Oversight board asks Meta not to replace fact-checking with Community Notes

Washington – Meta’s oversight board asked the company not to replace fact-checking with Community Notes, according to a statement seen by AFP early on Sept 12, after it said it was testing the crowdsourcing system in Latin America.

Meta announced on Sept 9 that it had begun testing Community Notes in 16 Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, in a step towards replacing the professional fact-checking programme it runs with partner organisations across the region.

The list covers Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Meta said it hoped the notes would become the standard way it adds context to misleading posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, ending the need for the fact-checking programme.

The crowdsourced notes system, modelled on the one used by Elon Musk’s X, is designed to supplant checks carried out by accredited newsrooms and fact-checking agencies.

Meta gave no timeline for when the change will become official, saying only that full roll-out would come when it was confident the product worked.

However, Meta’s oversight board, the quasi-independent body the company funds to review its moderation decisions, said Community Notes were not an adequate replacement for fact-checking, explaining that the notes themselves often rely on fact-checking.

“Community Notes could contribute to real-world harms that Meta has a responsibility to avoid or remedy,” it said in a statement dated Sept 10.

“We urge Meta not to consider Community Notes a direct replacement for fact-checking, and to use all the tools that best address the challenge of misinformation on its platforms in ways that both protect free expression and address potential harms.”

The board previously warned that the global rollout of Community Notes risked human rights harms in politically polarised countries and during tense elections.

Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the region’s largest market for Meta’s platforms, was excluded from the crowdsourcing trial.

AFP is among the fact-checking organisations that participate in Meta’s programme in Latin America and elsewhere, verifying information in 26 languages.

‘Not enough’

The company’s pivot came while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on a trip to the region, visiting countries whose leaders now align with President Donald Trump’s policies.

It follows a run of elections that have seen right-wing politicians, who are typically more favourable to digital deregulation, make huge gains across Latin America.

The new leaders rely on social media to burnish their images and spread disinformation. In some cases, they have been accused of deploying troll armies to simulate popular support.

Meta founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2025, days before Trump took office for a second term, that the company was ending its US fact-checking partnerships and replacing them with Community Notes.

In line with Republican views, he cast the shift as a return to free expression.

The pilot programme has drawn criticism from the world’s main fact-checking network.

“The Community Notes programme alone is simply not adequate when it comes to reducing the impact of harmful falsehoods on social media platforms,” said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, of which AFP is a signatory.

LatamChequea, a network of 47 regional verification initiatives, also asked Meta to rethink its decision, calling on the tech giant “to complement, not replace, independent verification”. AFP