Mr Yiu was asked by MPs on the committee how this fitted with leaked guidelines for the new community notes system which showed the site would now allow a range of transphobic, racist and antisemitic statements, including statements such as: “trans people don’t exist”, “immigrants are filthy” and “Jews are greedier than Christians” – which were labelled “racist misinformation” by the committee.
During an appearance before MPs on the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee, Chris Yiu, Meta’s director of public policy for northern Europe said the decision to replace third-party fact checkers with a community notes system in the US was based on feedback that debate on sensitive issues was being “suppressed”.
Responding to Mr Yiu, Emily Darlington MP asked whether Meta believed there was a “genuine debate” around the example statements on trans people, Jewish people and immigrants.
“We’ve had feedback that topics which have become part of mainstream discourse – conversations around some of the issues that happen among members of the public, that happen in newspapers, were being suppressed on our platforms in a way which was too aggressive,” Mr Yiu said.
“Replacing experts trained to establish factual accuracy with a community notes model designed to reach consensus risks skewing information circulating on Meta platforms towards what some users think rather than what the evidence says.
