This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump’s impending second presidential term and competitive methods, such as X’s Community Notes. Meta has decided to no longer invest money in its program. From now on, he hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will decide what content constitutes disinformation and what does not.
In the statement in which Zuckerberg announced he would dismantle the program, he said the fact-checkers had succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust than they had created in the United States. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the largest Spanish-speaking verification organizations) and LatamChequea, and now director of Factchecked (a fact-checking media outlet aimed at the Latino community in the United States), Zuckerberg’s statements come as no surprise and he has no scientific evidence to support his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context,” Zommer says. “We never advocate removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.”
Zommer, who is skeptical about the benefits that disbanding this program could bring to Meta, points out that the company is contradicting itself by ending the fact-checking program, particularly because it has highlighted its positive results in the past. Zommer also agrees with Angie Drobnic Holan, current director of the IFCN, who in a LinkedIn post jobwrote: “It is unfortunate that this decision follows extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters. The fact-checkers have not been biased in their work: this line of attack comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie. without refutation or contradiction.
While Trump, a few days before his inauguration, threatens to massively expel migrants, the Hispanic community is facing a possible new wave of misinformation. “The evidence makes us think it will be bad. Until this is implemented, we will see, but we can say that, during the Trump campaign, one of the main misinformation narratives was against migrants, like those who said that migrants would commit fraud It was false The data from the past makes us believe that this decision is likely to negatively affect Latino communities in the United States,” Zommer told WIRED in Spanish.
Anti-immigration rhetoric isn’t the only thing putting the ecosystem at risk. In an era where deepfake video and audio scams are on the rise, having viable information will be a priority.
Spanish-language fact-checking media in danger
The Latin American information ecosystem, with its economic vulnerability, is in danger. “Payments from Facebook’s fact-checking program were still keeping fact-checking organizations and news organizations with fact-checking sections afloat. So I think, most likely, if these organizations fail to diversify soon, a lot of them will disappear,” says Pablo Medina, editor-in-chief of disinformation research at Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism, CLIP.
Even though the decision currently only applies to the United States, the disappearance of the project has alarmed the Hispanic media ecosystem. “The attack expressed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg against what he called the “secret courts” that promote censorship of the platform in Latin America – a false claim – indicates that Brazil is at the heart of the concerns of the company”, declares Tai Nalon, CEO of Aos Fatosone of the most important fact-checking outlets in the Global South.
“This is very much in line with the rhetoric of Donald Trump, a regular critic of journalism and fact-checking,” says Nalon. “The arguments used by Zuckerberg have been widely exploited by the far right around the world to delegitimize effective initiatives against disinformation. As there has never been any dissatisfaction with the work of fact checkers previously this seemed to me to be a move to gain political advantage. We know that Meta is facing antitrust cases in the US and that being close to the government could be an advantage for the company.
Meanwhile, as Laura Zommer says, evidence from the past gives the information ecosystem reason to worry.
WIRED in Spanish contacted Meta for this story. Through a media representative, the company responded with the statement (in Spanish) of the decision and stated that this does not apply to WhatsApp and only concerns US verifiers.
This story was originally published on WIRED in Spanish and was translated from Spanish.
