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Meta announced on Thursday that it’s now accepting sign-ups for its Community Notes program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The announcement follows Meta news last month that it’s going to end its third-party fact-checking program and is instead moving to a Community Notes model similar to the one at X.
In a blog post, Meta explains that Community Notes will be a way for users across its platforms to decide when posts are misleading, and allow them to add more context to the posts.
Starting today, people can sign up to be among the first contributors to the program. To sign up, users must be based in the United States and be over 18 years of age. Plus, users must have an account that’s more than six months old and in good standing, along with a verified phone number or enrollment in two-factor authentication.
Meta says contributors will be able to write and submit a Community Note to posts that they think are misleading or confusing. Just like on X, Notes can include things like background information, a tip, or other details that users might find useful.
Notes will have a 500-character limit and are required to include a link.
“For a Community Note to be published on a post, users who normally disagree, based on how they’ve rated Notes in the past, will have to agree that a Note is helpful,” Meta explains. “Notes will not be added to content when there is no agreement or when people agree a Note is not helpful.”
Meta says Community Notes will be written and rated by contributors, not by the tech giant itself. All Notes must adhere to Meta’s Community Standards.
“We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information,” Meta says.
The company plans to introduce Community Notes in the United States over the next couple of months. Meta hasn’t shared when it plans to bring the feature to additional countries.
Meta’s decision to drop fact-checking for Community Notes has been seen as the company repositioning itself for the Trump presidency, as it takes an approach that’s in favor of unrestricted speech online. When Meta announced the change, Mark Zuckerberg said in a video that fact-checkers were “too politically biased” and had destroyed “more trust than they’ve created.”
Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.
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