STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Another tech billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, is adjusting his company's political posture. As we've been reporting, Zuckerberg says his company, Meta, will drop professional fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram. The company will copy X by developing a crowd-sourced community notes feature in the United States. This matters around the world because the company funds fact-checking organizations in other countries. We'll note that Meta is an NPR sponsor, and we cover them like any other company. NPR's Huo Jingnan reports.
HUO JINGNAN, BYLINE: One of Meta's international partners is Factly in India. Here's one of their videos debunking a deceptive clip of an Indian politician.
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PARVATI MOHAN: In the video, Yadav was heard saying we are enemies of Hindus and friends of Muslims, and we proudly say this. Reverse image search of key frames from the video and a keyword search on the internet did not yield credible results.
HUO: Meta funds over 90 fact-checking organizations in more than 60 languages around the world. The company's fact-checking program started after Russia used Facebook to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.
ALAN DUKE: It pretty much built the global fact-checking industry into what it is right now.
HUO: Alan Duke is the editor-in-chief of Lead Stories, an international fact-checking group that's one of Meta's partners in the U.S.
DUKE: It's pulling the rug out from under us and undoing all of that work.
HUO: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said fact-checking contributed to, quote, "censorship" on Meta's platforms, even though it is the company and not the fact-checkers that decide how to police posts. Meta's rationale doesn't make sense to Duke and his Lead Stories cofounder, Maarten Schenk.
MAARTEN SCHENK: I'm just a simple European, but the United States seems to be the only country in the world where adding information is seen as censorship.
HUO: Fact-checking is just one of the changes Zuckerberg announced. Another is the way Meta automatically reviews content, which makes it difficult for people to post about certain subjects. The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund has accused the company of banning the hashtag #Sikh from Meta's platforms at the request of the Indian government. Neither Meta nor the Indian government responded to those accusations, but the group's Jyot Singh says the ban was lifted after several weeks, so Zuckerberg has a point.
JYOT SINGH: He's actually acknowledging some real problems that exist. But then, of course, the issue is his solution is to get rid of fact-checking.
HUO: He says, in India, the government has more propaganda firepower than civil society.
SINGH: It's going to make the platforms easier to abuse for coordinated actors who want to spread disinformation for political gain.
HUO: Meta may face obstacles rolling out these changes outside of the U.S. When he announced the changes, Zuckerberg called out the European Union.
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MARK ZUCKERBERG: Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there.
HUO: Regulations there require tech companies to more actively combat online harms, including disinformation. Meta says it will not cancel fact-checking in Europe. In Brazil, prosecutors are demanding more information from Meta about its plans. The country's Supreme Court aggressively regulates social media and briefly banned Elon Musk's X last year. Meta told NPR that there are no changes to other countries at this time, and before rolling out changes anywhere else, they will, quote, "carefully consider our obligations." Politicians around the world are taking note of Meta's actions in the U.S., says David Kaye, who studies free speech at the University of California, Irvine.
DAVID KAYE: That is the biggest kind of global takeaway. You can pressure the company, and the company will ultimately respond.
HUO: Fact-checking could end altogether in some places without Meta's funding, says Brazilian fact-checker Natalia Leal. She says that could mean...
NATALIA LEAL: We have an open space for lies, conspiracy theories and polarization.
HUO: Leal says the consequences for Brazil and the rest of the world could be dire.
Huo Jingnan, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHIERRO'S "NO SLEEP TILL CHRISTMAS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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