Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies

By Barbara McQuade

As false information about wildfires in Los Angeles rages online, Mark Zuckerberg is fanning the flames of disinformation.

Last week, the Meta CEO announced that the company would stop fact-checking posts on its social media sites. Meta will move to a community notes model, similar to that used by the X platform, relying on users to flag false claims rather than using professional fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact. While conceding that more “bad stuff” will appear on Meta’s platforms -- Facebook, Instagram and Threads -- Zuckerberg said the change was necessary to prevent “too much censorship.”

At a time when the World Economic Forum identifies disinformation as the greatest global threat, Zuckerberg is burning down the defense system of a social media company with 3.5 billion users worldwide. What could possibly motivate a move that will certainly lead to more chaos and upheaval in society?

The answer comes in Zuckerberg’s remarks. “The recent elections,” the billionaire tech owner said, “feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” In other words, Donald Trump’s return to the presidency is influencing a change of heart for Meta, which once banned the former and now future president from its platforms following his use of social media to falsely claim that Joe Biden had stolen the 2020 election, which led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. At the time, Trump accused Facebook of “censorship.” But that was before Trump’s electoral victory in 2024. Elections have consequences, even online.

It’s no secret that Meta has ponied up $1 million for Trump’s inauguration. Zuckerberg was one of the subjects of the political cartoon over which Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes recently resigned from the Washington Post when the editor refused to run it. The cartoon depicted Zuckerberg, along with Post owner Jeff Bezos and other tech and media moguls, laying bags of money at the feet of a statue of the president-elect. Zuckerberg also plans to host an inaugural party for Trump.

Perhaps Zuckerberg has truly had a change of heart over fact-checking. Or maybe his move is designed to fend off regulatory oversight in the new administration. Perhaps he just wants to save the money it costs to assure quality control. But whatever the motive, the results will be disastrous.

One need only look to the X platform to see what happens when fact-checkers are replaced with community notes. My personal feed has become a toxic wasteland with real-world consequences. Last month, Elon Musk, the platform’s owner and a close advisor to Trump, pressured lawmakers to kill a budget bill that would have prevented a government shutdown. According to the Associated Press, Musk’s posts included false claims about funding for congressional salaries, a new football stadium, for the NFL’s Washington Commanders and bioweapon labs.

Disinformation online has other dire consequences. As fires rage in Los Angeles, posts containing false claims about looting, suspected arsonists and even the government’s use of lasers to intentionally start the fires have appeared on social media platforms. Responders say disinformation makes their jobs harder because it sows distrust in government and its employees. In October, false claims about relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Helene forced FEMA to post a page on its website to debunk multiple false rumors, including one that the agency had run out of money and another, conveniently placed, about their spending money to support immigrants.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg said he did not want Meta to be the “arbiter of truth.” But he seems to conflate political opinion with verifiable facts. Certainly, people can debate policy issues and the virtues of candidates, but fact-checking is another matter. There is such a thing as truth. After all, Meta’s fact-checking policy was launched in response to Russia’s use of its platforms to spread disinformation about the 2016 presidential election. The Internet Research Agency was indicted for setting up fake accounts posing as Americans to disparage political candidates, undermine confidence in elections and sow discord. In response, Meta invested billions of dollars into fact-checking, using outside firms like Snopes and Accenture to reduce false content.

Since 2016, the threat of disinformation has not abated. In fact, it has only grown more sophisticated. During the past election cycle, the U.S. Department of Justice seized internet domains operated by a Russian companies Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technology (Structura), and ANO Dialog--colloquially referred to as “Doppelganger”--to spread disinformation by using artificial intelligence to replicate the web pages of the Washington Post and Fox News and fill them with false content. According to the Justice Department, Doppelgänger’s goal was to weaken support for Ukraine in the war with Russia and influence voters in the U.S. presidential election. Russian operatives posed as Americans and posted links to the counterfeit websites on social media.

In July, Musk posted on X a deepfake video montage of Kamala Harris campaigning for president. The video contained the sound of Harris’s voice saying she was the “ultimate diversity hire,” so if you criticize her, “you’re both sexist and racist.” The voice, however, was generated with AI. Musk later called the video “parody,” but his post carried no warnings to that effect, presumably leaving online users to believe that Harris herself had uttered those words.

One of the goals of disinformers is to cause people to become skeptical of everything, leading them to become exhausted and cynical until they disengage from politics altogether, right where an authoritarian wants them.

In light of the dangers to public safety and democratic institutions, abandoning fact-checking at any moment in time seems like a reckless move for Meta. Doing so just as Trump is about to take office threatens to burn it all down.

Barbara McQuade is a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and author of the New York Times bestseller Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.