WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden blasted Meta on Friday for scrapping fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram in the United States, calling the move \u201creally shameful\u201d after a global network warned of real-world harm if the tech giant expands its decision to other countries.<\/p>\n
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg triggered alarm Tuesday when he announced the Palo Alto company was ditching third-party fact-checking in the United States and turning over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as \u201cCommunity Notes,\u201d popularised by X.<\/p>\n
The decision was widely seen as an attempt to appease President-elect Donald Trump, whose conservative support base has long complained that fact-checking on tech platforms was a way to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really shameful,\u201d Biden told reporters at the White House when asked about the announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cTelling the truth matters,\u201d he said, adding that the move was \u201ccompletely contrary to everything America\u2019s about.\u201d The International Fact-Checking Network has warned of devastating consequences if Meta broadens its policy shift beyond US borders to the company\u2019s programs covering more than 100 countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these countries are highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide,\u201d IFCN, which includes dozens of news agencies as members, said in an open letter to Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg doubled down in an interview Friday with podcaster Joe Rogan, comparing the fact-checking programme with \u201csomething out of 1984,\u201d in a reference to George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden blasted Meta on Friday for scrapping fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram in the United States, calling the move \u201creally shameful\u201d after a global network warned of real-world harm if the tech giant expands its decision to other countries. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg triggered alarm Tuesday when he announced the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4602,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions\/4602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}