Meta ends its fact-checking program, replacing it with Community Notes

In brief: Facebook is making one of the biggest changes in a decade later today: it will officially end its fact-checking program in the US. In its place will be the Community Notes feature popularized on Twitter/X. And it's not just happening on Facebook – Instagram and Threads are killing off fact checking, too.

"By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over," Meta's recently installed policy chief Joel Kaplan announced in a post on X. "That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers."

By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we'd be winding down the program & removing penalties. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start…

On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company's third-party fact checkers had become too politically biased and destroyed more trust than they created. As such, they were being replaced by Community Notes.

Zuckerberg said at the time that to prevent bias, the Notes would "require agreement between people with a range of perspectives."

Meta started accepting signups for Community Notes in February.

The crowdsourced Community Notes will appear in small boxes beneath posts marked as "Readers added context."

The 500-word-limit Notes are designed to be used on potentially misleading, confusing, or inaccurate posts, offering corrections or clarifications. They must including a link to trusted sources.

Meta writes that contributors can rate Notes as helpful and unhelpful. The system's algorithm detects if people rate differently over time, so if enough contributors who have a history of rating differently agree that a community note is helpful, there's a better chance it will get published.

To be a Community Notes contributor, users need to be based in the U.S., over 18, have an account that's more than 6 months old and in good standing, and have a verified phone number or have set up two-factor authentication.

We've yet to see any Community Notes appear on public posts, but today's end of the fact-checking program, which was introduced in 2016, suggests the rollout is set to begin. It's still unclear what plans Meta has for Community Notes outside of the US, especially as some countries and the EU have expressed concerns about the change.

The end of the fact-checking program is just one of the initiatives Zuckerberg has introduced as an apparent appeasement to President Trump. Meta has also removed restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender and ended its DEI programs.