Meta has stopped using an AI system that identified viral fakes and limited their spread, journalist Casey Newton writes in his Platformer newsletter, citing internal company documents.
The decision was made as part of Meta's strategy to establish close ties with the incoming Donald Trump administration by easing its policies on disinformation and hate speech. The changes include ending cooperation with independent fact-checkers in the United States, stopping proactive scanning of new posts for policy violations, and creating exceptions to community standards to allow dehumanizing statements about transgender people and immigrants.
Meta's decision to limit its fact-checking tools has essentially eliminated key security measures introduced after the 2016 US presidential election to combat the spread of fake news. According to internal documents and sources, the company instructed its content ranking teams to stop downgrading disinformation, allowing fake news and conspiracy theories to spread unchecked.
This decision opens up the possibility of spreading viral fakes that took over platforms during the 2016 election campaign, such as"The Pope supports Trump."
In 2016, Meta had not yet invested in machine learning to detect disinformation. However, in recent years, the company has developed artificial intelligence algorithms that can reduce the spread of fake news by more than 90%. Despite the effectiveness of these systems, Meta decided to disable them.
Meta is currently planning to replace its fact-checking program with a system similar to X (formerly Twitter)'s Community Notes, where users add context to posts. However, the company has not disclosed details about when this feature will be available on all of its platforms; so far, it has only started appearing on Threads.
The company also shut down CrowdTangle, a tool that allowed researchers and journalists to track the most popular posts in real time. This will make it harder to monitor the spread of disinformation.
The changes currently apply only to the United States, but experts believe that Meta may extend the new policy to other regions with less stringent regulation.