Meta To Begin Testing 'Community Notes' Across Facebook, Instagram, Threads From March 18

Social Media giant Meta announced that they will begin testing the Community Notes across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the United States from March 18.

Meta will be ending their third-party fact-checking program and will adopt the same approach as the X’s Community Notes system unveiled in 2021, in which users can add context to posts.

In January, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will be ending the third-party fact-checking program and moving to the Community Notes model.

“We expect Community Notes to be less biased than the third-party fact-checking program it replaces and to operate at a greater scale when it is fully up and running. When we launched the fact-checking program in 2016, we were clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth and believed that turning to expert fact-checking organizations was the best solution available. But that’s not how it played out, particularly in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own political biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact-check and how,” Meta said in a statement.

Meta executives said that their focus is to get the Community Notes right in the US before it is released to other countries. The tech giant may not release Community Notes in the European Union as the European Commission has opened formal proceedings against X over the effectiveness of the ‘Community Notes’ system in the EU.

Meta said they won’t be building the Community Notes feature from the beginning but will use X’s open-source algorithm and build on it.

Meta’s Community Notes system, similar to X’s, allows users to add more context to posts that are confusing or potentially misleading.

Community Notes will have a limit of 500 characters and will need to include a link to support the note. The contributor needs to be over 18 of age and have an account that’s more than 6 months old and also either have a verified phone number or be enrolled in two-factor authentication.

“Meta won’t decide what gets rated or written – contributors from our community will. And to safeguard against bias, notes won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them,” said Meta.

The Community Notes will be available in 6 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Portuguese. Contributors will not be able to submit notes on advertisements, but they can write and submit notes on any other content, including posts by Meta, politicians, and other public figures.