Meta’s fact-checking decision sets off alarm bells in India

Social media conglomerate Meta has decided to do away with the third-party fact-checking programme in the US and will instead rely onuser-generated community notes to cross-check and establish the veracity of content on its platforms.Community Notes, made popular by Elon Musk after he took over Twitter, is run by writers, contributors and other users who rate the quality of the fact-check against various parameters. Meta’s move to adopt a similar structure for fact-checking content on its platforms could lead to a spurt in misinformation and disinformation across the company’s platforms, experts said.

“We are in a situation in the world where there is an extraordinary rise at the moment in conflict as well as authoritarianism. Both of those feed on disinformation and the generation of often unwarranted fears about the other,” Phil Bloomer, executive director at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre said.

The decision will hurt social media users looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family, Angie Drobnic Holan, the director of International Fact-Checking Network said in a post on LinkedIn.

“The fact-checkers used by Meta follow a Code of Principles requiring nonpartisanship and transparency. It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters,” Holan said.

While the move to do away with third-party fact-checkers has been announced only for the US for now, experts feel that it is only a matter of time before the change is also introduced in other large user bases such as India.

In India, Meta works with nearly a dozen fact-checking companies which handle independent cross-checking and verification of content posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The removal of these fact-checkers and moving to a community-based network may have a far more damaging impact in India, the experts said.“India is a diverse country and with diversity, the understanding of the same situation or content could vary. It does not necessarily always fit the technical parameters. There is also the issue of failure on the part of these platforms to act quickly on content flagged by users,” said Pratishtha Arora, the chief executive officer of Social and Media Matters, a New Delhi-based non-government organisation which works for online safety.

Apart from this, the lack of financial and technical backing from a large platform such as Meta is also likely to force the fact-checking companies in India to change their focus and seek more independent work or shut shop completely, the experts said.