This 180-degree change is a response to Donald Trump's imminent second presidential term and to the methods of the competition, such as X's Community Notes. Meta decided not to invest any more money in its program. Now, it hopes that Facebook and Instagram users themselves will be the ones to decide what content is disinformation or not.

In the statement where Zuckerberg announced that he will dismantle the program, he said that fact-checkers succumbed to political bias, destroying more trust than they'd created in the US. However, for Laura Zommer, former director of Chequeado (one of the most important Spanish-speaking verifier organizations) and LatamChequea, and now leader of Factchequeado (a verification media aimed at the Latino community in the US), Zuckerberg's statements are not a surprise, and he does not have scientific evidence for his claims. “Far from censoring, fact-checkers add context," Zommer says. “We never advocate for removing content. We want citizens to have better information to make their own decisions.”

Zommer, who is skeptical of how the dissolution of this program might benefit Meta, emphasizes that the company contradicts itself by ending the fact-checking program, especially because it has highlighted its positive results in the past. Zommer also agrees with Angie Drobnic Holan, current director of IFCN, who, in a LinkedIn post, wrote: "It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters. Factcheckers have not been biased in their work—that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction."

As Trump, just days away from his inauguration, threatens a mass deportati...