Editorial: Volte-face for truth

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social media giant Meta, announced that he was changing Facebook and Instagram content moderation policies, including replacing third-party fact-checking with user-written, Twitter-styled 'community notes'. US President-elect Donald Trump summed it up as “probably” a result of threats he made against the technology mogul. In the aftermath of the announcement, Zuckerberg claimed in a podcast that in elections around the world in 2024, most incumbent governments, including the one in India, lost power.

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw retorted that Zuckerberg's statement was "factually incorrect" and that as the world's largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 general elections involving more than 64 crore voters, highlighting PM Modi's decisive third-term victory. While Zuckerberg won’t acknowledge that he stands corrected, we must take a deep dive into the implications of this lapse of reason which transpired in the run-up to the official start of Trump's second innings at the White House.

Zuckerberg’s u-turn is yet another example of a tech mogul bending over backwards to endear himself to the new Trump administration. But, Meta's volte face could impact the entire fact-checking multiverse. In 2016, Meta began its independent fact checking programme in partnership with the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), and the European Fact Checking Standards Network (EFCSN). Eventually, the Silicon Valley behemoth emerged as one of the largest donors to IFCN. So much so that income from Meta's Third Party Fact Checking programme and grants contributed to the predominant revenue streams of fact checkers. To top it off, 68% of fact checking organisations have 10 or fewer staffers, whereas just about 6.6% have 31 or more people on their payrolls.

One might recall that last year, an official notification issued by Meity, informed the public that under the Press Information Bureau, the central government will constitute a fact check unit (FCU), to identify fake, false and misleading information about the government and its establishments on social media. The FCU had been notified under IT Rules of 2021, according to which, the government could ask platforms to remove any content/news related to the business of the Centre that was flagged off by the FCU as misinformation. Interestingly, the Bombay High Court struck down the amended IT Rules, 2023, which empowered the Centre to set up the FCU, describing the legislation as an infringement on the right to equality and freedom of speech/expression.

The dangers of online intermediaries dropping their responsibilities as fiduciaries cannot be overstated, as authoritarian administrations around the world are looking for such cues to step in and take matters into their own hands. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled his plans to establish a state-sponsored fact-checking network that strictly follows Russian values, as opposed to the IFCN’s standardised code of principles.

Closer home, the Delhi High Court granted Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of AltNews, a trusted fact-checking site, the permission to move trial court for seeking possession of his mobile phone that was seized by the Delhi Police in connection with a 2022 FIR. The fact checking website which functions with a skeletal staff of contributors on a shoestring budget has often been the target of DDOS attacks that have made the portal inaccessible for hours together.

Meta’s withdrawal from the arena of hands-on fact checking tightens the noose on smaller independent fact checkers, and it’s a loss as far as the authenticity of online data is concerned.