Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has announced that social media users can now sign up for the Community Notes system on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The company scrapped its third-party “fact checking” system due to its overwhelming leftist bias after the election of Donald Trump.
Meta has announced that it is now accepting sign-ups for its new Community Notes feature, which is replacing its “politically biased” third-party fact checking system.
“Community Notes lets you help decide when posts might be misleading or missing context, and what context should be published on the post,” the company said in its Thursday announcement. “Sign up now and you’ll get a notification once you’re able to contribute to Community Notes and help keep people better informed.”
Meta explained that Community Notes allows users to “add more context to posts that are confusing or potentially misleading.”
“Everyone has seen a post that could use more context, or doesn’t seem quite right,” Meta said. “That’s why we’re introducing Community Notes, a new way for people on Facebook, Instagram and Threads to add more context to posts that are confusing or potentially misleading.”
The tech giant clarified that a Community Note will be published only after enough contributors agree that the additional context is helpful in better understanding a post.
“Meta does not decide which posts get community notes,” the company said. “Community notes are written and rated by contributors.”
Notably, this new feature will operate much like the Community Notes tool on X, from which it was inspired. Instead of outright banning or censoring a post that may contain misleading or incorrect information, the community will have an opportunity to add more context.
Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that “The recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” and therefore, his company will be “restoring free expression on our platforms.”
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes, similar to X,” Zuckerberg said in a January 7 video posted to his Instagram account.
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“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” the Meta CEO explained.
“We tried in good faith to address those concerns, without becoming the arbiters of truth,” Zuckerberg continued. “But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
The Meta CEO added, “We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
