Meta’s fact-checking partners around the world are disappointed — but not surprised — by Facebook’s move to do away with fact-checking by trained teams.
In a January 7 blog post, Meta announced that it was shutting down its third-party fact-checking partnerships. Chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan indicated that the shutdown was “starting in the US” because “a program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.” In its place, the company will transition to X-inspired Community Notes across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads that are “written and rated by contributing users.” The system will be tried and tested in the U.S. over the next year, before expanding to other countries.
While reports of U.S.-based fact-checkers being blindsided are doing the rounds, global fact-checking organizations have seen Facebook’s support for the program waning for some time now.
“I don’t think this decision came out of nowhere,” Zainab Husain, managing editor of the Pakistan-based Soch Fact Check, told Rest of World. Soch Fact Check is made up of 10 journalists who put out editorials fact-checking misinformation. Husain said she’d heard rumors of the program shutting down for the past two years.
Since 2016, Meta has attempted to combat misinformation by partnering with credible fact-checking organizations in 119 countries to label misinformation and link out to explanatory posts from its partners. All of Meta’s partners are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which ensures standardization across the globe. The organizations flag and label content — decisions related to content and account removal are then made entirely by Meta, multiple fact-checking organizations and civil society groups told Rest of World.
In response to questions, Meta directed Rest of World to its company blog post.
“Meta has been gradually lowering its investment in fact-checking for years,” Eliška Pírková, senior policy analyst and global freedom of expression lead at digital rights nonprofit Access Now, told Rest of World. Some fact-checking organizations that spoke to Rest of World said the fallout will likely be limited because Meta failed to make substantial fact-checking investments in their regions to begin with.
Back in 2018, Chequeado, a 15-year-old fact-checking organization based in Buenos Aires, got 25% of its revenue from Meta, according to its director of impact and new initiatives, Olivia Sohr. But the team has actively sought to diversify revenue streams and now depends on a mix of donors, international organizations, and platforms such as Google and TikTok, as well as other business endeavors — developing civil tech tools and media literacy initiatives, for example. Meta now represents just 10% of its revenue stream.
“However, we know that other organizations in the region depend more heavily on funding from Meta, and its absence could significantly impact their operations or even lead to their closure,” Sohr told Rest of World.
The Rio de Janeiro-based fact-checking site Aos Fatos, which has partnered with Meta since 2018, didn’t share specifics about how much of its revenue comes from the Meta partnership. But the organization’s founder did say that other funders had also withdrawn support from efforts to combat misinformation. Aos Fatos used to support itself by engaging in fact-checking partnerships with social media platforms like Kwai and Telegram, although the organization has since withdrawn from such partnerships. The organization also sells subscriptions for its transcription software Escriba and monitoring reports created with the help of Radar, an in-house tool that uses algorithms to track disinformation across social media in real time. It has also developed public generative-AI tools such Busca Fatos for automated fact-checking and a chatbot called Fátima, which are both sponsored by small philanthropies and major platforms like Google and WhatsApp. Recently, it launched an audiovisual unit that makes explanatory videos with the help of an IFCN grant.
Husain said she thinks Meta will honor its current contract with Soch, which started in 2022. In the meantime, Soch has also secured more IFCN grants and partnered with other social media platforms.
Across the border from Pakistan, the Meta partnership is the biggest funding source for many Indian fact-checking organizations, local media reported.
Meedan, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that does software development and programming for newsrooms and fact-checkers, works with 69 organizations across 24 countries. In Facebook’s biggest market, India, Meedan provided tech support to many of Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners ahead of last year’s elections. According to a January 8 statement, Meedan is concerned that “dismantling this program will leave many of our partner organizations facing an existential crisis.”
“Third-party fact-checkers play an important role in South Asian countries where disinformation is rampant, government censorship is on the rise, online content has grave offline consequences, and digital literacy remains a work in progress,” Namrata Maheshwari, who leads Access Now’s policy and advocacy work across South Asia, told Rest of World. “Fact-checkers’ prompt expertise is crucial, particularly during conflicts and crises — relying solely on community notes is completely divorced from the needs and realities of South Asia.”
While the loss of funding and reach are the tangible impacts of Meta backtracking, sources also highlighted an ideological blow.
In Pakistan, mainstream broadcast media is heavily controlled by the state, and severe internet restrictions have been extensively documented by watchdogs. Soch Fact Check’s Husain said she is worried about the “villainization of fact-checking” that will follow, leading to Pakistan’s already small fact-checking industry shrinking.
Several Southeast Asian and African nations rank low on internet and press freedom. Already, Meta’s lack of resources to properly moderate Arabic content has led to “erroneous removal of swathes of political content while leaving hate speech, disinformation, and other types of harmful content run amok across its platforms,” Marwa Fatafta, Middle East and North Africa policy and advocacy director at Access Now, told Rest of World. “The company’s new overhaul will not promise more freedom of expression and less censorship across the Middle East and North African region as Mark Zuckerberg would like to sell. Rather, it will wreak more havoc on online civic spaces in the region that are already strife with state-sponsored disinformation, hate speech, and genocidal rhetoric.”
Over the years, the relationship between Meta and third-party fact-checkers around the world “has been unequal. … In some cases, organizations became dependent on it, and in others the partnership had ups and downs on issues such as tools, data, and legal support,” Chequeado’s Sohr said. But the program has had a positive impact because it lets fact-checkers “reach the same people who were exposed to misinformation on the same platform with verified information,” she acknowledged. Many fact-checking organizations run verification and debunking channels on Meta-owned WhatsApp and hope to continue doing that work on the biggest messaging platform in the world.
