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According to one professor, “ordinary citizens should be very concerned” about Mark Zuckerberg’s changes to how Meta will handle fact-checking in 2025.
Just days before Donald J. Trump takes on the mantle of 47th President of the United States of America, Mark Zuckerberg announced a seismic shift in the way Meta would handle fact-checking across its social media platforms.
Starting with the US, it will no longer employ third-party fact-checkers but will rather rely on Community Notes.
Zuckerberg said of the move that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created”.
Meta will also now remove “a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse”, while the company will now also “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
The move appears to be both a response to a rise in laws attempting to censor extreme forms of speech on social media platforms, while also positioning Meta as a more right-leaning, Trump-friendly business.
But the timing could prove problematic for Australia, one academic warns.
“The timing is particularly significant for Australia – with our federal election approaching, these changes to Meta’s platforms could substantially impact how Australians access and verify political information,” said Dr Alexia Maddox, director of digital education and senior lecturer in pedagogy and education futures at La Trobe University’s School of Education.
“In Australia, specifically, we currently have three professional fact-checking organisations working with Meta (RMIT FactLab, AFP, and AAP FactCheck). The shift to a community-based system raises questions about maintaining verification standards in our market, where we already have limited fact-checking resources compared to larger markets like the US.”
Maddox observed that while this is, on the surface, a push to expand freedom of speech, it may well prove the opposite for some groups.
“When misinformation spreads unchecked, it can effectively prevent certain groups from participating in public debate,” Maddox said.
Maddox also said that any shift to “personalised political content” could lead to the creation of dangerous echo chambers.
“Democratic discourse requires a shared information environment where citizens can engage with common facts and diverse viewpoints – when different groups of voters are seeing fundamentally different versions of political discussions and news, it becomes more challenging to have the informed public debate that democracy needs to function effectively,” Maddox said.
“While Meta’s announcement focuses on US issues, their plan to relocate trust and safety teams from California to Texas raises questions. How will decisions be made around global content moderation, and will Australian concerns be adequately addressed?”
While Maddox raised some valid concerns, her academic colleague from Monash University was more damning of Zuckerberg’s move.
“Anyone surprised by this news learned nothing from Mark Zuckerberg’s role in the Cambridge Analytica affair,” Emma Briant, associate professor, news and political communication, at Monash University, said.
“While they may pay lip service to the policy concerns of the moment, tech oligarchs run their companies to maximise profits and minimise costs, not to be society’s protector or mediate a neutral, democratic town hall.“
According to Briant, this applies to every tech oligarch, “not just Elon Musk”.
“There is nothing to stop tech oligarchs weaponising their platforms to suit political objectives when the moment is right,” Briant said.
“With at least 13 billionaires in his new administration, including big tech oligarchs like Musk, Trump has sent a powerful message across America’s wealthy right-wing elite – now is your time, not theirs.
“Clearly, Mark Zuckerberg heard him loud and clear. Ordinary citizens should be very concerned.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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