Meta's fact-checking partners claim they were “blindsided” by the company's decision to ditch third-party fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in favor of a Community Notes model, and some say they are now scrambling to figure it out or they can survive the hole this leaves in their financing.
“We heard the news just like everyone else,” said Alan Duke, co-founder and editor-in-chief of fact-checking site Lead Stories, who started working with Meta in 2019. “No prior notice.”
The news that Meta was no longer planning to use their services was announced Tuesday morning in a blog post from Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan and an accompanying video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the company plans to rely on X-style Community Notes, which will allow users to flag content they think is inaccurate or requires further explanation.
Meta works with dozens of fact-checking organizations and newsrooms around the world, ten of which are based in the US, where Meta's new rules will be applied for the first time.
“We were blindsided by this,” Jesse Stiller, the editor-in-chief of Meta fact-checking partner Check Your Fact, told WIRED. His organization started working with Meta in 2019 and employs ten people in the newsroom. “This was completely unexpected and out of left field for us. We didn't know this decision was being considered until Mark dropped the video overnight.
The news organizations that have worked with Meta since 2016 to tackle the spread of misinformation on the platform are trying to figure out how this change will impact them.
“We have no idea what the future looks like for the website,” Stiller said.
Duke says Lead Stories has a diverse revenue stream and most of its operations are outside the US, but he claims the decision would still impact them. “The most painful part of this is the loss of some very good, experienced journalists who will no longer be paid to investigate false claims found on Meta platforms,” Duke said.
For others, the financial consequences are even more serious. An editor at a US-based fact-checking organization working with Meta, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told WIRED that Meta's decision “will ultimately exhaust us.”
Meta did not respond to a request to comment on her partners' allegations or on the financial impact her decision would have on some organizations.
“Meta owed the fact-checkers nothing, but it knows that pulling out of this partnership takes away a very important source of funding for the ecosystem worldwide,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, who helped create the first partnerships between fact-checkers and Facebook between 2015 and 2019 as director of the International Fact Checking Network.
Meta's partners were also angered by Zuckerberg's claim that fact-checkers had become too biased.
According to Duke, it is disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the organizations in Meta's US fact-checking program of being “too politically biased.” 'Let me fact-check that. Lead Stories follows the highest standards of journalism and ethics required by the principles of the International Fact-Checking Network. We check the facts without regard to where in the political spectrum a false claim comes from.”
