Meta Faces Legal Challenges as It Ends Fact-Checking Program
WASHINGTON — Social media giant Meta appears to be headed into a legal quagmire after its chief executive officer announced Tuesday his company would cease fact-checking and censorship of controversial material in user posts on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the censorship interferes with free speech.
At the same time, some states — such as California, Florida and Maryland — have laws prohibiting social media platforms from allowing posts or marketing practices that could be addictive to children and potentially cause depression.
Facebook and Instagram have been blamed for contributing to teen suicides. Meta is their parent company.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that hateful commentary might enter more frequently into Facebook and Instagram posts but added that it is not his company’s fault.
The censored material has included statements that homosexuals are mentally ill. Such statements would no longer be censored.
The fact-checking will be replaced by community notes, similar to those on the social media site X. Community notes work as a crowdsourcing system to flag potentially misleading content.
Zuckerberg could claim support for his policy shift from the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2024 decision in Moody v. NetChoice.
The Supreme Court said personalized feeds created by other persons and posted on social media websites qualify as “expression” protected by the First Amendment.
NetChoice is a trade association of online businesses that advocate for free expression and free enterprise on the internet. It has six ongoing First Amendment lawsuits over state-level internet regulations.
Zuckerberg instituted a fact-checker program in 2016 while Facebook was blamed for allowing posts of fake news and conspiracy theories that could influence who gets elected. The fact-checkers were supposed to remove false and misleading information.
He explained his reasoning in a 2016 Facebook post that said, “The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously.”
In his change of plans for ending the program announced Tuesday, Zuckerberg said the fact-checking was “too politically biased,” that there were “too many mistakes” and “too much censorship.”
Some of the complaints had come from Republican members of Congress. They said Facebook was censoring conservative commentary more than liberal opinions.
Zuckerberg plans to meet with U.S. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in the next few weeks in Washington, D.C., to discuss social media policy.
Regardless of the July Supreme Court ruling in favor of social media free expression, several states are continuing with their lawsuits against Facebook and other social media sites. They say the safety and well-being of the public is the issue, not free expression.
One of the most hotly contested state lawsuits is NetChoice v. Bonta, which challenges California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act as being ineffective and a violation of free speech.
The law requires online services likely to be used by children to submit assessments to the state attorney general on whether its service could expose persons under 18 years old to potentially harmful content. The law does not clearly define potentially harmful content.
It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1 but a judge ordered a halt to enforcement of it as a result of the NetChoice lawsuit.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta responded Friday by pledging to “vigorously defend” the law against “addictive” social media content for children.
A similar lawsuit is pending in Florida against the state’s law restricting social media for 14- and 15-year-olds and banning it for younger children.
The state argues the law protects children from content that could damage their physical and mental well-being. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice say the law violates free speech rights.
A Maryland “Kids Code” law modeled on the one in California will not take effect until October but the state’s attorney general is acknowledging it could face a constitutional challenge.
Attorney General Anthony Brown wrote in a letter to the Maryland governor that the law was “not clearly unconstitutional” but has “potential constitutional issues.”
You can reach us at [email protected] and follow us on Facebook and X
We're proud to make our journalism accessible to everyone, but producing high-quality journalism comes at a cost. That's why we need your help. By making a contribution today, you'll be supporting TWN and ensuring that we can keep providing our journalism for free to the public.
Donate now and help us continue to publish TWN’s distinctive journalism. Thank you for your support!
