On 8th January, BBC News headline: “Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checkers”. According to this article by Liv McMahon, Zoe Kleinman and Courtney Subramanian:

Meta is abandoning the use of independent fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style “community notes” where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users.

Today in the Daily Monsoon, I check the facts on this article on fact-checking.

Consider the headline I read just now, “Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checkers”. As far as that goes, the statement is true.

Do you feel angry? If you don’t, you should. If you care about the truth, you should be upset with what that headline says, Facebook getting rid of fact checkers means they don’t want facts to be checked, which means they are complicit in fake news!

Now, notice what happens if I change the BBC headline to be less click-baity and more accurate to Zuckerberg’s announcement which is actually what is reported in that BBC article.

On the 8th January 2025, BBC News reports: “Facebook and Instagram change how they detect fake news”. Are you angry? No. If anything, you would be more curious than upset. What was the problem with the previous method?

You can also consider who is really upset with the change. Well, those who benefited, the fact-checkers, and those who believe that the fact-checkers are better than community notes. They believe that the fact-checkers are more reliable than the crowd. More on that later.

First, what are community notes? This is something we see in X. If you read what X has to say about Community Notes, there is very little to disagree with it. Let me quote the first paragraph:

Community Notes aim to create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post.

Isn’t this the same argument Wikipedia used against Brittanica, Encarta and other encyclopedias that our children will never hear about?

What was the argument from encyclopedia makers? They said encyclopedia contributors were more reliable than the crowd.

Who won that argument? Wikipedia.

But… we also know that the encyclopedia people had a point. Wikipedia is wonderful, but it is not necessarily accurate. It seems more democratic but the majority is not always right.

We have moved from the tyranny of the few experts telling us what is true to the tyranny of the majority telling us what is true.

This reminds me of what Polybius wrote in his Histories. He was commenting on the cycle of political power in the Roman government. Let me quote him first, then I will explain what he said and finally link it to our topic of fact-checkers.

The first of these [forms of governments] arises without artificial aid and in the natural order of events. Next to this, and produced from it by the aid of art and adjustment, comes kingship; which degenerating into the evil form allied to it, by which I mean tyranny, both are once more destroyed and aristocracy produced. Again the latter being in the course of nature perverted to oligarchy, and the people passionately avenging the unjust acts of their rulers, democracy comes into existence; which again by its violence and contempt of law becomes sheer mob-rule.

When you have chaos, you want a strong man, a king. But once power is concentrated in one man, the king becomes a tyrant. So the people think, “A king with unchecked power is bad; we need a few to keep him in check”, so they put power into the hands of the few. Then when the few become oppressors, the people rise up and we have democracy, which later becomes corrupted to become mob-rule and chaos.

This compelling analysis of politics and history is why, in America, there is a structured balance of power in one (the President), power in the few (the Senate) and power in the many (the House of Representatives).

And if knowledge is power, then what we see in Facebook is a fight for power between the few fact-checkers and the many community contributors.

My prediction, which I think is already happening, is we will see a structured balance of power in one (Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg as dictators of policy), power in the few and power in the many.

Alternatively, if we cannot reach a power-sharing agreement on fact-checking, then according to Polybius’ analysis, we should expect chaos. Chaos which invites a strong man to sort things into order.

One more thing before I go, as we explored the question, “How do we detect fake news?”, we could also ask the question, “What is Truth?”

A Roman governor once asked that question to a condemned criminal. Pontius Pilate did not realise that of all the people ever born and all who will be born, there is no one more able to answer that question than this Nazarene carpenter. The son of Mary and Joseph. A travelling rabbi. A miracle healer. The son of Man, the son of God. The Word made Flesh. The Embodiment of the Truth.

This is what the Bible records:

John 18:37 (ESV)
Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

And it is in response to Jesus, that Pilate asks, “What is truth?”

If we care about fake news, that means we care about the truth. and if we genuinely care about the truth, then we should consider Jesus’ words: “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

We should care so much about the Truth that it eclipses any allegiance to any political party, any financial interest, or any social grouping. Our desire for Truth, a desire innate in all of us, should, if we allow it, transcend all other desires.

And this is the Christian proclamation: wherever you start from if you would boldly go down the road to find the Truth, at the end of that road, you will find Jesus waiting.

This is the Daily Monsoon, a podcast where we seek the Truth and proclaim it. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.