One person who is a fan of Meta’s decision to copy X’s Community Notes feature? X owner Elon Musk.
The world’s richest man, in an X post on Tuesday, applauded Meta’s plan to ditch its third-party fact checking operation. In its place, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company — which runs Facebook and Instagram — will opt for a program that closely resembles X’s Community Notes.
“This is awesome,” Musk posted, in response to Republican Sen. Rand Paul sharing a Fox News story on Meta’s sweeping changes.
Musk’s response came a few minutes after he said Meta’s decision was “cool.”
The existing Community Notes feature allows users to add context to posts that may be misleading or false. The feature was first teased in 2021 under the name “Birdwatch,” before being rolled out to the masses after Musk bought Twitter in late 2022.
X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino was similarly excited about the update, writing, “Fact-checking and moderation doesn’t belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It’s a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many. And as we’ve seen on X since Community Notes debuted, it’s profoundly successful while keeping freedom of speech sacred. It’s a smart move by Zuck and something I expect other platforms will follow now that X has shown how powerful it is. Bravo!”
Earlier on Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced Meta was canceling its third-party fact checking program, signaling a major shift in how the company patrols content.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in a video message. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
Meta launched its fact checking program soon after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The company used ABC News, AP, Politifact, Snopes and FactCheck.org to flag content on its platforms, and posts that were deemed unreliable were pushed further down in Facebook’s news feed; users were also warned before sharing flagged content that they were posting “disputed” stories.
COMMUNITY NOTES FTW!!!
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) January 7, 2025
Fact-checking and moderation doesn't belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It's a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many.
And as we've seen on X since @CommunityNotes debuted,… https://t.co/zg51yUTGG1
Zuckerberg, in his video on Tuesday, said the company tried its best to be accurate with its fact checks, but incorrectly flagging even 1% of content on its platforms still negatively affected millions of users. “We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he said.
The Meta boss also pointed to recent elections, like Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in November, as a “cultural tipping point” that made “prioritizing free speech” vital.
Zuckerberg said that, following the 2016 election, the legacy media “wrote nonstop” about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. But the fact checkers, he said, have been “too politically biased” and “destroyed” the public’s faith they’re simply calling balls and strikes.
Last month, Meta said it was donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund — a move that was copied by Amazon and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Musk, meanwhile, spent more than $140 million to help Trump win his second term in the White House.
Meta’s new Community Notes-style program will be implemented over the next few months, Zuckerberg noted. He added that the company would be easing up on censoring content tied to hot button topics like “immigration and gender” moving forward.
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