Meta employees rip Mark Zuckerberg over fact-checking, Dana White
Meta employees blasted the company’s decision to do away with third party fact-checkers and to add pro-Trump voices including Ultimate Fighting Championship head Dana White to the board of directors, according to a report.
Workers at the Silicon Valley giant vented their displeasure on the company’s internal messaging forum on Tuesday in response to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta will remove restrictions on free expression when it comes to controversial, hot-button topics.
Zuckerberg, who wore a $900,000 Swiss watch while admitting to engaging in “too much censorship,” said that discussions about sensitive subjects such as immigration and gender will no longer be subject to strict content moderation rules on Meta’s major platforms including Facebook, Instragram and Threads.
One Meta employee wrote on the Workplace chat forum that they were “extremely concerned” about the move, which they attribute as Meta “sending a bigger, stronger message to people that facts no longer matter, and conflating that with a victory for free speech.”
Another employee wrote that “simply absolving ourselves from the duty to at least try to create a safe and respective platform is a really sad direction to take,” according to CNBC. Still another feared that the change will lead to an “influx of racist and transphobic content” across Meta platforms.
Other employees, however, praised the move. One worker wrote that adopting the “Community Notes” model used by Elon Musk’s X has “proven to be a much better representation of the ground truth.”
Another employee suggested that the company “provide an accounting of the worst outcomes of the early years” which initially pushed management to hire third-party fact-checkers and whether the new policies would prevent the same type of fallout from happening again.
Meta management also deleted internal employee criticism of Zuckerberg’s decision to add White to the board of directors, according to the 404 Media newsletter.
“Major W,” one Meta employee sarcastically wrote on Workplace. Another quipped: “We hire Connor [Conor McGregor] next for after work sparring?”
“Joe Rogan may be next,” another employee wrote. That prompted a worker to respond: “LOL.”
Meta’s “Internal Community Relations team” deleted posts critical of White, saying they violated the “Community Engagement Expectations” that govern Workplace, according to 404 Media.
Meanwhile, the third part fact-checking partners said they were “blindsided” by Zuckerberg’s decision.
“We heard the news just like everyone else,” Alan Duke, cofounder and editor in chief of fact-checking site Lead Stories, which started working with Meta in 2019, told the tech publication Wired on Tuesday.
“No advance notice.”
Jesse Stiller, managing editor of Check Your Fact, told Wired: “We were blindsided by this.” His newsroom, which is staffed by 10 people, has been working with Meta since 2019.
“This was totally unexpected and out of left field for us. We weren’t aware this decision was being considered until Mark dropped the video overnight,” Stiller said, adding: “We have no idea what the future looks like for the website going forward.”
The partnership with Meta was a key source of revenue for media organizations.
“The most painful part of this is losing some very good, experienced journalists, who will no longer be paid to research false claims found on Meta platforms,” Duke told Wired.
Duke was outraged at Zuckerberg’s suggestion that third-party fact checkers had a liberal bias.
“Let me fact-check that. Lead Stories follows the highest standards of journalism and ethics required by the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles,” he said. “We fact-check without regard to where on the political spectrum a false claim originates.”
Kristin Roberts, chief content officer at Gannett Media, also criticized the move. USA Today, a Gannett subsidiary, was another fact-checking partner of Meta.
“Fact-based journalism is what USA Today does best,” Roberts said in an emailed statement to Wired.
“Truth and facts serve everyone—not the right or the left—and that’s what we will continue to deliver.”
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
