Meta’s fact-checking partners claim they were “blindsided” by the company’s decision to abandon third-party fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in favor of a Community Notes model, and some say they are now scrambling to figure out how to fill the funding gap.
“We heard the news just like everyone else,” says Alan Duke, cofounder and editor in chief of Lead Stories, a fact-checking website that began collaborating with Meta in 2019. “No advance notice.”
Meta’s decision to no longer use their services was announced in a blog post by chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan on Tuesday morning, along with an accompanying video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instead, the business intends to rely on X-style Community Notes, which allow users to mark content that they believe is incorrect or needs more explanation.
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Meta works with dozens of fact-checking groups and newsrooms throughout the world, including ten in the United States, where Meta’s new standards will be implemented first.
“We were taken aback by this,” Jesse Stiller, managing editor of Meta fact-checking partner Check Your Fact, tells WIRED. His organization began working with Meta in 2019 and currently employs 10 individuals in the newsroom. “This was completely unexpected and out of left field for us.” We were unaware that this choice was being contemplated until Mark released the video overnight.”
The news organizations that had cooperated with Meta to combat the spread of misinformation on the site since 2016 are scrambling to determine how this shift would affect them.
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“We have no idea what the future looks like for the website going forward,” Stiller claims.
Duke states Lead Stories has a broad revenue stream and the majority of its operations are outside the United States, but the ruling will still have an impact on them. “The most painful part of this is losing some very good, experienced journalists, who will no longer be paid to research false claims found on Meta platforms,” according to Duke.
Others face far worse financial consequences. One editor from a US-based fact-checking organization that works with Meta, who was not permitted to comment on the record, told WIRED that Meta’s decision “is going to eventually drain us out.”
Meta did not react to a request for comment on its partners’ complaints or the financial impact of its choice on some groups.
“Meta didn’t owe fact-checkers anything, but it knows that by pulling this partnership, it’s removing a very significant source of funding for the ecosystem globally,” says Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the International Fact Checking Network from 2015 to 2019.
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Meta’s partners were also outraged by Zuckerberg’s claim that fact-checkers had grown overly biased.
Duke is disappointed to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse the groups in Meta’s US third-party fact-checking program as being “too politically biased.” “Let me verify the facts. Lead Stories adheres to the highest journalistic and ethical standards set by the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles. We fact-check claims regardless of political affiliation.”
Kristin Roberts, chief content officer at Gannett Media, whose publication USA Today was another Meta fact-checking partner, reiterated this position.
“Fact-based journalism is what USA Today does best,” Roberts said in an emailed statement. “Truth and facts serve everyone—not the right or the left—and that’s what we will continue to deliver.”
Many of Meta’s fact-checking partners have said that Zuckerberg’s accusation of fact-checkers being responsible for excessive censorship on the company’s platform is incorrect, as fact-checkers simply supplied information and context to posts, leaving the final choice to remove content to Meta itself.
“To blame fact-checkers is a disappointing cop-out, and it perpetuates a misunderstanding of its own program,” says Neil Brown, President of the Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact and the International Fact-Checking Network. “Facts do not constitute censorship. Fact-checkers have never censored anything. Meta was always in control of the situation. It’s time to stop using provocative and inaccurate language when discussing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”
Other fact-checkers point out that the Community Notes approach, which has historically performed poorly at X, still requires expert input to function.
“While a crowdsourced model for content verification may work in theory, it cannot magically succeed without relying on expertise, particularly on complex scientific and technical topics,” says Emmanuel Vincent, executive director of Science Feedback, a Meta fact-checking partner, to WIRED. “Participants in such a program will still need to rely on credible evidence sourced from fact-checking organizations, trustworthy journalism, or scientists with relevant expertise to ensure accurate assessments.”
Zuckerberg, who addresses President-elect Donald Trump on several occasions in his video, has been attempting to strengthen ties with the new administration in recent weeks.
The Meta CEO, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, paid a recent visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and brought along a pair of the company’s Ray-Ban AI glasses as a gift.
Zuckerberg’s move last week to promote Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, was widely interpreted as an attempt to placate the incoming government, as did Meta’s decision this week to hire UFC CEO and close Trump ally Dana White to its board.
Some of Meta’s fact-checking partners consider the move to jettison third-party fact-checkers in favor of an X-style Community Notes approach as yet another attempt to placate Trump.
“It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters,” Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, wrote in an e-mail. “Fact-checkers have not been biased in their work—that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.”
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