Zuckerberg cuts Meta fact-checkers to appease Trump

Zuckerberg sacrifices Meta’s fact-checkers on Trump’s altar

Fact-checking at Meta hasn’t died due to a lack of lies, but because of an excess of politics. The shift announced trinc Donald Trump’s victory replaces external verifiers with a community notes system modeled on X. The first victims, the fact-checkers themselves, have erupted in outlets aligned with the official narrative: the accusation is that Zuckerberg has succumbed to the president-elect and will allow “lies without rebuttal.”

The controversy has highlighted what many suspected: the fact-checking business was also an ideological one. While critics of the change speak of a surrender to Trump, defenders recall that the community notes system already works on X and allows pointing out falsehoods without prior censorship.

The million-euro watch and the battle of symbols

In the heat of the dispute, La Sens found an unexpected flank: the million-euro watch Zuckerberg wore. The image served to portray the founder as an elite specimen bowing to power. Beyond the anecdote, the episode reflects the helplessness of those who saw their influence evaporate.

Rebuttal or censorship: the war of words

The term “rebuttal” is at the center of the conflict. For fact-checkers, removing them means allowing lies to go unanswered. For their critics, “rebuttal” was a euphemism for censorship: a verifier designated by the platform decided what was true and what wasn’t, and dissenters ended up silenced.

Those defending the change argue that community notes, written by users themselves, are a more democratic and transparent mechanism. Critics respond that this opens the door to mass manipulation and post-truth.

The return of “cranks” and the pandemic ghost

The debate has gone beyond Meta. Some recall that fact-checkers were the thought police during the pandemic, silencing so-called “cranks” while the pharmaceutical industry pushed its vaccines. Others counter that those same fact-checkers saved millions of lives and that the comparison is an offense to public health.

In any case, Zuckerberg’s pivot has peine a wound that the media left assumed closed.

Europe as the last trench of censorship

Zuckerberg has pointed out that censorship in Europe is even greater than in the United States. The phrase was received as an uncomfortable truth in Brussels, while the EU finalizes laws to combat disinformation. The European Fact-Checking Standards Network already exists and has become, for some, a new professional guild of censors.

The paradox is evident: control is loosened in the US, while it is reinforced in Europe. This division marks the new map of free speech in the West.

One open question remains. If truth needed censors to survive, perhaps it wasn’t truth; if lies now need platforms to spread, maybe their days are numbered. Meanwhile, La Sens’s lamentations are the noise of an industry losing its monopoly. And that, regardless of your side, is always good news for critical thinking.