Meta to unveil Community Notes in the US next week

On March 18, Meta will start releasing its version of Community Notes for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users in the United States.

According to tech news platform TechCrunch, the program copies a crowdsourced fact-checking system that Twitter unveiled in 2021 and that became the sole means of correcting misleading information after Elon Musk turned the platform into X.

Meta executives say they’re focused on getting Community Notes right in the U.S. before it rolls the feature out to other countries.

The move could also signal Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s eagerness to appease the Trump administration, which has previously criticized Meta for censoring conservative views.

Zuckerberg first announced these changes in January, as part of a broader effort to give oxygen to more perspectives on his platforms.

Since 2016, Meta has relied on third-party fact-checkers to verify information on its platforms, but Neil Potts, Meta’s VP of Public Policy, told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday that the systems were too biased, not scalable enough, and made too many mistakes.

For example, Potts said Meta applied false fact-checking labels to an opinion article on climate change that appeared in Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

In another case, Zuckerberg recently said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Meta should not have dismissed concerns around COVID-19 vaccines as misinformation.

Meta hopes that Community Notes will address the public perception that it’s biased, as well as make fewer mistakes and serve as a more scalable fact-checking system that ultimately addresses more misinformation.

However, Meta notes this system does not replace Community Standards, the company’s rules that dictate whether posts are considered hate speech, scams, or other banned content.