“The fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.” That is how Meta CEO
Mark Zuckerberg described his company’s efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation for the better part of a decade. So, instead of an army of third-party Meta fact-checkers, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will move to an X-style community notes form of moderation for most of their content.
Illegal activity, hate speech, pornography, and other clear violations of their content rules will still be taken
down, but they are largely trying to move away from policing political and cultural views that are simply matters of free speech.
The news came as a welcome sign of sanity to many on the right, while those on the left tended to view it as a capitulation to the incoming Trump administration and harbinger of hate speech, conspiracy theories, and a host of other perceived ills. However, like most of the overly politicized trends in our culture today, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Zuckerberg went on to acknowledge as much, noting that there will be a “tradeoff” where “we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.” He’s decided that tradeoff is worth it, and
those close to him say it reflects “an evolved return to his political origins.”
While that sentiment may sound unlikely to those who have watched Facebook grow increasingly restrictive toward views that don’t align with the mainstream or political left, Zuckerberg’s reasons ultimately matter less than the new reality they will usher in. And, in a sign that Meta’s CEO is serious about these changes, that new reality will be guided by a host of new faces as well.
Read Why Meta Abandoning Fact-Checkers Marks a Turning Point for Social Media from today's daily devotional. Be encouraged and grow your faith with daily and weekly devotionals.
www.crosswalk.com
