On Jan. 7, Meta Platforms admitted to plans on changing its censorship to community notes. Mark Zuckerberg explained in a video that more harmful content will be on the platform after the change appears. Meta’s fact-checking program was mistakenly used to silence pieces of content that didn’t violate standards. The fact checkers program started in 2016 to get rid of false misleading information, or controversial content. Due to these reasons, Meta has gotten rid of the fact checker program.
“I guess I don’t like it, but I don’t really care that much,” Radio and broadcast teacher, Dave Packard, said. “I feel like Facebook’s not a place where they should be getting their news and information, I think Facebook’s a place where you should be interacting with your family.”
Ways people have responded to the change is by posting false claims related to Mark Zuckerburg. One claim was of Zuckerberg starting a dog meat farm in Hawaii. Some of the hashtags on these claims were #Meta and #FactCheckThis. Another claim was that Zuckerberg defended the decision to fly the Confederate flag.
“In the end, you have to be responsible for your own brain and your own thoughts,” Packard said. “There are always gonna be people out there saying false things in order to go with their agenda, but you just have to avoid those people like you always tried to when you were young.”
The fact-checker program was well-intentioned but has been making mistakes when fact-checking specific stuff related to politics.
“Anything that is open to edit by the public is susceptible to abuse. It’s unfortunate but it’s the world we live in. Some people behave completely differently in real life than they do on social media. A team is only as strong as its weakest link,” Manager of McHale, John Vales, said.
Posts about politics were stressing people out, so Meta has lowered the amount of recommended political posts. Manager of McHale John Vales said that Facebook is under a lot of pressure and is struggling to remain relevant.
“I have seen how Facebook has morphed over the years from a platform that allowed friends/family to stay in touch with each other, sharing photos/life events to a platform that actively tries to promote specific content to you,” Vales said. “I feel like so little of the content I see on the main feed is about people I know and most of it is news/groups/advertisers. The use of an algorithm to promote content means it will keep putting things in front of you that you agree with and less that you don’t agree with. I think that is a problem and is really warping people’s opinions of the world, and society.”
Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will now focus on big violations and will depend on its users to report these violations.
“With community notes, if the ‘community’ believes something to be true, even when it is not true, then it will be deemed ‘true’,” Assistant Manager of McHale, Jeff Szymanowski, said.
