Zuckerberg’s Bold Claim: Dismantling Fact-Checks to End Censorship Sparks Debate with Critics

Meta’s fact-checking affiliates are contesting Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion on Tuesday that their efforts equate to censorship.

While announcing the social media titan’s resolution to halt fact-checking in the U.S. across Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta platforms, Zuckerberg indicated that this decision would “significantly lessen the level of censorship on our platforms.” In a Facebook post detailing the corporation’s transition to a community-guided moderation model, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan also remarked that “Excessive benign content gets censored, far too many individuals find themselves unjustly confined in ‘Facebook jail’.”

However, those managing the nonpartisan organizations supporting Meta’s third-party fact-checking initiatives insisted they were not responsible for the removal of any posts from a platform, emphasizing that the company remained the ultimate authority on what content it disseminated.

“Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers have never censored anything,” Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit dedicated to media education, stated in a release. Poynter’s PolitiFact is one of the organizations that collaborated with Meta on fact-checking.

Meta’s official fact-checking initiative was launched in 2016 in collaboration with several third-party partners. Fact-checked articles received labels and were subsequently demoted, limiting their reach. Yet, the articles were not completely removed, according to Meta. Severe content violations, such as posts endorsing terrorism or encouraging child sexual exploitation, are what gets eliminated.

The vast amount of content across Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta applications indicates that the majority of posts were not fact-checked. Moreover, fact-checks were not permitted on posts made by politicians.

Fact-checked posts were labeled and subsequently demoted, which decreased their visibility. Fact-checked content was not outright dismissed. Severe content violations that get eradicated include terrorism or child sexual exploitation.

“As far as I know, they did not remove anything solely because it was inaccurate — their removals were limited to false information that could inflict harm,” Angie Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, which also collaborates with Meta, informed CBS News. “My aspiration is for an internet where individuals can access information that is accurate and trustworthy, and this is a regression, quite simply put.”

“Fact-checking journalism has never censored or discarded posts; instead, it has provided information and context to contentious claims, as well as debunked fraudulent content and conspiracy theories,” Holan added in a statement shared on social media.

“Unrelated to free speech”

Among Meta’s fact-checking collaborators, Poynter’s PolitiFact stated it provided independent evaluations and disclosed its sources, while Meta established the criteria for content removal. 

“This decision is entirely unrelated to free speech or censorship,” Aaron Sharockman, executive director of PolitiFact and Poynter’s vice president for sales and strategic partnerships, posted on social media.

“The determination to eliminate or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not by fact-checkers. They formulated the regulations,” he added.

Lori Robertson, director of the impartial website FactCheck.org, which also collaborated with Meta, similarly contested Zuckerberg’s perception that fact-checking played a role in the suppression of opinions.

“Our efforts are not about censorship. We supply accurate information to assist social media users as they navigate their news feeds. We did not, nor could we, remove content. Any such decisions were made by Meta,” she stated.

Another fact-checking organization that partners with Meta also questioned whether transitioning to a “Community Notes” system, wherein the tech giant relies on social media users to oversee posts, similar to the methodology employed by Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter), will mitigate bias and enhance content quality.

“Based on our experience and that of others, Community Notes on X frequently appear slowly, are at times blatantly inaccurate, and are unlikely to surface on contentious posts due to the difficulty of reaching consensus among users,” Maarten Schenk, co-founder and chief operating officer at Lead Stories, stated in a post on the fact-checking site. “Ultimately, the truth remains indifferent to consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth remains constant even if social media users cannot concur.”

CBS News has an exclusive editorial team, CBS News Confirmed, devoted to fact-checking claims, unveiling misinformation, and providing essential context. You can follow CBS News Confirmed on Instagram and TikTok.