CNN
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Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program looks like the company is “caving in” to political pressure, Meta’s supervisory board co-chairman Michael McConnell said.
McConnell, who is a law professor at Stanford University, told NPR on Friday that he would have liked to have seen changes made during “less contentious and partisan times so that they could be considered on their merits.” instead of looking like that, you know. , Donald Trump is president and now they’re running away.”
The changes to Meta’s fact-checking program come within two weeks of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration and after CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined at Mar-a-Lago in November. Meta and other tech giants that have faced harsh criticism from Trump in recent years have made large donations to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Meta did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
“I think there are bad optics here,” said McConnell, who said he was speaking personally and not on behalf of the board. “It certainly seems like this is bowing to political pressure.”
Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that Meta’s partnership with third-party fact-checkers will be replaced with user-generated “community notes” on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, a policy similar to Elon Musk’s X. The company also quietly updated its hate conduct policy. striking old rules for content that can’t be posted, including referring to “women as household items or property” or “transgender or non-binary people like ‘her'”
“Fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the new policy. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut down people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the changes would “reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally remove,” but that there would be more harmful content on the platform. McConnell said the official revisions to Meta’s hate speech policy “came as a surprise” to board members.
Meta first implemented its fact-checking program in 2016 after allegations that it failed to stop foreign actors, particularly Russia, from using its platforms to spread disinformation. Since then, Meta has faced an investigation into election misinformation, anti-vaccination stories, violence and hate speech.
Meta’s newly appointed head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News on Tuesday that Meta’s use of third-party fact-checkers was “well-intentioned” but showed too much political bias. Trump later said he saw Kaplan’s presentation and said Meta “has come a long way.” Trump is among Republicans who have criticized Meta for what they see as censorship of right-wing voices.
McConnell said there is “pretty overwhelming evidence” that fact-checkers correct more content from right-wing users, but whether these users spread more misinformation is “a very difficult thing to measure.”
He also said that there was “active and energetic debate” within Meta’s supervisory board.
“The oversight board is a global enterprise, and it’s making a big difference in how Americans think about free speech and other countries around the world,” McConnell said. “And that really plays out. It is also true that the fact-checking program has been much more controversial and controversial in the United States, not so much elsewhere.”
McConnell said he doesn’t know what the change will mean for upcoming elections or foreign government propaganda on social media platforms.
“There’s really no magic bullet for this problem,” he said. “But most of this is not about whether the information is true or false, but where it comes from.”
