Arts·Commotion

What does the end of the Meta fact-checking program mean for truth?

Journalists CT Jones and Robyn Urback discuss how this could affect our lives on- and off-line.

Journalists CT Jones and Robyn Urback discuss how this could affect our lives on- and off-line

Mark Zuckerberg stands on stage at a Meta conference holding a cell phone.
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta will remove fact checkers from its platforms. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta will remove fact-checking on all of its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Instead, the platforms will rely on users to flag misinformation.

Today on Commotion, journalists CT Jones and Robyn Urback join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss how this policy will change our on- and off-line lives and what it means for truth and democracy. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Some of us are old enough to remember an internet where fact checkers [were] not a part of the experience. To me, fact checkers became largely a response, I think, to the Trump presidency, the ways that the Trump presidency changed the internet. More and more, you saw the social media platforms rush to fill that space of, "OK, there's a lot of misinformation spreading around, we should get involved because misinformation tends to travel a little bit faster than truth." And that continues to be the case.

But to put this in context, more than 3.5 billion people are on all of these platforms. The writer Chris Stokel-Walker called it an "extinction-level event for the idea of objective truth on social media." CT, what's your take on that? Like, do you hear that and say, "Yeah, I really am that worried?"

CT:  As an internet culture journalist, I spent my entire career studying the parts of the internet that are less than savoury. So I might be a little too "internet pilled" in that mindset. I think that I'm concerned not for the people who are on, right now, Facebook, who might accidentally come across misinformation or disinformation and spread it. But my worry is that before this, Facebook's rules on hate speech, violence, etc., were such a low bar that when they suspended Trump for his words on Jan. 6, it felt like too little, too late. Everyone was like, "Why wouldn't you do this before there were people there?" 

And right now, what it feels like is Meta cares more about making sure that they don't have any rules that exist that they'll have to inevitably punish Trump or his incoming cabinet for. This feels like an entire compilation of things that people who Trump is putting into power have already said. And now Meta is just making sure that they don't have to slap anyone on the wrist. 

Elamin: Robyn, do you experience this as an "extinction-level event" for truth on social media? Are you that level of concerned when you see these changes coming into effect? 

Robyn: In short, not really, because I think we were as close to extinction when it comes to truth and decency on social media anyway. I think, one, we have to acknowledge the ecosystem that we're in. It's not 2008 anymore, where Facebook is the big player in the game and everyone's posting their pre-drink photos every weekend. We've diversified, so we have Twitter and we have TikTok — for now — and we have Discord and we have Telegram, and we have all of these other social media outlets that have varying degrees of truth and safety controls. So for Meta alone to make this change, yes, it's significant, there are billions of people who have Facebook accounts. But I don't think it's going to be a tidal wave of misinformation. 

And I think the other thing to acknowledge, too, we — the royal we — we're getting a bit precious about it. But there were some problems with the fact-checking process at Facebook. For example, earlier in the pandemic, there were articles from mainstream publications, like The Atlantic, discussing the lab leak theory about COVID-19. And those were taken down. And with hindsight, we can see that that was probably premature, we still don't know, maybe there is some credibility to that. But at the time, it really did seem like censorship. 

And I think the last thing that's tempering my existential dread about the future, is that the past, even with Facebook having these processes in place, isn't so rosy. If you think [of] the Jan. 6 storm on the Capitol, which was fueled by misinformation, the idea that Donald Trump had the election stolen from him, well, that idea took hold and motivated people pretty well, even with Facebook having these controls and fact checks and everything else there. So I don't think this will see to a sea change because I think, unfortunately, we've already been on that path for a long time. 


You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.


Panel produced by Jess Low.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sabina Wex is a writer and producer from Toronto.