Meta, a company owned by Mark Zuckerberg and which controls Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, assured that it is committed to “respecting human rights”.
A big tech was asked by the AGU, which represents the federal government, to justify the changes announced last week by Zuckerberg on the platform – such as the decision to suspend the current independent Fact Checking Program through the Community Notes system.
This change, in principle, will only apply to the United States, in a kind of “test” before being expanded to other countries. Other measures announced, such as the return of political content recommendations by algorithms, will have global reach.
“Balance” between freedom and security
According to the letter sent by Meta to AGU, the changes to the platform seek a “balance” between freedom of expression and security.
“As part of this build and launch process, we hope to publish more information about how Community Notes will work, including our plans for any transparency reports related to their use,” Meta says in the document.
The company further states that “it is committed to respecting human rights and their underlying principles of equality, safety, dignity, privacy and voice.”
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“We seek to give people a voice; serve everyone; promote economic opportunities; enable people to connect and build communities; keep people safe and protect privacy. Our policies are a reflection of this”, says Meta.
Corroborating the speech given by Zuckerberg when announcing the changes last week, the big tech states that, in recent years, the news checking model in force until then ended up, in practice, “limiting legitimate political debate”.
The company states, however, that it will continue to remove offensive content and misinformation “when there is the possibility that it directly contributes to the risk of imminent bodily harm or, when misinformation may directly interfere with the functioning of political processes, such as elections and censuses ”.
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According to Meta, the end of independent checking adopted in the US aims to “improve” the approach to disinformation “by empowering our users, who will decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, reducing the risk of bias in decisions of content moderation.”
According to Zuckerberg’s company, the idea is to “concentrate the use of these systems to deal with high-severity violations, such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams”.
the Community Notes model will allow Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users to call attention to potentially misleading posts that need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact-checking organizations and experts.
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“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This was evident in the choices some made about what and how to fact-check… A program intended to inform has often become a tool of censorship,” Meta reported.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, . He said he will work together with US President-elect Donald Trump to “stop governments around the world from going after American companies and pushing censorship.”
Zuckerberg also said that, in Latin America, there are “secret courts that can order companies to take down content silently”.
