Meta scrapped factcheckers because systems were ‘too complex’
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Comments by co-chair of oversight board Helle Thorning-Schmidt come as X CEO welcomes move by rival. The co-chair of Meta’s oversight board has said the company’s systems have become “too complex” after it decided to scrap factcheckers, as the chief executive of Elon Musk’s X welcomed the decision.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the co-chair of the social media company’s oversight board and the former prime minister of Denmark, has said she and the departed president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, had agreed “Meta systems have been too complex”, adding that there had been “over-enforcement”.
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement that the Facebook owner would move away from using third-party checkers to flag misleading content in favour of notes from other users. The 40-year-old billionaire said that, starting in the US, Meta would “get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X”, as the company moves to prioritise free speech in the run-up to Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The move came only days after Clegg, Britain’s former deputy prime minister, left Meta after six years at the company, most recently in the role of president of global affairs. In a departure post on Facebook, Clegg said he was proud of having worked on “new forms of governance”.
