Americans were mixed reactions to Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program this week, with some telling Fox News Digital the move was concerning.
“Freedom of speech should be absolute,” one respondent told Fox News Digital in Texas. “I don’t think anyone has the authority to censor anyone.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this Wednesday that it would end its fact-checking program and lift restrictions on speech to “restore” free speech on Facebook, Instagram and other metaplatforms, conceding that current content moderation practices “have gone too far have gone’. Zuckerberg said the new system for Meta would be similar to Elon Musk’s Community Notes on X.
“I like that there are no more fact-checkers. The fact-checkers didn’t really do much fact-checking, just whoever paid them to do the fact-checking,” Rudy told Fox News Digital. ‘Sounds like they can’t be trusted. Same thing, just called back, a little too late to do that. But I think it’s better than what they had.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company would implement a new fact-checking system, similar to Community Notes on Elon Musk’s X. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC/Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Other Americans told Fox News Digital that the announcement was disappointing.
“That disappoints me, because you want all of your social media to be as fact-checked as possible so that you get accurate information. It really concerns me that Facebook may not be going through that fact-checking process as it should, I believe, Greg told Fox News Digital.
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was introduced after the 2016 election and was used to “manage the content” and disinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure,” executives said, but admitted the system “has gone too far “. far.”
Multiple people told Fox News Digital that they had not yet heard of Meta’s announcement.
Facebook app on smartphone. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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“Honestly, a few years ago I probably would have said, ‘Well, it’s a private company. They have the right to do whatever they want and people have to use their own brains to figure out what’s right and what’s not, which is true’ .’ But I’m a psychology student and I started to realize that people don’t always think for themselves, so maybe they need someone else to check the facts for them. So yeah, it’s concerning,” Melissa said.
Fox News Digital also asked Texas residents about Zuckerberg’s move Meta’s content moderation team to their state.
“Yes, we’ll give them a chance and see what the outcome is,” Greg said. “I dropped all my social media, you know, just because it’s not fact-checked and it’s not as well supervised as I think it should be.”
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Another Texan, Madeline, told Fox News Digital that Zuckerberg would most likely move to Texas because businesses are “easier to run” in the state and questioned his reasoning for moving their operations from California.
Elizabeth Heckman reported from Texas.
Fox News’ Brooke Singerman contributed to this report.
