When Meta announced last year that it was ditching third-party fact checkers in favor of an X-style Community Notes system, the company was careful to note that it would only implement the changes within the United States to start. Now, nearly a year later, the social media company is getting ready to expand the crowd-sourced fact checks to more countries, and is asking the Oversight Board for advice on a potential rollout.
The company has requested that board weigh in on “factors we should consider when deciding which countries, if any, to omit from the international roll out” of Community Notes. Notably, Meta isn’t asking the Oversight Board to advise on the merits of replacing traditional fact-checking organizations. Instead, the company wants guidance on how to approach country-specific challenges and whether there should be any carveouts.
“We respectfully ask the Board to focus its examination on the country-level factors relevant to omitting countries from the international roll-out, and not on topics such as general product design or the operation of the Community Notes algorithm,” the company wrote in its request shared by the board.
Up to now, Meta has been experimenting with Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram and Threads in the United States only. People who want to be able to author notes still need to be approved, but the company allows anyone to rate notes. However, it seems that the feature so far hasn’t gained as much traction for Meta as it has on X. In September, the company said that just 6 percent of the more than 15,000 notes that had been contributed had actually been published.
In a statement from the Oversight Board, the group said it would consider issues like whether a crowd-sourced fact checking system would make sense in countries with “low levels of freedom of expression” or without a free press, as well as places with “low levels of digital literacy.” It also said it was hoping to hear public comments from researchers who have studied different approaches to countering misinformation.
Unlike with a typical case from the Oversight Board, which deals with specific content moderation decisions, Meta has no obligation to implement any of the group’s recommendations. But, the company has previously chosen to follow its suggestions in previous policy advisory opinions, including its decision to roll back COVID-19 misinformation rules following a recommendation from the board.
