Latin America fact-check group asks Meta not to replace verification practice

A Latin American fact-checking network on Thursday asked Meta not to replace the verification practice with Community Notes after the company said it was testing the crowdsourcing system in the region.

As of Wednesday, Facebook, Instagram and Threads users in 16 Spanish-speaking countries can sign up to provide context to online posts, which will remain invisible to others under the pilot program.

The crowdsourced notes system, modeled on the one used by Elon Musk's X, is designed to supplant checks carried out by accredited newsrooms and fact-checking agencies, which Meta ended in the United States last year.

The company run by Mark Zuckerberg has not disclosed when the change will become official, saying only that full rollout would come when it was confident the product worked.

LatamChequea, a network of 47 regional verification initiatives, asked the tech giant to rethink its decision.

"Community Notes are not enough in contexts of high disinformation," it stated, calling on Meta "to complement, not replace, independent verification."

Digital platforms are "at a critical moment," it said, especially "due to the boom in content generated and manipulated with artificial intelligence."

The world's main fact-checking network, of which AFP is a signatory, voiced similar concerns Wednesday.

"The Community Notes program alone is simply not adequate when it comes to reducing the impact of harmful falsehoods on social media platforms," said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network.

AFP is among the fact-checking organizations that participate in Meta's program in Latin America and elsewhere, verifying information in 26 languages.

The countries included in Meta's pilot are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the region's largest market for Meta's platforms, was excluded from the crowdsourcing trial.

The company's pivot comes as right-wing politicians, aligned with US President Donald Trump and typically more favorable to digital deregulation, make huge gains across the region.

Last year, days before Trump took office for a second term, Zuckerberg announced that Meta was ending its US fact-checking partnerships and replacing them with Community Notes.

In line with Republican views, Zuckerberg cast the shift as a return to free expression.