SÃO PAULO — I decided that I would write about fact-checking after Brazil’s federal government requested explanations from Meta regarding the announcement of the end of fact-checking on the platform. (Note that the company that owns Facebook and Instagram responded to Brazilian authorities that it would only end fact-checking operations in the U.S. for now).
But I’m also writing because I just finished reading a book by Paolo Demuru, a professor of semiotics, called Politics of Enchantment. The book reiterates arguments I have heard from so many sides – from the right, left, center, journalists and researchers. Some have gone so far as to declare that “fact-checking serves no purpose.”
This is not exactly what Demuru says. Instead, he maintains a duplicitous discourse about fact-checking while saying things such as, “we need to make debunking less toxic and less elitist.”
But first, let’s get back to Mark Zuckerberg.
Much has been said about his Jan. 7 announcement, but it contains nuances that I cannot ignore. Zuckerberg not only announced that he would abolish fact-checking on Instagram and Facebook; he adopted a vile and cowardly Donald Trump-like language to speak about fact-checkers — who are, let us always remember, nothing more than journalists dedicated to a specific type of coverage.
He said, “We are going to get rid of fact-checkers,” meaning that instead of thanking those employees who dedicated years to making his company run well, he kicked them out. He stated that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.” In contrast, he added, Facebook tried “in good faith” to address concerns about disinformation.
The real meaning of censorship
The language used by Zuckerberg is so vile that it does not surprise me; Meta’s relationship with fact-checking has always been despicable. In the face of a flood of criticism about disinformation that helped bring Trump to power in 2016, Facebook hastily announced a program in which it would pay fact-checking agencies monthly to analyze viral posts reported by users.
Within an internal platform, these journalists investigated each of these posts and sent their analysis to Facebook’s team. It was they who decided what to do with them — from reducing their reach, tagging them as disinformation, to penalties.
In other words, if there was “censorship” — a term that the right uses to refer to editing — it was always Facebook itself that practiced it.
Their business model depends on false information and criminal discourse.
For years, it was precisely this contract with fact-checking agencies that allowed Zuckerberg to evade scrutiny from Congress and U.S. Justice. On March 25, 2021, he himself testified before Congress praising the fact-checking program as an “industry leader,” proof that the company was indeed acting to combat fake news.
Look, I am not going to defend Meta’s fact-checking program, which has never been anything more than marketing; an operation that paid a pittance to serious journalism groups worldwide, who today have no way to make a living from traditional journalism; a crisis model that Zuckerberg helped create when he dominated, alongside Google, 70% of the global advertising market.
It was a pittance that exploited the vulnerability of a community that has been vilified and precarious for the past decade but remains firmly convinced that facts do matter.
Fueling hate speech
As far as I’m concerned, the program came too late.
And I say this because I know well; I was there. In 2018, when Meta launched this program here in Brazil, Agência Pública was still doing fact-checking through the Truco project. Meta representatives asked us to be part of the partnership; it would be fixed money every month that could have given new life to Truco, one of our most successful projects in Publica’s 13-year history.
We said “no.” For us, it was already clear that the only real purpose was to pretend that the company was doing something. It was merely outsourcing a job that should be its own: moderating, editing, ensuring that the content created and published on its platform does not cause real harm in the real world, does not violate laws, does not cause discrimination, violence, coups d’état or genocides.
I have argued in this space that if they were to take responsibility for maintaining a healthy debate grounded in realities and civility, social networks would simply go bankrupt. Their business model depends on false information and criminal discourse. They know this.
The terms used by Zuckerberg are likely to worsen these attacks even further.
There is another layer of cruelty in his discourse. Still in 2018, despite Pública having rejected Meta’s offer, our team was involved along with other fact-checking agencies in a violent campaign of online harassment with coordinated attacks against profiles, doxxing, heavy threats that left marks on all newsrooms affected by this. It was still the era before Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, when people linked to the conservative Free Brazil Movement (MBL) used violence on social media to stand out before being overtaken as a national political force.
This was just one of dozens of similar campaigns suffered by agencies for doing their work regardless of whether they were on the right or left. It is clear that in a political scenario where extremist right forces began systematically using increasingly absurd lies — such as calling the invasion of the U.S. Capitol “a day of love” — fact-checking work had to lean much more toward this side of the scale.
That is why, as recalled by the 70 organizations that signed an open letter to Zuckerberg, the terms used by the businessman are likely to worsen these attacks even further. “People online have often blamed and harassed fact-checkers for Meta’s actions,” the signatories wrote. “Your recent comments will no doubt fuel those perceptions.”
Who are fact-checkers?
Now back to Demuru’s book, which suggests that fact-checkers are “ratio-supremacists” sitting at their desks judging what is true and what is not without any concern for dialoguing with their audience or innovating in language and format.
That is pure nonsense: Fact-checkers are among the most innovative sectors in journalism today — not only in Brazil but also in other regions, including the United States. There are initiatives ranging from partnerships with Brazil’s Electoral Superior Tribunal (TSE), media literacy for social networks, unprecedented collaborations between the country’s largest newsrooms, partnerships with artists and influencers, alliances with groups from the periphery and popular communicators with content distributed via WhatsApp, the use of robots, artificial intelligence, and partnerships with linguists. The list is extensive.
Whether Trump, Musk or Zuckerberg like it or not, fact-checking will not die.
Fact-checking has become a journalism format adopted by all major media conglomerates in Brazil and other countries like the United States. It is much more than just famous checks — which let’s be honest do have their utility for any family WhatsApp group debate; if not as “the” final argument at least to strengthen those who are on factual grounds.
Today, these journalists are leading experts on disinformation who can analyze in real-time artificially created waves — be it for staging a coup d’état or destroying a political opponent or diverting attention when there is serious wrongdoing against their company being reported.
Because of the nature of their work — which involves constant monitoring of debates on social media — they provide reliable data on who are the actors working together to boost criminal narratives. They measure and record which profiles are recurring — that is those acting in an orchestrated manner with specific ends — regardless of whether the same story has been verified dozens of times before. They know what relationships exist between these individuals and how disinformation campaigns spread across platforms.
A public service
The work of fact-checkers assists those investigating disinformation networks. It helps authorities monitor and correctly investigate who belongs to online gangs while being crucial for developing public policies at all levels aimed at improving public debate more broadly rather than just on one platform or another.
Therefore their “checks” or reports underpin everything from academic studies to judicial decisions and legislative projects. It is a public service in essence.
Whether Trump, Musk or Zuckerberg like it or not, fact-checking will not die — even from starvation — because it is a service that has been embraced by various sectors of society (and, yes, also to counter your uncle on WhatsApp).
In the end, Facebook’s withdrawal will have a financial impact on these organizations, but perhaps it is better for them to stay away from this company. This way it becomes clearer who encourages and profits from criminal disinformation, and who is actually trying to clean up the mess of the online infodemic.
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