Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he decided to end Facebook and Instagram’s third-party fact-checking operation because it too closely resembled George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984.” Zuckerberg made the comment while appearing on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Friday.
“I think people just felt like the fact checkers were too biased, not necessarily even so much in what they ruled — although sometimes I think people would disagree with that. A lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go and fact check in the first place,” he explained. “So I kind of think, after having gone through that whole exercise, it’s something out of, like, ‘1984’ — one of these books, where it’s just like, it really is a slippery slope. And it just got to a point where it’s just ‘OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States.’”
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would end its fact-checking program in favor of a feature similar to Community Notes on X, Elon Musk’s platform formerly known as Twitter.
Meta launched its fact-checking program soon after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The company used ABC News, AP, Politifact, Snopes and FactCheck.org to flag content on its platforms, and posts that were deemed unreliable were pushed further down in Facebook’s news feed. Users were also warned before sharing flagged content that they were posting “disputed” stories.
Zuckerberg on Tuesday said the decision to end Meta’s fact checking was about “restoring free expression” on Facebook and Instagram.
He added that, while Meta tried its best to accurately police content since it first introduced fact checking in late 2016, there had been too many errors. “We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” he said.
On Friday, Zuckerberg admitted he gave “too much deference” to media pundits in 2016 who said Donald Trump could not win the election without the help of a massive misinformation campaign.
“People didn’t want to believe that anybody looked at him and said, ‘This should be our president,’” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
Notably, Facebook slapped warning labels on several posts made by Trump during his first term, and in January 2021, Trump was “indefinitely” banned from Facebook and Instagram. At the time, Zuckerberg said “the risks” of keeping Trump on those platforms were “simply too great.” Trump has since been reinstated by Meta.
Zuckerberg on Friday told Rogan that one of the main drivers behind his decision to end fact checking was the pressure he felt in recent years from the Biden Administration, particularly in regards to COVID-19 posts.
“I’m generally like, pretty pro-rolling out vaccines. I think on balance, the vaccines are more positive than negative,” Zuckerberg said.
“But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true, right?” he continued. “I mean, they basically pushed us and said anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down. And I was just like, well, we’re not going to do that. We’re clearly not going to do that.”
You can watch the full Rogan interview on YouTube by clicking here.
