- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have called for Meta to reverse course on its decision to rid its platforms of fact checkers in favor of community notes. In a statement released Monday, the royal couple said Meta’s decision was fueled by “ego or profit, likely both.”
One of the reasons Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left the United Kingdom and stepped down as senior members of the royal family in 2020 was due to the intense attention from British tabloids and the spread of misinformation about them.
Now the couple, still referred to as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, is fighting for Meta to reverse course on ridding Facebook, Instagram, and the company’s other platforms of fact checkers. Harry and Meghan currently reside in Montecito, Calif., about 90 miles away from Los Angeles, which has been ravaged by wildfires. The premiere of Markle’s new Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, has been delayed due to the wildfires.
“It doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right, or somewhere in between—the latest news from Meta about changes to their policies directly undermines free speech,” the couple wrote in an open letter published on Monday. “This should deeply concern us all.”
In a documentary called Harry & Meghan released in late 2022 on Netflix, the couple recounts intense pressures from social and traditional media.
“The truth didn’t matter,” Markle said in the documentary. “The clickbait did.”
On Jan. 7, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a video announcing changes to content moderation across the company’s platforms. Fact checkers are now replaced with community notes, similar to how content is moderated on X. Community notes are essentially fact-checks by approved community members that call out false or misleading information. The below is an example of an X post with a community note.
Oh Englishman what have you unleashed on your country. pic.twitter.com/d0X0qKPf93
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) January 14, 2025
Now, Harry and Meghan “urge Meta to reconsider and reinstate policies to protect all users,” the couple’s statement reads. “We also call on leaders across industries to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying.”
Meta and representatives for Zuckerberg didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex also said Meta’s latest move is a sign the company is “allowing either ego or profit, likely both, to guide decisions that affect billions.” Meta has nearly 4 billion users across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads.
Zuckerberg, meanwhile, argues fact-checkers have made “too many mistakes” leading to “too much censorship” on the platforms.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” he said in the video posted Jan. 7. “So we’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”
Zuckerberg admitted his move toward community notes was inspired by Elon Musk’s move on X to do the same.
“We've seen this approach work on X—where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see," according to a statement by Meta.
This is one of the latest moves by Zuckerberg to follow in Musk’s footsteps, becoming increasingly closer to President-elect Donald Trump. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago weeks after Trump clinched the election.
Harry and Meghan said Meta’s move to eliminate fact checkers is “undoubtedly responding to political winds,” and is “so far away from [Meta’s] stated values and commitments to its users.”
The couple went as far to say removal of fact checkers is “deeply deceptive.”
“Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy,” their statement reads.
