PolitiFact executive criticizes Meta’s Zuckerberg for announcing end of fact-checking on his platforms

The executive director of fact-checking site PolitiFact ripped Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday after the billionaire tech boss announced his platforms would end fact-checking.

In an article evaluation of publications on Meta platforms.

“If Meta is upset that he created a censorship tool, he should look in the mirror,” Sharockman said in a statement posted to X after Zuckerberg’s announcement.

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In a video posted to We’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community ratings similar to

For years, Meta’s platforms — including Facebook and Instagram — have employed journalists from PolitiFact and other media outlets to fact-check and provide context for posts shared there.

Meta’s director of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that Meta had turned to “independent, third-party fact-checkers” like PolitiFact, but has since realized they were too biased. PolitiFact has long resisted accusations that it leans in its articles.

“It has become clear that there is too much political bias in what they choose to fact-check because basically they can fact-check anything they see on the platform,” Kaplan said Tuesday.

As Zuckerberg claimed in his video, Kaplan said Meta was “completely” ending the fact-checking project and replacing it with a “Community Notes” model similar to that used on X, where regular accounts can contribute context and fact-checking. messages.

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“Instead of going to a so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and people on the platform to provide their own feedback on something they’ve read,” Kaplan added.

Sharockman fumed: “The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision couldn’t be less subtle .”

He rejected Zuckerberg’s accusation of political bias, saying Meta’s platforms, not fact-checkers, were the entities actually censoring posts.

“Let’s be clear: The decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not by fact-checkers. They are the ones who created the rules,” Sharockman said.

Elsewhere, he argued that Meta should create a space on its platforms where independent fact-checkers can “provide additional information and discourse for users seeking to understand the whole picture behind posts.”

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“You can see all of our work online at politifact.com,” he added. “We do not use anonymous sources and we have provided a sort of bibliography of all the information that we have looked at. When we make a mistake, there is a process to correct those mistakes. And there is also a process to ensure that Facebook and Meta receive the corrected information.”

In the caption of his statement, he added: “.@PolitiFact will have more to say on this. But these are my thoughts. This decision has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. (PolitiFact is an original partner and has worked on this project for more than 8 years).

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