Meta announced that they will be overhauling their platforms. In a video released on Jan. 7 by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg and on Meta’s website, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram went over the new changes: getting rid of fact checking and switching to community notes, loosening guidelines and pushing political content. These changes were framed as the company “commit[ting] to free expression.” However, some Woodside students and faculty are hesitant.
The change garnering the most attention is the ending of fact checking and the moving to community notes. The community notes style is similar to the one on X (formerly known as Twitter) started in 2021. Sophia Valencia, a junior, was concerned about the comparison.
“Twitter is filled with a bunch of incorrect information,” Valencia said. “Overall, if you’re looking for accurate information, Instagram is more reliable than Twitter and if you’re changing the policy of what information is being put out…it feels wrong.”
The change has made people concerned about how it will affect users. Junior Fiona Beasley is worried about her relatives who use the platform.
“It’s probably gonna get a little bit more crazy there,” Beasley said. “ I don’t know if it’s going to personally affect me, but I definitely have some cousins who are prone to believing some false things.”
Senior Isabella Shivananda stated that the company needs to make the changes clear to users.
“They need to make it very obvious that they are changing it,” Shivananda said. “I feel like a lot of people, when there’s new terms and conditions…just click accept. So [they should] make it a headline [so] that you really do understand that part, then I think it should be fine if everyone is at least aware.”
Another change being made is that Meta is loosening their platform’s guidelines. Some of the changes have been controversial. One example of this is the allowing of “allegations of mental illness or abnormality” against LGBTQ+ people. Elias Mooring, an English teacher, shared his thoughts on the change.
“I think I’m personally disappointed in these decisions by meta, because it’s clear that they value some identities more than others based on the type of speech that they’re allowing,” Mooring said. “I just think that that’s bigoted.”
Zuckerberg, in his video, described the changes as ridding the platforms of “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.” However, Shivananda agreed with Mooring and felt that the lack of guidelines would negatively affect the platform.
“People shouldn’t be able to take advantage of the platform to just spread hate, right?” Shivananda said.
Meta is also going to recommend more political content on their users’ feeds. They state that they had previously reduced the amount recommended due to user feedback but will again start to integrate political content onto the algorithm. Mooring felt that these changes would lead to users receiving unreliable political information.
“That’s a hilarious combination of policy changes,” Mooring said. “We’re going to simultaneously end fact checking and content restrictions and push more politically based content towards you…There’s an obvious outcome to that, which is that people are going to get continued misinformation.”
Despite the controversy, Zuckerberg stated in his video that he believes these changes will benefit Meta’s platforms.
“It’s time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots about giving people [a] voice,” Zuckerberg said. “I’m looking forward to this next chapter.”
