Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. said Thursday it will begin testing its crowd-sourced fact-checking program, Community Notes, on March 18.
It initially will be based on a ratings system used by Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Meta ended its fact-checking program in January. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time fact-checkers became "politically biased," using some of the language that conservatives long used to criticize his platforms.
Media experts and those who study social media were aghast at Meta's policy shift.
The decision "not only removes a valuable resource for users, but it also provides an air of legitimacy to a popular disinformation narrative: That fact-checking is politically biased. Fact-checkers provide a valuable service by adding important context to the viral claims that mislead and misinform millions of users on Meta," said Dan Evon, lead writer for RumorGuard, the News Literacy Project's digital tool that curates fact checks and teaches people to spot viral misinformation.
The Meta logo is seen June 14, 2023, at the Vivatech show in Paris, France.
Meta began fact checks in December 2016, after President Donald Trump was elected to his first term, in response to criticism that "fake news" was spreading on its platforms. For years, the tech giant boasted it was working with more than 100 organizations in more than 60 languages to combat misinformation.
The Associated Press ended its participation in Meta's fact-checking program more than a year ago.
Community Notes will replace fact checks, though not right away. Meta said potential contributors in the U.S. can begin to sign up to take part in the program but the notes they write won't appear immediately.
"We will start by gradually and randomly admitting people off of the waitlist, and will take time to test the writing and rating system before any notes are published publicly," Meta said.
Meta said it won't decide what gets rated or written and the notes "won't be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them." Unlike with fact checks, where posts that were determined to be misinformation had their distribution reduced, posts with Community Notes won't be penalized, Meta said.
Fact checks will stay in place outside the U.S. for now, though Meta says it eventually plans to roll out Community Notes worldwide.
