Meta Platforms (META) will continue to use controversial fact checkers outside of the U.S., the company said this week at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
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Speaking to Bloomberg at the event in Davos, Switzerland, Meta’s head of global business, Nicola Mendelsohn, said the company would keep things as they stand for the time being and see how things go over the next year with the new system in the U.S.
“So, nothing changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world,” she said.
META Fact Checkers Ditched in U.S.
Her comments come after the company moved to end its use of third-party fact checkers in the U.S., a particular bugbear among conservatives and president Trump, who felt they were biased against Republicans.
META Chief of Global Affairs Joel Kaplan said the feature was “well intentioned at the outset but there’s just been too much political bias in what they choose to fact check and how.”
On January 7th, META said starting in the US, it is ending the third-party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.
But it may prove harder to abandon fact checkers in other jurisdictions, particularly the European Union, where the Digital Services Act has strong guardrails about the spread of misinformation.
A week ago the company assured Brazil, amid pressure from the country’s attorney general about the new policy leading to an online “Wild West”, that fact checkers would be kept in other countries except the U.S until the company had fully tested the new Community Notes program.
According to Fortune, Brazil’s new Communications Minister Sidonio Palmeira said the new measures “violate fundamental rights and national sovereignty, promoting a digital Wild West.”
In response, META said it would “test and refine” Community Notes before rolling out the approach to other countries.
Is META Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Overall, Wall Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating for META based on 40 Buys, three Holds, and one Sell. The average META price target of $689.12 implies around 12% upside after the stock rose over 61% in the last year.
