Well, well, well—look who’s finally admitting the obvious. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has decided to hit the brakes on its heavy-handed content moderation policies, kicking the so-called “fact-checkers” to the curb and replacing them with a system similar to X’s Community Notes. Mark Zuckerberg himself came out and said it: the fact-checkers have been “too politically biased” and have “destroyed more trust than they created.”
Now, if you’ve been paying attention, this isn’t exactly breaking news. For years, these so-called “independent fact-checkers” have operated like hall monitors for the Democratic Party, wielding their power to throttle, shadow-ban, or outright nuke any opinion or post that dared to deviate from their preferred narrative. Hunter Biden’s laptop story? Fact-checked into oblivion—until it wasn’t. COVID-19 origins? Debated into censorship. And let’s not even start on the 2020 election coverage.
In which CNN’s Jim Acosta and Brian Stelter pitch fits about @ElonMusk putting a spotlight on the Muslim human trafficking cases in the U.K. and Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) getting rid of fact-checkers from @Meta.
So sad, they are! pic.twitter.com/bTU9yCWjUf
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 7, 2025
But now, the chickens have come home to roost. Zuckerberg, in a rare moment of clarity, acknowledged that these groups haven’t just failed—they’ve actively made things worse. And what’s the fact-checkers’ response to being shown the door? A chorus of pearl-clutching.
Neil Brown of the Poynter Institute—the group behind PolitiFact—whined that they weren’t biased and that they were just “grabbing what they could” from the “mountain of what could be checked.” Oh, please. This isn’t some noble effort to combat misinformation; it’s been a selective hit job against voices and opinions they didn’t like. And let’s not forget that these fact-checkers weren’t just checking facts—they were stamping opinions with warning labels, throttling viewpoints they found politically inconvenient.
Now, here’s the truth: Fact-checking is necessary when it comes to blatant falsehoods. But when “fact-checkers” start masquerading as ideological enforcers, the credibility of the entire system crumbles. Meta’s own rules prevented these groups from fact-checking politicians (how convenient), yet they had no problem slapping labels on ordinary Americans questioning policy decisions, medical guidelines, or election integrity.
.@PolitiFact will have more to say on this. But these are my thoughts. This decision has nothing to do with free speech or censorship. (PolitiFact is an original partner and has been working on this project for 8+ years). https://t.co/NjydINtNlf pic.twitter.com/OzL2UwUtmX
— Aaron Sharockman (@asharock) January 7, 2025
The legacy media and their allies in these so-called “independent” fact-checking organizations have operated under one simple premise: control the narrative, control the people. But it’s slipping away. Their grip is loosening because trust isn’t something you can algorithm your way into—once it’s gone, it’s gone.
And let’s address the real fear lurking behind these complaints from the fact-checking class: free speech. For years, they’ve enjoyed their power to moderate, censor, and de-platform with almost zero accountability. Now, with this shift toward a Community Notes-style system, regular users will have more say in what’s flagged and what isn’t. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step closer to democratizing the moderation process instead of leaving it in the hands of a handful of biased gatekeepers.
Here’s the bottom line: In America, people are allowed to be wrong. They’re allowed to have unpopular opinions. They’re allowed to ask questions without being silenced by a self-appointed panel of digital hall monitors.
The end of Meta’s partnership with these groups isn’t a step toward chaos—it’s a step toward something better: a platform where dialogue, debate, and yes, even disagreement, can happen without the overbearing hand of ideologues tilting the scales.
