Former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya ripped Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday after the billionaire announced he would get rid of Facebook’s fact-checking program.
The third-party fact-checking system will be replaced with community notes similar to X, Zuckerberg said in a video.
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The company’s system was put into place after the 2016 election and was used to "manage content" and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to "political pressure," executives said, but admitted the system has "gone too far." Political bias from the fact-checkers appeared to be one of the main issues.
Tafoya appeared on OutKick’s "Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich" to talk about Zuckerberg’s decision. Dakich asked her what gave Zuckerberg the right to do the about-face now.
"Absolutely nothing. This is not unique to Facebook. I had a guest on my podcast yesterday, Gad Saad, a professor out of Canada, so much has gone on up there under the Justin Trudeau administration that has been really similar," Tafoya said. "People being absolutely wiped out of their professions. We’re talking doctors, researchers, professors, medical experts because they either said something kind of cutesy that someone was uncomfortable with.
META ENDS FACT-CHECKING PROGRAM AS ZUCKERBERG VOWS TO RESTORE FREE EXPRESSION ON FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM
"This suppression of human thought, this suppression of human opinion, is completely antithetical to America and free speech. People don’t see it happening or they’re OK with it. This should be massive, flashing red light.
"Mark Zuckerberg knows what he did was wrong, and now he’s going to try and fix it and hope we just say, ‘Oh, good for you, you fixed it, Mark.’"
Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Digital earlier Tuesday that using community notes is a better option.
"Instead of going to some so-called expert, it instead relies on the community and the people on the platform to provide their own commentary to something that they’ve read," Kaplan explained, noting that if a note gets support from "the broadest cross-section of users," that note can be attached to the content for others to see.
"We think that’s a much better approach rather than relying on so-called experts who bring their own biases into the program," Kaplan said.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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