Fighting Disinformation: Meta’s U-Turn 

Laurent Cordonier 
An article from the Fondation Descartes to understand the consequences of Meta’s decision to discontinue its fact-checking program. 

Last Tuesday, January 7, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced that its fact-checking program in the United States would be discontinued. Will Europe follow? And what will be the consequences of this reversal? 

By Laurent Cordonier, Research Director at Fondation Descartes, Paris 

Published on January 14, 2025 

The "fact-checking program" created about a decade ago by Facebook—renamed Meta in 2021—aims to combat disinformation on the company’s social networks. It relies on paid partnerships with independent media outlets that have dedicated fact-checking services. These media partners review flagged posts reported by users or detected by Meta’s algorithms. When a media partner deems a piece of content false or misleading, Meta attaches a warning label that links to the fact-checking article. Meta also claims to reduce the visibility of such flagged content on its platforms. 

It is important to note that media partners in the program do not participate in content moderation on Meta’s platforms. They do not remove content or accounts from the applications. That responsibility lies with Meta’s moderation teams, who enforce the company’s "community standards" to determine what is allowed. 

At its inception, this fact-checking program was an encouraging initiative. By implementing it, Facebook seemed to acknowledge, first, that social networks play a role in public disinformation and, second, that digital platforms should financially contribute to fact-checking efforts by compensating journalistic work. 

How, then, should we understand Meta’s announcement on January 7, 2025, that it will eliminate this program in the U.S. and replace it with community notes openly modeled after Elon Musk’s social network X (formerly Twitter)? 

Reasons for the Reversal 

In a video posted on Meta’s website, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg outlined his reasoning for this reversal. According to him, the fact-checking program, like the current content moderation system on Meta’s social networks, allegedly infringes on users' freedom of expression. Zuckerberg specifically accused U.S. media partners of ideological bias in their fact-checking work and of contributing to the censorship of certain viewpoints. It is clear from Zuckerberg’s remarks that the ideological bias in question is perceived as "progressive," opposed to the political stance represented by President-elect Donald Trump. 

Among the measures Zuckerberg announced to, in his view, restore freedom of expression on Meta’s platforms are the elimination of the fact-checking program and its replacement with community notes, as well as recalibrating moderation algorithms to be more permissive and narrowing the scope of prohibited content. 

European Policy Under Attack 

Although Meta told Le Monde that the removal of its fact-checking program would not apply to Europe "at least for now," the old continent is not spared from Zuckerberg’s rhetoric. In his January 7 video, he asserted that "Europe has an increasing number of laws that institutionalize censorship and make it difficult to build anything innovative." 

Zuckerberg is undoubtedly targeting the Digital Services Act (DSA, 2023), the European regulation that imposes obligations on major digital players to combat the spread of illegal or harmful content, including misinformation. This regulation is likely what is currently preventing Meta from discontinuing its fact-checking program in Europe. The community notes system intended to replace it is currently under investigation by the European Commission as part of formal proceedings against X under the DSA. 

X’s community notes allow voluntary users, known as "contributors," to propose annotations providing context or clarifications on content posted on the platform. When these annotations are deemed "useful" by a sufficient number of contributors, they appear beneath the relevant content. All social network users can then vote to evaluate their relevance. 

In its proceedings against X, the European Commission seeks to determine whether this system effectively combats "the manipulation of information on the platform," as required by the DSA. The Commission’s conclusion could influence Meta’s decision on whether to extend the removal of its fact-checking program to Europe in favor of a similar system of community notes. 

Without waiting for the Commission’s conclusion, Zuckerberg has already announced in his video that he will "work with President Trump to push back against governments worldwide that target American companies and pressure them to increase censorship." The threat is clear, as is Zuckerberg’s declaration of allegiance to the President-elect. 

Informational Populism 

Through his statements, Zuckerberg embraces the informational populism of Elon Musk, who encapsulated this ideology in a tweet on November 10, 2024, declaring to X users: "You are the media now." 

This tweet was accompanied by a video in which Musk attacked U.S. media outlets just days before the presidential election. After accusing them of being "left-wing" and attacking candidate Trump, he stated: "Something is wrong with the press. Journalism is dead. That’s why X is the future. It’s citizen journalism where you hear from the people; it’s by the people, for the people. [...] It is absolutely fundamental and transformative that people can decide the news, the narrative, and what matters. Traditional media are essentially controlled by a handful of editors-in-chief. They decide what will be published. That’s why I strongly encourage everyone to write things on X and other platforms as well. But citizen journalism is the future." 

This concept of "citizen journalism" reflects the fantasy of unmediated information, a direct and transparent access to reality that would no longer be distorted by the editorialization of current events imposed by traditional media. However, this overlooks the fact that social networks also editorialize the news. Unlike media editorialization, which generally follows a known editorial line—when you read Le Figaro, you know you are not reading Le Monde, and vice versa—the editorialization of news on social networks operates according to the opaque logic of recommendation and content personalization algorithms. You see what the algorithms decide you should see, based on criteria beyond your control. 

For Musk and now Zuckerberg, fact-checking should also be done "by the people, for the people," through the community notes system, rather than by professional media accused of ideological bias. While this system of notes is not without merit, how does it guarantee impartiality? Moreover, do the "contributors" tasked with writing these notes always have the same time and investigative resources as professional fact-checking journalists? Can they be held accountable for their publications in the same way? Are they expected to adhere to a set of ethical standards and practices in their investigative and editorial work? Does the fact that a note is deemed "useful" by other contributors and users guarantee its truthfulness? 

Will Europe resist? 

These questions likely hold little interest for Musk and Zuckerberg, who have found in the community notes system a way to address the issue of misinformation that aligns perfectly with their information populism and, most importantly, costs them nothing. Meta's fact-checking program had the virtue of placing part of the financial burden of fact-checking misinformation on the company itself, following the "polluter pays" principle. If this program were to be eliminated in Europe, most media organizations would lack the financial capacity to continue this work. 

This represents a serious threat to the integrity of information and public debate. The prospect is even more concerning in the current context of proliferating foreign information interference targeting liberal democracies, including France. As the Fondation Descartes demonstrated in its latest study, French citizens who frequently rely on social networks for international news are, when controlling for other factors, more receptive to narratives promoted by foreign powers such as Russia and China—countries known for their information manipulation campaigns in France’s digital environment. There is reason to fear that the effectiveness of these information attacks will be further amplified if media organizations' capacity for fact-checking is weakened. 

The DSA (Digital Services Act) serves as a safeguard that Europe has put in place against such harmful developments in social networks, which have become an essential space for democratic debate. But this safeguard is fragile. It will only hold if the European Commission and member states actively commit to defending it. At the same time, European and French media must work to regain the trust of a segment of the population that has lost faith in them. This will not be achieved through mere declarations of principle but through a continuous effort to raise standards of rigor and transparency in news reporting. Their participation in journalism ethics councils, such as the Conseil de déontologie journalistique et de médiation (CDJM) in France, and their involvement in the certification process proposed by the Journalism Trust Initiative could help them in this endeavor.