in the US. He said that the fact-checking program had led to “too many mistakes and too much censorship”.
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Zuckerberg’s censorship claims ‘false’
Zuckerberg claimed that fact-checkers were “too politically biased”. However, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) refuted his censorship claims, calling them “false”. “We want to set the record straight, both for today’s context and for the historical record,” IFCN stated.
Currently, Facebook cooperates with about 80 fact-checking organizations worldwide and uses their services on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. IFCN warned that extending Meta’s new policy outside the US could have dire consequences in the more than 100 countries where these programs operate.
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“Some of these countries are highly vulnerable to disinformation that fuels political instability, electoral interference, mob violence and even genocide,” the IFCN said.
“If Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it will almost certainly cause real harm in many places,” it added.
UN human rights chief says regulation of harmful content online ‘is not censorship’
On Friday, UN human rights chief Volker Tyrk stated that regulating harmful online content “is not censorship”. “Allowing hate speech and harmful content online has real consequences. Regulating such content is not censorship,” Türk wrote on X. He further called for “responsibility and governance in the digital space, in line with human rights.”
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Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, “We have seen it really explode in recent years. It is a harmful development, harmful to our democracy and to people’s mental health when they receive false information on social mediaChalmers said.
Meta first introduced its fact-checking program after criticism of widespread misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 US presidential election.
(With input from agencies)
