EXCLUSIVE: Meta is launching its new community notes program next week to replace its biased, third-party fact-checking program.
The company’s global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that content with community notes applied will not be limited in distribution to users nor have penalties imposed.
Meta, in January, ended its fact-checking program and lifted restrictions on speech on the platform to “restore free expression” across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms. Meta said its content moderation practices had “gone too far.”
META ENDS FACT-CHECKING PROGRAM AS ZUCKERBERG VOWS TO RESTORE FREE EXPRESSION ON FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM
“We had a third-party, fact-checking program, which was well-intentioned at the beginning but proved to be really prone to partisan political bias and destroyed a lot of trust and credibility in the system,” Kaplan said. “We decided to replace that system, starting in the United States with a crowdsourced, community-based approach, which we announced in January.”
Next week, Meta is opening the new community notes program for users to write and rate notes on content across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
“We’ve developed a waitlist that actually has a couple of hundred thousand people on it, a broad cross-section of Americans who use Facebook and Instagram who want to be able to add context to the content that they are seeing when they think it is misleading,” Kaplan said. “And the great thing about community notes is that, first of all, instead of a handful of so-called experts like the third-party fact-checkers, it’s our community, which is broad based, ideologically diverse people from across the political spectrum.”
Meta is launching its new community notes program.
Meta will begin by gradually and randomly admitting people off the waitlist and will take time to test the writing and rating system before any notes are published.
Meta will not decide what gets rated or what gets written but rather the contributors from the Facebook, Instagram and Threads communities, the company told Fox News Digital.
Meta’s community notes program will allow users to post additional context to posts. (Meta)
Kaplan told Fox News Digital that Meta is borrowing the algorithm used by X, which the company has open-sourced from its system.
META POLICY CHIEF SAYS DECISION TO END DEI ENSURES COMPANY HIRES ‘THE MOST TALENTED PEOPLE’
“The algorithm only applies a community note when people who normally disagree agree that something is misleading,” Kaplan said. “And that’s the way that you ensure that the bias that crept into the third-party fact-checking system isn’t a part of this system.”
Kaplan said all content is subject to community notes, except for advertisements. But contributors can submit notes on almost any other form of content, including posts by Meta, Meta executives, politicians and other public figures.
“Another thing that it won’t do that the third-party fact-checking program did is it doesn’t apply any penalty,” Kaplan explained.
“The third-party fact-checking program, in addition to the bias, had penalties attached to it, where if something was rated false, we would dramatically reduce its distribution,” Kaplan continued. “And that turned a program that was intended to be about providing additional information into one that was essentially a censorship tool.”
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was put in place after the 2016 election and had been used to “manage content” and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure,” executives said, but they admitted the system had “gone too far.”
“The community notes program is just about providing additional information and context so people can make their own decisions, but it doesn’t apply any distribution penalties or limit the flow of information through the algorithm,” Kaplan said.
Under the third-party fact-checking program, fact-checked posts often had their distribution reduced across platforms. Meta said that will not be the case with posts that have community notes applied to them, and it will not affect who can see the content or how widely it can be shared.
MARK ZUCKERBERG’S PHILANTHROPY ENDS DEI PROGRAMS, SOCIAL ADVOCACY EFFORTS
Kaplan said Meta believes users “should see both the posts and then also the additional information to give them context about the post.”
“We want to make sure that the full range of information is provided,” he said.
The community notes will be limited to 500 characters and will be written by contributors in the Meta community notes program.
“Individual members of the community will write and submit notes, and then other members of the community will get to say, ‘Yeah, that looks right to me,’ within the system,” he said. “And once the algorithm determines that it received a critical mass of support from people who usually disagree, that is the check on the bias.”
“All the changes we made in January were in the service of returning to our roots of free expression, and the third-party fact-checking program has become an impediment to that,” Kaplan said. “A community-based system that empowers our users to just provide additional information that people find helpful, I think, is a really big improvement on voice and expression on the platform.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
As for who can contribute community notes, Meta told Fox News Digital that contributors must be over 18 years old and have an account that is more than six months old and in good standing. The user must also have either a verified phone number or be enrolled in two-factor authentication.
The community notes feature will be available in six languages commonly used in the United States to start, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Portuguese. Meta will expand to other languages down the line.
