This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump’s imminent second presidential term and competing methods, such as X’s Community Notes. Meta decided not to invest more money in its program. Now he hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will decide what content is disinformation or not.
In the statement in which Zuckerberg announced he was dismantling the program, he said fact-checkers succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust in the United States than they had built. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the most important Spanish-speaking verification organizations) and LatamChequea, and now leader of Verified fact (a verification medium aimed at the Latino community in the US), Zuckerberg’s statements are not a surprise, and he has no scientific evidence for his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context,” says Zommer. “We never advocate removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.”
Zommer, who is skeptical about how the dissolution of this program could benefit Meta, emphasizes that the company contradicts itself by ending the fact-checking program, especially since it has already highlighted its positive results in the past. Zommer also agrees with Angie Drobnic Holan, current director of IFCN, who, in a LinkedIn mailwrote: “It is unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters. Fact-checkers have not been biased in their work: that line of attack comes from those who feel they should to be able to exaggerate and lie without refutation or contradiction.”
While Trump, a few days before his inauguration, threatens a mass deportation of immigrants, the Hispanic community faces a possible new wave of misinformation. “The evidence makes us think that this will be bad. Until it is implemented we will see, but we can say that, during the Trump campaign, one of the main disinformation narratives was against migrants, such as those that said that migrants would commit fraud “That was false. Past data makes us think that this decision is likely to negatively affect Latino communities in the United States,” Zommer tells WIRED en Español.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric is not the only thing that endangers the ecosystem. In a time when deepfake audio and video scams are spreading, having actionable information will be a priority.
Spanish-speaking media for verifying data at risk
The Latin American information ecosystem, with its economic vulnerability, is at risk. “Facebook’s fact-checking program payments were still keeping fact-checking organizations and news organizations with a fact-checking section afloat. So I think, most likely, if these organizations don’t manage to diversify soon , many of them are going to disappear,” says Pablo Medina, disinformation research editor at the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism, CLIP.
Although the decision applies for now only to the US, the disappearance of the project has raised alarm in the Hispanic media ecosystem. “The attack expressed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on what he called ‘secret courts’ that promote censorship of the platform in Latin America – a false claim – indicates that Brazil is a key focus of the company’s concerns” says Tai Nalon. CEO of Aos Fatosone of the most important means of fact-checking in the global south.
“This is totally in line with the rhetoric of Donald Trump, a frequent detractor of journalism and fact-checking,” says Nalon. “The arguments used by Zuckerberg have been widely exploited by the far right around the world to delegitimize effective initiatives.” against disinformation. . Since there has never been dissatisfaction with the work of fact-checkers before, this seems to me to be a measure aimed at gaining some political advantage. “We know that Meta faces antitrust cases in the United States and being close to the government could be an advantage for the company.”
Meanwhile, as Laura Zommer says, evidence from the past gives the news ecosystem reason to worry.
WIRED en Español contacted Meta for this story. Through a media representative, the company responded with the declaration (in Spanish) of the decision and said that this does not apply to WhatsApp and is only for American verifiers.
This story originally appeared on WIRED in Spanish and has been translated from Spanish.