A prominent fact-checking organization that Facebook uses to police political content on news has responded that it will revamp its fact-checking process to better avoid bias with an article outlining its disappointment and disagreement with the move.
“Lead Stories was surprised and disappointed when I first learned through media reports and the press release about the end of the third-party fact-checking partnership that Lead Stories had been a part of since 2019,” Lead Stories Editor Martin Schenck He wrote on Tuesday In response to an announcement from Meta that it would significantly change its fact-checking process in order to “restore freedom of expression.”
Lead Stories, a Facebook fact-checking tool staffed by several former CNN alumni including Alan Duke and Ed Payne, has become one of the most prominent fact-checking tools used by Facebook in recent years.
Fox News Digital Reported for the first time Meta announced Tuesday that it will end its fact-checking program and lift restrictions on expression in order to “restore freedom of expression” across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, acknowledging that its current content moderation practices have “gone too far.”
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the new Facebook News feature at the Paley Center For Media on October 25, 2019 in New York City.
“After Trump was first elected in 2016, legacy media wrote nonstop about how disinformation threatens democracy,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message on Tuesday. “We tried in good faith to address these concerns without becoming arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers were too politically biased and destroyed more trust than they created, especially in the United States.”
“What is political bias?” The article from Lead Stories asks before explaining that “it is disappointing to hear Mark Zuckerberg accuse organizations in Meta’s third-party validation program in the US of being ‘too politically biased’.”
“Especially since one of the requirements imposed by Meta to be part of a partnership included being an accredited signatory to the IFCN Code of Principles, which explicitly requires a ‘commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness,’” the article states. “For years we have been part of the partnership, neither we nor the IFCN have ever received “Any complaints from Meta about any political bias, so we were quite surprised by this statement.”
Meta said in its announcement that it would move toward a moderation system more in line with Community Notes in X, which Lead Stories appears to oppose.
“However, in our experience and that of others, community feedback on “Lead Stories wrote. . “In the end, truth does not care about consensus or agreement: the shape of the Earth remains the same even if social media users cannot agree on it.”
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” in Washington, D.C., on January 31, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Leading Stories added that Community Feedback is “completely opaque regarding contributors: readers are left wondering about their bias, funding, loyalty, sources or expertise, and there is no way for appeals or corrections” while “fact-checkers, on the side The other, “asks the IFCN to be fully transparent about who they are, who funds them, and what methodology and sources they use to reach their conclusions.”
“Fact-checking is about adding verified, sourced information so people can make up their own mind about what they believe. It's an essential part of freedom of expression,” Schenk added.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Duke said Lead Stories plans to move forward.
“The groundbreaking stories will continue, even though we have to reduce our production without support from Meta,” Duke said. “We are global, and most of our business is now outside the US. We publish in eight languages other than English, which will be affected.”
Some conservatives took to social media to attack major stories over their article lamenting the change in Meta after years of conservatives firing back at fact-checkers on Facebook as a whole over major news stories. Including repression From surprising reports on Hunter Biden's laptop.
“Of all the fact-checking companies, Leads Stories is the worst,” said British-American conservative author Ian Haworth. Published on X. “I couldn't be happier because they're going to be going down the drain soon.”
Trump says Meta has “come a long way” after Zuckerberg ended fact-checking on platforms
(Jakub Purzycki/Noor Photo via Getty Images)
CEO of Politifact, a fact-checker also used by Facebook, He issued a strong rebuke Zuckerberg after Tuesday's announcement.
“If Meta is upset about creating a censorship tool, she should look in the mirror,” Aaron Sharockman said in a statement posted on X following Zuckerberg’s announcement.
“The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook's content moderation program in the United States has nothing to do with freedom of expression or censorship. Mark Zuckerberg's decision could not be less accurate,” Sharockman said angrily.
He rejected Zuckerberg's accusation of political bias, pointing out that meta platforms, not fact-checkers, are the entities that actually… Moderated posts.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once claimed that Facebook blocked 18 million posts containing “misinformation” about the coronavirus. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Let me be clear: the decision to remove or penalize a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not the fact-checkers. They set the rules,” Sharockman said.
Concluding his post on Lead Stories, Schenk wrote: “Although we are clearly disappointed by this news, Lead Stories would like to thank the many people at Meta we have worked with over the past years and will continue our fact-checking mission. To paraphrase The tagline on our homepage: “Just because it's trending now without a fact-checked tag, doesn't make it true.”
Fox News Digital's Gabriel Hayes and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
