Zuckerberg's post on his knee surgery got little engagement: Why Meta scrapped Fact Check policy

Meta had, notably, introduced a reinforced fact-checking policy during Donald Trump's first presidency.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company would be stopping its Fact Check process and would instead move to a structure like X's 'community notes'.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, this decision was the result of Facebook's algorithm angering the founder. Zuckerberg saw his November 2023 post on his knee surgery get very little engagement. At the time of his surgery, Facebook was reportedly throttling all health-related content on the platform to stop the spread of misinformation.

Zuckerberg on January 7, this year, then announced, "We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms."

With this, Meta joins Elon Musk's platform in leaving fact-checking to the users on the platform. This has understandably heightened fears that Facebook, Instagram, and Threads -- the three platforms under the Meta umbrella-- will now be used to sow discontent.

Meta had, notably, introduced the fact-checking policy during Donald Trump's first presidency. However, Zuckerberg's stance towards the Republican has softened, with Meta pledging to give $1 million to the president-elect's inaugural fund. Amazon, too, has made a similar pledge.

However, Meta's move away from fact-checking -- with the claim that it puts censorship on journalism, has been disputed from some quarters. Head of the International Fact-Checking Network said "Fact-checking journalism has never censored or removed posts; it’s added information and context to controversial claims, and it’s debunked hoax content and conspiracy theories."

Meta launched its independent, third-party, fact-checking programme in 2016.

As part of the programme, Meta funded fact-checking partners – such as Reuters Fact Check, Australian Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and PolitiFact – to independently assess the validity of problematic content posted on its platforms.

Warning labels were then attached to any content deemed to be inaccurate or misleading. This helped users to be better informed about the content they were seeing online.

The 'community notes' model of X that Meta is now veering towards, faces an investigation by the European Union regarding its very effectiveness.

(With inputs from The Conversation)