Zuckerberg fired the fact-checkers. We tested their replacement.
When a hoax about Donald Trump went viral at the funeral of Pope Francis, I went on social media to try to set the record straight. I’m a volunteer for community notes, a program Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that replaces fact-checkers with users to counter falsehoods on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
I drafted a note debunking images claiming to show Trump sleeping during the ceremony. I cited live-stream footage and corroborating time stamps. I linked to research by Snopes.
None of that mattered. My community note never got added to a post because not enough other users voted it was “helpful.”
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Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.