Meta: Oversight Board calls against replacing fact-checking with community ratings

Fact-checking or context notes, the Meta supervisory board has decided. The latter called on the group not to replace the first with the seconds, according to a statement consulted by AFP on the night of Friday to Saturday, after the group indicated that it was testing this system in 16 Latin American countries. Meta announced on Wednesday to test in sixteen Spanish-speaking countries in the region these notes already deployed in the United States and implemented by Twitter in 2021 before being generalized on the social network bought in 2022 by Elon Musk and renamed X.

The “community notes” are written by volunteer users, who must register beforehand, with the aim of “better” informing “in the event of a potentially misleading or unclear publication”, states Meta on its site. The countries concerned are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

“Community notes could contribute to concrete harm”

This is a step towards replacing the fact-checking program run by Meta with partner organizations across the region. No timetable has been communicated. AFP is one of the fact-checking organizations participating in Meta's program in Latin America and elsewhere. “We urge Meta not to view community notes as a direct replacement for fact-checking,” the oversight board said, calling on the company to use “all tools that best address the challenge of misinformation on its platforms.”

The Oversight Board is a virtually independent body funded by Meta to review its moderation decisions. “Community notes could contribute to concrete harms that Meta has a responsibility to prevent or repair,” he said. The council had previously warned that the global rollout of background notes risked harming human rights in politically polarized countries and during tense elections.

In Latin America, several countries have recently seen the election of right-wing populist leaders including Peru, Colombia and Costa Rica, after Chile and Argentina - leaders who intensively use social networks, rife with disinformation, to improve their image and spread propaganda.