The announcement had the effect of a thunderclap on social networks. The Meta group announced this Tuesday that it was ending its fact-checking program in the United States and replacing it with a system of context notes.
The tech giant, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, explained that its notes program would be similar to that of the X platform, believing that it was a “less biased” system than fact checking. But how and by whom will these context notes be written?
How do context notes work?
Context notes are a collective content moderation tool. They appear below some potentially misleading posts. They were set up by Twitter in 2021 then generalized on the social network bought in 2022 by Elon Musk and renamed X. Notes on X are proposed and written by voluntary users, who register beforehand. They are not edited by the X teams.
Then, “other users will evaluate whether the note is useful or not, according to different criteria, in particular the relevance of the sources and the clarity of the information”, specifies Lionel Kaplan, president of the content creation agency on the Dicenda social networks. “If there are enough positive evaluations of the note, it will appear under the tweet to provide additional information,” he continues.
The notes “take into account not only the number of contributors who judged a note useful or useless, but also study whether the people who judged it seem to come from varied backgrounds”, details X on its site. It’s the same principle as Wikipedia. “We rely on the most active users of a social network or platform to increase the quality of content,” adds Lionel Kaplan.
What are the risks?
Facebook has a fact-checking program in more than 26 languages, which pays more than 80 media outlets around the world to use their “fact-checks” on its platform, on WhatsApp and on Instagram.
With the notes, “the problem is to rely on the crowd for verification,” underlines Christine Balagué, professor at the Institut Mines-Télécom and founder of the “Good in Tech” research network which works on disinformation. “The crowd can say something right, but there can also be malicious people who are there to spread and propagate disinformation,” she notes.
“This decision will affect users who want precise and reliable information,” Angie Drobnic Holan, American boss of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), commented on X. “Fact checkers have never shown bias in their work and this criticism comes from people who think they can exaggerate the facts and lie without being refuted or contradicted,” she said, pointing to the climate of pressure politics in the United States as the inauguration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump approaches.
Are notes effective against misinformation?
Researchers have shown that context notes “reduced the dissemination of disinformation by around 20%” on the X network, recognizes Christine Balagué.
Even if this system “is not 100% reliable”, for Lionel Kaplan, the notes are effective and make it possible to process a greater volume of information than fact-checking, which is “heavy to implement”. It also highlights a “democratic” functioning, which allows “to have different points of view and to confront them”.
Meta said users could start registering as early as Tuesday, to write notes when the program launches, without giving details on participation criteria. The company also announced that it is giving users greater control over the amount of political content they want to see on Facebook, Instagram or Threads. It remains to be seen whether this system will lead to an explosion of false information.
