Is the end of fact checking on all social media drawing near? This N.B. academic says yes

A social media giant's decision to end fact checking on its platforms is a source of concern for two New Brunswick university professors.

Meta announced recently that fact checking would come to an end for its American operations. A spokesperson for the company told CBC News it is only for the American market at the moment.

However Daniel Downes, a professor of communication studies at the University of New Brunswick Saint John, expects it will eventually extend to Canada, as well.

"There seems to be a sense that things can move much more quickly in terms of policy and procedures," said Downes.

"It's not going to take two years before we see fact checking disappear in other countries, other than the United States."

If a federal election is held sometime this spring, Downes suspects fact checking will still be in place, but if it is scrapped before the next vote he has concerns about what that will mean for democracy.

"We'll find that the difference between misinformation, where people spread erroneous information because they don't know that it's not factual, and disinformation, which is the deliberate spread of misinformation, might be much more prevalent," he said. 

"We might see a much more heated and less responsible public discourse around the election."

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has said the company's platforms will move to a system of "community notes," added by users and are supposed to serve as a kind of open source fact-checking operation. This echoes a similar move by X, formerly Twitter, after it was bought by Elon Musk.

But Erin Steuter, a professor of sociology at Mount Allison University, said this isn't how they're being used on X.

"It wasn't a space that cultivated knowledge," said Steuter, speaking about the people who use the platform.

"It was just a space that was like, 'No, no, you're wrong. No, you're wrong,' type of thing."

While both Musk and Zuckerberg have cited free speech concerns as the driving force behind their move away from fact checkers, Steuter believes this is more about power and the Trump administration.

"The tech industry has really cozied up to the more far-right side of politics over some time now," said Steuter.