A lot is happening in the world of social media lately that has organizations scrambling for guidance. Last week, the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerburg announced some big changes impacting fact-checking and misinformation. Setting aside the political discourse on the decision, there are some real implications to consider for how your organization uses the platforms.
Zuckerburg announced it will end its fact-checking system using independent partners it implemented in 2016 to Facebook and later to Instagram and Threads and will pivot away from content moderation. It will instead roll out a “Community Notes” feature on all three platforms, similar to what is used on X.
How will Community Notes work?
On X, users can apply to add corrections or context to a post and can include links to support their case. The information then appears below the post with the tag “Readers added context.” Other users can vote on whether the additional context is needed or should be removed, and users can lose their ability to add notes if theirs are voted as unhelpful often. The post author can request reviews of notes they believe should be deleted.
In theory, it is crowd sourced fact-checking that, as the Meta announcement claims, allows “people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see.” In practice, however, it’s much more complicated. This means posts with misinformation will only be flagged if a user adds a community note and nothing is stopping the user from adding a note with more misinformation. As Axios’ Dan Primack posted, X’s Community Notes “regularly allows blatant misinformation to be loudly amplified for hours or days before being noted.”
When is this happening?
Meta said they plan to both phase out the fact-checking program and phase in community notes function over the next couple of months. Though, you can sign up now to be one of the first users to add Community Notes when the function becomes available (Facebook, Instagram, Threads).
What does it mean for my organization’s social media strategy?
It will be important to watch updates from Meta on how exactly Community Notes will work and to understand how they, as X has done, will continuously adapt the program as it goes into effect. Meta’s announcement didn’t mention ads, so it’s unclear whether the Community Notes program will apply to your paid ads or boosted posts.
In the meantime, as the roll-out/roll-in begins, keep a close eye on your content for added notes and become very familiar with Meta’s (to be announced) process to appeal a note. Your posts that garner a lot of comments today may be the ones users focus on to add Community Notes in the future.
We will also keep a close eye on the developments with Meta (and Tiktok) and continue to provide timely, strategic guidance to ensure our clients are prepared to navigate these changes effectively.
If you’d like to discuss leveling up your social media strategy in this changing landscape, contact me at Burgie MediaFusion at melanie@burgiemediafusion.com!
