MEDIAWATCH: Facebook now fact free – Social Media as the new disinformation Tower of Babel

Meta removing fact checking will have ‘catastrophic consequences’ – disinformation expert

Experts are concerned changes to content moderation and an end to third-party fact checking on social media platform Meta will leave users open to abuse and disinformation.

Chief executive of the company which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Mark Zuckerberg, announced a number of big changes on Tuesday which would significantly alter the way content is moderated, including getting rid of fact checkers and replacing them with user-generated “community notes,” similar to Elon Musk’s platform X.

Zuckerberg himself acknowledged a “tradeoff” in the new policy, noting more harmful content would appear on the platform as a result.

Community notes will allow users to add context and corrections, rather than allowing subject matter experts working as part of certified, regulated agencies to check and flag false information.

Researcher for the now wound-up Disinformation Project, Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa, said it would be catastrophic for countries outside the US.

“To take away fact checking will have – and I want to say this very, very clearly – catastrophic consequences in Meta’s largest markets which are outside the US, in countries like India and the Philippines, where the platform has been historically associated with significant offline violence.”

The Daily Blog has had many posts (usually ones critical of Israel) challenged and removed by Facebook’s fact check policy so we know first hand the ease with which that process has been weaponised, but dumping Fact Checkers altogether to create a mob editorial committee so that social media hate algorithms become the de facto voice of truth is dangerously unhinged at a time when Social Media and excruciating loneliness is corroding actual reality alongside Democratic Institutions that require good faith citizens instead of bitter cynical patriots.

The ease with which full blown conspiracy theories will be set alongside truth and promoted on platforms with the ubiquity of Facebook will propel polarisation into new extremes.

All the fuses are lit now.

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