SAN FRANCISCO—
Social media giant Meta announced Thursday that it would begin testing its new “Community Notes” feature on its platforms on March 18, as it moves away from third-party fact-checking toward a crowdsourced content moderation approach.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new system in January as he appeared to align himself with the incoming Trump administration, including naming a Republican as the company’s public policy chief.
The system change came after years of criticism from supporters of US President Donald Trump, among others, that conservative voices were being censored or repressed under the guise of fighting misinformation, a claim professional fact-checkers vehemently reject.
Meta has also scaled back its diversity initiatives and relaxed content moderation rules on Facebook and Instagram, particularly regarding certain forms of hostile speech.
The initiative, similar to the system already implemented by X (formerly Twitter), will allow Facebook, Instagram and Threads users to write and rate contextual notes on various content.
Meta said approximately 200,000 potential taxpayers in the United States have already registered on the three platforms.
The new approach requires taxpayers to be over 18 with accounts older than six months that are up to date.
During the trial period, notes will not immediately appear in the content and the company will gradually admit people from the waiting list and thoroughly test the system before its public rollout.
Meta emphasized that the notes will only be published when contributors with different points of view agree on their usefulness.
“These are not majority rules,” the company said.
Additionally, unlike verified posts that often saw reduced distribution, content marked with Community Notes will not face distribution penalties.
Notes will be limited to 500 characters, must include supporting links, and will initially support six languages commonly used in the United States: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Portuguese.
“Our intention is to ultimately roll out this new approach to our users around the world, but we will not do so immediately,” the company said.
“Until Community Notes is launched in other countries, the third-party data verification program will remain in effect for them,” he added.
Meta said it would not “reinvent the wheel” and will use the open source X algorithm as the basis of its system.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last month that rollbacks to fact-checking and moderation safeguards were “opening the floodgates” of online hate and violence.
