Mark Zuckerberg’s excuse for ending fact-checking program is a hoax, say experts: ‘It is a lie that we are censors’

Meta introduced the end of fact-checking on its networks, which it will implement this year in the United States, with its own hoax spread by its new head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, and by the founder of the social network, Mark Zuckerberg. Both executives justified the end of the anti-hoax program with the argument that objective verification of the veracity of content is a form of censorship, and that the professionals in charge of it are introducing their own biases. This is false: the fact-checkers do not censor or eliminate content, they only warn of falsehoods, and they do not introduce biases either, since their work follows an objective methodology. The elimination of this service has led to a cascade of criticism from experts in social communication and Europe is demanding a strict application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to maintain content moderation.

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” said Meta CEO Zuckerberg, justifying the end of the content moderation program. “The fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S..” Kaplan adds: “Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do.”

Clara Jiménez Cruz, a fact-checker, co-founder and CEO of Maldita.es and president of the European Fact-checking Standards Network (EFCSN), denies the claims: “It is a lie that we are censors. What fact-checking does is add verified information and facts to the public discourse. In the case of the collaboration with Meta [with whom they signed a contract to continue their work in Europe days before announcing their elimination in the United States] it is to tell them what those verified data and facts are so that the company, by its own decision and in accordance with a program designed by them, decides what to do.”

Jiménez Cruz insists that the goal is to warn users “that they are consuming misinformation so that they can make the decision to continue reading or share it, but under no circumstances do we delete or remove content.”

The expert in identifying hoaxes also strongly refutes that the work of professionals introduces bias. “We, the verifiers, are subjected every year or every two years, depending on the organization, to an examination carried out by independent experts who review the way in which we make decisions, what we verify, how we do it and how we decide. Our research is not biased, it is correct and transparent, and we are bound by methodologies and standards that are reviewed every year and that we comply with. Accusing us of introducing political bias is out of place.”

Meta’s own evaluations, prior to the decision to remove fact-checking following Donald Trump’s victory in the last elections, highlighted the effectiveness of the service that it is now dispensing with. During the 2024 European Parliament elections, the company underscored that 68 million pieces of content were labelled on Facebook and Instagram after monitoring the data and 95% of users avoided consulting them after seeing the warnings.

Meta, EFCSN recalls, has also praised the virtues of the program that it is now dispensing with: “We know this program is working and people find value in the warning screens we apply to content after a fact-checking partner has rated it.”

Even the errors Zuckerberg and Kaplan allude to are not massive. According to the company’s data, they account for 3.15% of the total, according to Meta’s transparency report.

Reactions

The European network of fact-checkers has strongly criticized the decision to bring social platforms from Meta closer to Elon Musk’s X by adopting the insubstantial and ineffective model of Community Notes, which delegates the responsibility of countering disinformation to user consensus. This decision to replace the fact-checking service has also raised alarm among social media experts.

Lisa Fazio, an associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, warns that this collective tool is “insufficient to determine what information is true” and considers it too slow and ineffective: “This system misses a lot of false content. Politicized disinformation is rarely detected because not everyone will agree that it is false.”

Syracuse University professor Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Expression, agrees: “The fact that the Meta community polices itself probably won’t diminish the amount of misinformation and disinformation floating around on social media.”

Gordon Pennycook, a psychology professor and researcher of social media and hoaxes at Cornell University, joins this group: “In an ecosystem where misinformation is having a huge influence, crowdsourced fact-checking will simply reflect the erroneous beliefs of the majority. I support the use of crowdsourced fact-checking, but eliminating third-party (professional) fact-checking seems like a huge mistake to me.”

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