Meta confirms it will keep fact-checkers outside the U.S. ‘for now’

Meta says it plans to keep its fact-checking program in place outside the U.S. for the time being, though it could eventually expand it elsewhere.

Meta had put the fact-checking guardrails in place over several years in response to criticism over how its platform was used to spread misinformation. With a new administration entering the White House, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced earlier this month it would replace its fact-checkers with a community notes system, similar to what’s in place at Elon Musk’s X.

“We’ll see how that goes as we move it out over the year,” Meta’s head of global business Nicola Mendelsohn told Bloomberg in a report from Davos on Monday. “So nothing changing in the rest of the world at the moment, we are still working with those fact checkers around the world.”

The company may face hurdles implementing its new program elsewhere in the world, particularly in Europe, which has regulations such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) in place to curb the spread of deceptive content.

Article updated Mendelsohn’s quote to say “year” rather than “years”.