Fact-Checkers Call an Emergency Meeting as Meta Cuts Their Funding

You’ve probably heard the news by now that Mark Zuckerberg announced this morning he was putting an end to Meta’s use of fact-checkers. Predictably, the fact-checkers are freaking out, not only because they are losing credibility but just as importantly because Meta was a big source of income for the entire industry. Tomorrow, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) will hold an emergency meeting to discuss what to do next.

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, IFCN Director Angie Holan confirmed that the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, was organized in direct response to Meta’s decision…

The meeting is expected to draw between 80 to 100 attendees from IFCN’s network of fact-checkers, which spans 170 organizations worldwide. Not all of the attendees are Meta fact-checking partners, although many of them have a stake in the program’s future and its global implications.

Why is this such an emergency? Because Meta was a major funding source for most fact-checkers. In 2023, Poynter released a “State of the Fact-Checkers” report in which 83.7% of fact-checkers cited “funding and financial stability” as their top concern. The report also stated:

Income from Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and grants remain fact-checkers’ predominant revenue streams. Notably, grants now support approximately 87% of survey respondents, overtaking Meta’s 3PFC as the most common funding source.

In case that wasn’t clear, Meta was until recently the most common funding source but is now in 2nd place after “grants.” Roughly 2/3 of IFCN members get money from Meta.

The survey shows that 63.5% of respondents participate in Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program, allowing approved signatories to rate the factual accuracy of posts on its platforms about public interest issues.

Politifact is a well-known (and widely disliked) fact-checker that was started by a Florida newspaper but it was bought by Poynter in 2018. Today Politifact posted a response to Zuckerberg’s statement. The goal seems to be to blame any censorship happening on these sites on Meta rather than the fact-checkers.

Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, the journalism nonprofit that owns PolitiFact, said Zuckerberg’s statement was disappointing. Meta sets its own tools and rules, he said, while PolitiFact and other fact-checking outlets offered independent review and showed their sources. 

“It perpetuates a misunderstanding of its own program,” Brown said of Zuckerberg’s statement. “Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything. And Meta always held the cards. It’s time to quit invoking inflammatory and false language in describing the role of journalists and fact-checking.”…

Zuckerberg repeated “censorship” concerns throughout his video, but Meta rarely removed content from its platform. When it did, it was Meta’s decision, not fact-checking outlets’ decision. The program’s third-party fact-checkers have never had the power to remove content from Meta’s platforms, a fact that Meta makes clear in its online program description: “Fact-checkers do not remove content, accounts or Pages from Facebook,” it says, bolding the words for emphasis.

I guess they have a point that Meta was ultimately responsible for shadow-banning posts the fact-checkers decided were misleading but it is fair to say that the fact-checkers were doing their jobs knowing full well this would be the case. It’s the whole reason they do what they do, i.e. to stop the spread of online misinformation. So claiming they didn’t actually pull the trigger seems pretty self-serving at this point. They wanted Meta to do exactly what it was doing. In fact, they wanted more of it.

But I think the larger issue here is that Politifact and others (but especially Politifact) have a long history of bogus and embarrassing fact-checks which are partisan and misleading. This is the reason Zuckerberg and so many regular people have little respect for their work. The Hot Air archives are chock-full of posts about Politifact. Here’s one I wrote last year when they were defending Randi Weingarten.

It’s not clear what percentage of Politifact’s budget comes from Meta. All their records reveal is that it’s more than 5% of the total budget (TikTok is another 5+%). I’m guessing it’s quite a bit more than that, but I can’t say for certain. 

In any case, despite tomorrow’s emergency meeting, we’re liable to see a lot of fact-checkers struggling in 2025 without all those Zuckerbucks to keep them in operation, plus the imminent loss of whatever TikTok was paying them as well. In Politifact’s case, I’d be happy to see them fold up their tents for good.

Update: More examples of Politifact’s hacktackular work.

Here are 10+ examples of Politifact skewing fact-checking to cover for partisan preferences. All in one direction.https://t.co/ghDmV3F2qrhttps://t.co/P1DulGnoi3https://t.co/PMmrPs0x0zhttps://t.co/DhMHJ83HBRhttps://t.co/Jo50hgMf31https://t.co/d5Q2w9ygNw…

— AG (@AGHamilton29) January 7, 2025