- Michael McConnell fears the decision by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to eliminate fact-checking will not work and argues the decision appears to reflect primarily parochial political concerns irrespective of the roughly 90% of Facebook's 3 billion monthly active users.
Meta’s elimination of fact-checking will not likely prove effective and lends the impression that it is caving to U.S. political pressure days before Donald Trump takes office, according to Michael McConnell, co-chair of Meta’s oversight board.
Speaking to NPR’s All Things Considered podcast on Friday, the Stanford Law professor said he privately felt it could be interpreted as “buckling” and “caving” to Trump following the former president’s ban from the platform four years ago.
Asked if outsourcing content moderation to volunteers in lieu of dedicated fact-checkers would work, he replied: “I’m not overly confident that this is going to be the solution.” In his view, there is no magic bullet to solving content moderation.
Last week, Meta scrapped fact-checking in favor of crowd-sourcing volunteers to police content similar to those already found on X, the rival social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg explicitly tied the decision to Trump’s election, calling the former president’s resounding victory a “cultural tipping point” that had consequences for speech on its platform.
This includes removing content filters instituted to weed out comments deemed bigoted and hurtful to religious and ethnic minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ community.
McConnell, a Stanford University law professor, admitted his oversight board had not even been consulted on this aspect: “This actually came as a surprise to us. We did not know that they were going to be revising that standard.”
The comments are somewhat unusual given that McConnell had co-authored a statement with three other colleagues last week that appeared to strike a more positive tone. In it, they wrote they would be reviewing the implications of the move, but that they welcome changes serving the goal of enhancing trust and free speech in a manner than can scale with the platform as it provides a voice for billions of its users.
"We look forward to working with Meta in the coming weeks to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible," the statement said, acknowledging a perception of political bias that had rightly or wrongly taken hold in the United States.
Zuckerberg institutes flurry of changes in response to Trump's election
In the weeks following the November election, Zuckerberg has made several changes at Meta that suggest he aims to mend bridges with the incoming administration.
Trump was banned from the platform for inciting violence culminating in the January 6th Capitol riot— notably by McConnell’s oversight board.
First, Zuckerberg sacked the executive most associated with Trump’s Facebook ban, global policy head Nick Clegg, elevating in his stead a former White House deputy chief of staff under Republican president George W. Bush.
In addition to new independent director John Elkann, Zuckerberg also named the boss of sporting event organizer UFC, Dana White, to the board.
White is a close personal friend of Trump, granted the honor of sharing the limelight during the President-elect’s November 6th acceptance speech.
Then, last week, Zuckerberg made the call to pare back moderation on Meta’s platforms.
As part of the move, the company’s U.S. trust and safety team tasked with reviewing content will move out of California—a state synonymous with leftist views.
In the future, the team will instead be based in Texas, typically found on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Zuckerberg then arranged an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, blaming Biden for aggressive censorship and government overreach.
Trump ally Musk, who runs Threads competitor X, suggested the Meta competitor prove his allegiance by publishing private correspondence from the outgoing administration.
'Buckling to political pressure'
When it came to the timing of this latest decision, McConnell said, “There’s bad optics here,” stipulating that, in this instance, he was not speaking for the oversight board as a whole.
“It certainly looks like this is buckling to political pressure,” he continued.
McConnell added he would have preferred to see these reforms presented during “less contentious and partisan times so that they would be considered on the merits”, rather than appearing to be a hasty reaction to Trump taking office in roughly a week.
Speaking once again in his official capacity, McConnell suggested Zuckerberg’s contentious move predominantly reflected parochial concerns at home irrespective of users' preferences outside of the country.
“The fact-checking program has been much more contentious and controversial in the United States, not so much elsewhere,” he said.
Meta has been at the forefront of controversy for nearly a decade, in part the result of accusations that Facebook (as it was still known then) functioned as a superspreader for misinformation during the 2016 election.
Zuckerberg created the oversight board in response to mounting domestic criticism. The board’s first set of recommendations was issued in February 2021, by which point issues like race relations and trans rights had gained in popularity. Later, it was rocked by allegations from whistleblower Frances Haugen that it harmed users.
Fortune reached out to Meta requesting a comment on the various points raised by McConnell but did not receive a reply by press time.
