Meta says it won’t drop fact checking system outside US

Meta, the technology company which operates social media platform Facebook, among others, is not dropping its third party fact-checking system outside the United States for now.

Rafael Frankel, Meta’s Director for Public Policy in Southeast Asia, made the response when asked by 1-Rider party-list Rep. Rodge Gutierrez on how the firm plans to keep the integrity of its community notes system which replaced the third party fact-checking system in the US.

“The determination by our global leadership on fact checking system in the US was that we saw that it had become in some way politicized and that they believed that there was the potential to improve on that system [by] using the community notes system which companies like X (formerly Twitter) have already developed and implemented. That [community notes] system has now been implemented in the United States only as opposed to our third party fact-checking system,” Frankel said during this week’s House inquiry on proliferation of false information online.

“But everywhere else in the globe, the third party fact-checking system is the system we still use. As of now, there's no plan to change that globally,” he added.

Likewise, Frankel said that Meta is always looking to innovate and so policies can change overtime.

“I think that I would just always say that whether it's our fact checking system, whether it's our generative AI products, whether it's the user experience in some way, we're always looking to improve everything we do, we're always looking at innovation,” he said.

“And so, you know, the community notes that are now rolling out in the United States, we're obviously gonna be looking at, are they effective? You know, do they make sense? And [we are] testing the capabilities there. But as of now, there's no plan to change the [third party fact-checking] system other than in the United States,” he added.

Frankel said that Facebook’s third party fact-checkers for the Philippines include Vera Files and Agence France Presse, among others.

He also said that third party fact-checkers can act on their own in flagging a false content and can also act on a content based on Facebook’s recommendation for review.

Facebook, on the other hand, also has community standards which censors hate speech, incitement to violence, bullying and harassment, terrorism, child exploitative imagery in its platforms.

But for House Assistant Minority Leader and Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Adiong, Meta should keep its third party fact-checking system to rid its platform of false information.

“Any possible mechanism that would maintain a productive, healthy discussion online is a welcome development. I would advise not only Meta, but all the social media platforms, to sanitize their platforms from distorted videos and fake news that is harmful not only to the individual being targeted, but to the entirety of the entirety of the public,” he said in a press conference.

“They should put all possible options and mechanisms towards that end in place, including the third party fact-checkers, to maintain a truthful venue of information. We need this kind of regulation,” Adiong added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News