Earlier this year, Meta announced it would end its third-party fact-checking program for posts on its social media sites: Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Instead of relying on established fact-checking programs such as Poynter’s PolitiFact, Meta would leave it up to its users to figure out what was right, wrong or needed more context. The tech giant announced it would implement a system similar to X’s — a crowdsourced initiative called Community Notes.

On Thursday, Meta released more details, including that it would begin testing its community notes system on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. The system won’t be rolled out immediately. Meta said in its release, “We’re going to take time to do this right. Around 200,000 potential contributors in the US have signed up so far across all three apps, and the waitlist remains open for those who wish to take part in the program. But notes won’t initially appear on content. We will start by gradually and randomly admitting people off of the waitlist, and will take time to test the writing and rating system before any notes are published publicly.”

It said, “Our plan is to roll out Community Notes across the United States once we are comfortable from the initial beta testing that the program is working in broadly the way we believe it should, though we will continue to learn and improve it as we go. Once Notes begin to appear publicly, no new fact check labels from third party fact checkers will appear in the United States, though fact checkers are free to become Community Notes contributors alongside other users of our platform.”

So how will it work? Pretty much just like X, Meta says.

Meta said in its release, “Meta won’t decide what gets rated or written — contributors from our community will. And to safeguard against bias, notes won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them.”

It added, “This isn’t majority rules. No matter how many contributors agree on a note, it won’t be published unless people who normally disagree decide that it provides helpful context.”

Read the release for even more information.

Now, here’s why Meta claims it’s moving away from fact-checkers and going to crowdsourcing. It writes, “We expect Community Notes to be less biased than the third-party fact-checking program it replaces, and to operate at a greater scale when it is fully up and running. When we launched the fact checking program in 2016, we were clear that we didn’t want to be the arbiters of truth and believed that turning to expert fact checking organizations was the best solution available. But that’s not how it played out, particularly in the United States. Experts, like everyone else, have their own political biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how.”

Interesting claims. Fact-checkers would argue with that assessment.

I asked two of my colleagues who are well-versed on this topic for their thoughts: Alex Mahadevan, the director of MediaWise, Poynter’s digital media literacy project that teaches people of all ages how to spot misinformation online; and Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network and former editor-in-chief of PolitiFact.

Holan told me, “The community notes process itself has both promise and peril. The promise is a system that fact-checks and provides context at scale. The peril is that the system won’t be effective or, worse yet, it might be controlled or gamed by the politically powerful. I do think fact-checkers are watching and looking to see how their work can serve their existing audiences as well as new audiences through any community notes programs.”

But as far as Meta’s plans, Mahadevan told me that Thursday’s Meta release, as well as a recent Instagram story from Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, made two bold claims. One is that community notes would be less biased than fact-checkers. And, two, that users would see more of them — that the system would scale better, that more posts would be flagged.

Mahadevan said, “But as someone who has spent many years studying how community notes work on X, which they are replicating according to the press release, I can say both of those points are wrong.”

He continued, “First, I have run lots of analyses and there are maybe a couple hundred community notes that go public per day. But if you look at them, maybe half of them are decent. And when I say decent, I mean like barely serviceable fact checks of claims on acts that are either totally unbelievable anyway or not even fact-checkable. I think in the couple of weeks that I looked at, there were maybe 50 community notes per day that were OK but barely up to the level of a nuanced, well-researched, legitimate fact check from a professional fact-checker. So when they say that it’s going to scale better than fact-checkers, that’s just incorrect.”

Mahadevan added about Meta, “According to their own statements recently and in the past, yes, fact-checkers might only write 100 fact checks per day, but those fact checks are attached to thousands and thousands and thousands of Facebook posts that have been flagged as misleading or needing context.”

As far as claims of fact-checkers being biased, Mahadevan told me, “Frankly, fact-checkers get dinged all the time for being too nonpartisan. I mean, anyone with half a brain can read a fact check and know that it is not biased at all. Most of the time, they’re straight-up boring. It’s just the facts.”

In the end, as someone who has studied community notes extensively, Mahadevan believes community notes won’t scale as Meta claims and its users won’t see quality fact checks.

“Ultimately,” Mahadevan said, “if you look at the notes that go public on X, I wouldn’t say all of them are unbiased. There’s inflammatory language, there are bad sources, there are biased sources.”

To be clear, however, Mahadevan is not totally sour on community notes.

“I do think there is a future for community notes. I think there’s a future for crowdsourced fact-checking,” he said. “But it’s just part of a larger trust and safety program. So, you have to have humans on one end. I think as AI gets better and better, you might see AI fact-checkers able to help out a little bit. But there always has to be a professional fact-checker, professional journalist in the loop.”

How might it all turn out?

Holan told me, “Clearly, Meta’s initiative is a new chapter in the story of trying to create online spaces that give people information that is both relevant and accurate. Will it show good progress, or will it be a step backward? We’ll see. Meta needs to earn the trust of its users by showing it actually does care if people are inundated with hoaxes, conspiracy theories and other junk content.”

Who’s up today?

So, which media outlet was President Donald Trump mad at on Thursday? Well, probably a bunch of them, but we know for sure that he was upset with The Wall Street Journal.

On Thursday morning, Trump posted on his Truth Social:

The Globalist Wall Street Journal has no idea what they are doing or saying. They are owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of “screwing” the United States of America. Their (WSJ!) thinking is antiquated and weak, and very bad for the USA. But have no fear, we will WIN on everything!!! Egg prices are down, oil is down, interest rates are down, and TARIFF RELATED MONEY IS POURING INTO THE UNITED STATES. “The only thing you have to fear, is fear itself!”

What set Trump off this time? Journalist Aaron Rupar has a pretty good guess that it was this appearance by Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business Network show. During the interview with Bartiromo, Tucker said that business chief executives are “slightly floundering” over the shape of Trump’s economy and where it’s headed.

Sad news

Longtime Washington Post sportswriter and best-selling author John Feinstein has died. He was 69. The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Feinstein joined the Post in 1977 and eventually became one of the better-known sportswriters in the country — writing columns for the Post and making frequent appearances on ESPN, NPR and other TV and radio shows.

Along the way, he wrote at least 40 books, perhaps none more famous than 1986’s “A Season on the Brink,” in which Feinstein embedded for a season with the Indiana University basketball team and extensively wrote about its polarizing coach, Bob Knight. The Post’s Matt Schudel and Brian Murphy wrote that the book was “immediately recognized as a breakthrough in sports writing. Instead of deifying a successful coach, Mr. Feinstein portrayed Knight in all his complexities, which combined a sensitivity toward his players with a volatile, uncontrollable temper often marked by obscenity-laden tirades.”

While Feinstein specialized in writing about college basketball and golf, he could and did write about all sports. He filed his final column on Wednesday and it was published on Thursday. It was about the Michigan State basketball coach: “Tom Izzo is having too much fun to stop coaching now.”

Check it out

If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check out this terrific story by my Poynter colleague, Amaris Castillo: “TMZ’s scoop on Michael Jackson’s death marked the moment digital news overtook legacy media.”

The story is a part of our Poynter 50 — a series that reflects on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century and continue to influence its future.

Castillo looks back at how TMZ’s big scoop and overall business model “reshaped expectations for breaking news. It forced traditional newsrooms to rethink their approach, not just in entertainment journalism but across all beats.”

Media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …

• The Columbia Journalism Review’s Sewell Chan and Betsy Morais with “Wesley Lowery Exits Investigative Reporting Workshop and American University Following Student Complaints.”
• New York Magazine’s Charlotte Klein with “MSNBC’s Post–Joy Reid, Post-NBC Future Is Kind of Bright?”
• The New York Times’ Ken Bensinger with “As Markets Whipsaw, Conservative Media Shrugs.”
• The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Meghan Bobrowsky with “She Promised Not to Speak Ill of Meta. Then Wrote a Tell-All. Now, She Can’t Talk About It.”
• The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr with “With recent appointments, Fox News enters a new stage of Trump closeness.”
• In a guest column for The Hollywood Report, journalist and author Michael Wolff writes, “Trump Scared the News Networks Into Banning My Book.” Wolff writes in the piece, “While the book was greeted by gratifying reviews in many print outlets, including the New York Times, and debuted at No. 9 on the Times’ best-seller list, most every significant television news outlet — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN — has declined to have it discussed on its news shows.”
• A few days old, but important nonetheless: the Detroit Free Press’ M.L. Elrick with “Michigan’s Attorney General’s Office has a dirty little secret. Until now.”
• The videos in this piece are so cool. For The New York Times, Richard Kemeny with “What a Crab Sees Before It Gets Eaten by a Cuttlefish.”
• Another fun one from The New York Times, and give yourself plenty of time to scroll through it: “The Movies We’ve Loved Since 2000.”

More resources for journalists

• This Poynter Leadership Academy is our flagship workshop for experienced managers and leaders. Apply by March 24.
• Turn your reporting into a compelling non-fiction book concept. Apply by April 25.
• Gain a deeper understanding of Immigration policy with Poynter’s Beat Academy training. Enroll now.
• Elevate your editing expertise with the Poynter ACES Advanced Certificate. Enroll now.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at tjones@poynter.org.

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