- Starting Monday, Meta will introduce Community Notes, a crowdsourced system allowing users to submit and rate notes on viral posts. Notes will only appear publicly when contributors from varying viewpoints agree on their accuracy.
- Meta announced in January that it would be ending its professional fact-checking program and removing penalties for misleading content, citing concerns over political bias.
- Community Notes will not limit the reach or visibility of flagged posts, unlike the former fact-checking system, similar to a program currently used by X.
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Meta’s fact-checking program will officially end Monday, April 7, affecting all of its platforms in the United States including Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Joe Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, posted the announcement to social media Friday, writing, “That means no new fact checks and no fact-checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program & removing penalties.”
Why the change?
In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited concerns about political bias when announcing the program’s end.
The social media giant faced criticism over the changes. Kaplan responded, “When we launched our independent fact-checking program in 2016, we were very clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth,” he said. “That’s not the way things played out, especially in the United States.”
Meta introduced professional fact-checking in 2016 to curb misinformation, particularly around elections and public health. The program partnered with over 100 independent organizations globally to verify claims and reduce the reach of misleading content.
What is Community Notes?
On Monday, Meta will replace professional reviews with a crowdsourced system called Community Notes, which is expected to mirror a similar program employed by X.
Community Notes appear in boxes marked “Readers added context” beneath posts on X flagged as potentially misleading or inaccurate. These notes typically provide a correction or clarification, often accompanied by a hyperlink to a reliable online source that backs up the correction.
Once approved as contributors, participants can rate other Community Notes as either “Helpful” or “Not Helpful.” Contributors are given a Rating Impact score, which reflects how often their ratings influence notes that achieve “Helpful” or “Not Helpful” status. A Rating Impact score of 5 enables contributors to advance to the next level, allowing them to write Contributor Notes for X posts as well as rate them.
Community Notes that receive five or more ratings undergo algorithmic evaluation. The algorithm classifies each note as “Helpful,” “Not Helpful,” or “Needs more ratings.” At this stage, the notes are not visible to X users, but only to contributors.
Only notes that receive a final “Helpful” status from the algorithm are displayed to all X users beneath the related post.
