Meta's fact-checking program officially ends on Monday

Starting Monday, fact-checking on Meta platforms will officially end in the US. Newly appointed chief of global policy Joel Kaplan announced the deadline on Friday in an X post.

"By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers," wrote Kaplan. "In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached."

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In early January, two weeks before President Trump started his second term, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook, Instagram, and Threads would replace its fact-checking program with X-style Community Notes. Zuckerberg explained the content moderation pivot, saying, "Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created."

Meta's new policy is purportedly a protection of free speech and an effort to combat political censorship. But civil rights and digital policy experts say the move will allow propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation to flourish unchecked — even more than it already does on Meta platforms. Meta's adoption of crowd-sourced community notes is similar to the approach adopted by X under Elon Musk's leadership. But misinformation and hate speech have increased on X since Musk's takeover.

Meta has already started beta testing Community Notes and inviting users to sign up to become contributors. To become contributors, users must be over 18 years old, have an account older than six months, and be "in good standing."

But Meta reportedly won't apply Community Notes to paid ads, so if you want to say something outrageous or offensive, you just have to pay for it. Around the same time, Meta announced the elimination of fact-checking, it also shut down its DEI programs and rolled back its hate speech policies.