Mark Zuckerberg’s extraordinary announcement via an Instagram Reel has sent shockwaves through the online safety community. He has decided to overhaul how Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp go about their content moderation work and, in the case of the moderators themselves, physically move them from (liberal) California to (less liberal) Texas. He is replacing Fact Checkers with Community Notes - a crowd-sourced mechanism to “correct” misinformation, which, of course, has its own issues.
While Meta’s CEO began with a jaunty “Hey, everyone!” it became clear that he was speaking to two individuals who will have much to say about the future of Facebook: the President-elect and Elon Musk. Zuckerberg gave a shout-out to X (formerly Twitter) and simply took the title of Musk’s Community Notes as his own. And, of course, there is a broader audience that Meta is trying to appeal to and that is the Republican held House and Senate as well as the Justice Department.
It is this last group that might be of greatest concern to Zuckerberg as the threat of antitrust lawsuits could well loom in the new Administration. Yes, he was making changes to the moderation system that many on the right feel unfairly censors their voices. But in sacrificing all the gains that have been made in filtering out mis- and disinformation, Zuckerberg hopes to garner favor with lawmakers and Trump himself in keeping his empire intact.
While the idea of a crowd-sourced solution to the notoriously challenging task of moderating online speech—much like Wikipedia’s reliance on volunteer editors—may seem appealing, both X and now Meta are discovering that Community Notes introduce a whole new set of challenges. There is the risk of bias and groupthink, where a majority of loud and persistent voices could very well drown out a minority viewpoint, that could quite likely be the correct one. Notes can amplify misinformation simply by receiving more votes or thumbs up than, say, a CDC statement on vaccines. And then there’s the anonymous nature of the new system, leading to a lack of accountability.
When we began in 2007, FOSI’s stated mission was to protect kids while protecting free speech on the Internet. We advocated for parental controls and online safety tools that would be a less intrusive way to filter out unwanted content rather than government censorship, leaving adults to speak freely online. While the pendulum swings back and forth between the protection of kids and free expression and between safety and privacy, we feel that the platforms have done a moderately good job of maintaining a difficult balancing act. It doesn’t come cheap. Many tens of thousands of content moderators have been hired over the past decade or so just to keep the sites from overflowing with hateful content, adult material, and misinformation.
But this retreat by Meta which emulates the chaotic descent experienced on X, portends for a much less safe and civil online experience, especially for kids. I hope that Zuckerberg’s “time to get back to our roots” is short-lived and even he sees the need to moderate his platforms if only for the sake of his three kids.
For the past 30 years, Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in both the US and UK. He is currently the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. FOSI’s mission is to make the online world safer for kids and their families. FOSI convenes the top thinkers and practitioners in government, industry and the nonprofit sectors to collaborate and innovate and to create a “culture of responsibility” in the online world.
Prior to FOSI, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) and led a team which developed the world’s leading content labeling system on the web. While with ICRA, Stephen served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) in 2000 and was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers, Internet Magazine, 2001.
In 1994, Stephen was named the first Executive Director of the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) which created a unique self-labeling system for computer games and then, in 1996, Stephen launched RSACi – a forerunner to the ICRA website labeling system. For his efforts in online safety, Stephen was given the 1998 Carl Bertelsmann Prize in Gutersloh, Germany, for innovation and responsibility in the Information Society and was invited to the first and subsequent White House Internet Summits during the Clinton Administration.
Stephen’s other positions include the Executive Director of the National Stepfamily Association (UK); General Secretary of the Islington Voluntary Action Council; Executive Director of Camden Community Transport as well as management positions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Inter-Action. Stephen’s first job was with Burroughs Machines (now Unisys) and he had a spell working for West Nally Ltd – a sports sponsorship PR company.
Stephen received a BA, magna cum laude, in Psychology from University College, Cardiff, Wales in 1977. A native of Washington, DC, Stephen spent many years in the UK and is now has dual citizenship. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, appears often on TV and has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and has been interviewed by leading newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, radio and in the mainstream press. He has given presentations and spoken in 15 countries on 4 continents.
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