“The first thing we’ve noticed after Zuckerberg’s statement … was a huge spread of harassment toward fact-checkers,” said Aistė Meidutė, editor of the fact-checking project Lie Detector at Lithuanian news outlet Delfi.
“It was a huge beat to our credibility. We see the after-effects right now,” she said, including death threats as part of the online blowback. “We are very worried,” she added, especially as Lithuania “is a particularly vulnerable region.”
Although Meta’s January announcement won’t immediately apply in the rest of the world, it will affect the work of dozens of civil society groups and media firms that have received funding from the U.S. giant over the past eight years to check and challenge claims on its social media platforms.
Other tech giants, including Google and LinkedIn, last week also dialed down their commitments to work with fact-checkers on a European Union disinformation code. X pulled out of the code altogether in 2023.
As Big Tech firms turn their backs on the efforts of EU authorities to regulate social media and stop disinformation, European democracies like Romania are being increasingly hit by foreign interference and manipulation campaigns online.
Fake-news fighters
Meta has been paying independent fact-checkers across the world since 2016, counting on them to help fight disinformation across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Threads. They spot viral fake news and come up with accuracy ratings, which Meta shares widely and relies on to curb the visibility of falsehoods.
