Meghan Markle and Prince Harry said that Meta’s new fact-checking policy should “deeply concern us all.”
“It doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right or somewhere in between — the latest news from Meta about changes to their policies directly undermines free speech,” the former royal couple said in a statement on their website.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced Meta would get rid of its fact-checking program because it was “too politically biased.” Instead, the company would implement a community notes feature, similar to the one on X, formerly Twitter, which is owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Community notes relies on users to add notes or corrections to posts.
Meta will also “remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse.” Users are now allowed to call women “household objects” and refer to transgender people as “it.”
Markle and Prince Harry said these new guidelines allow “more abuse” and it normalizes “hate speech.”
“In an already confusing and, in many instances, intentionally disruptive information environment, Meta has shown their words and commitments have very little meaning or integrity,” the couple said in a statement. “As they announce these changes undoubtedly responding to political winds, they once again abandon public safety in favor of profit, chaos, and control. The company’s decision to rollback protections is so far away from its stated values and commitments to its users — including the parents and families calling for change around the globe — that it’s now deeply deceptive.”
In Zuckerberg’s announcement of the policy changes, he said the movement to be “more inclusive” has “gone too far.”
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy,” Zuckerberg said. “We tried, in good faith, to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth, but the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.”
Following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Meta banned Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram, after the former president used social media to incite violence, but recently, Zuckerberg has tried to get back in the president-elect’s good graces. Zuckerberg met with Trump in Florida and Meta donated $1 million to his inauguration fund.
Markle and Prince Harry said they “urge Meta to reconsider and reinstate policies to protect all users,” as well as called on industry leaders “to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying.”
“Millions of people are using Meta’s platforms in the United States. Hundreds of millions more are using them globally,” the couple’s statement reads. “Many use the platform to spread joy, build community, and share empowering information. Unfortunately, Meta’s recent decisions go directly against its stated mission to ‘build human connection’ and instead prioritize those using the platforms to spread hate, lies and division at the expense of everyone else.”
They continued, saying Meta’s plan to give up its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs will “knowingly” put people in “harm’s way” and contribute to a “global mental health crisis.”
“Given the profound global impact Meta’s decisions have on the world — of which many are still recovering from or actively suffering from — the politics of one country should never determine whether freedom of expression and civil and human rights are protected in the online spaces so clearly shaping or destroying democracy,” the statement reads.
We Need Your Support
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
“Online spaces must be designed with public safety and well-being at their core, resilient against political pressures and lapses in corporate leadership. This latest move from Meta is an example of a social media company — fully aware of their power to shape public discourse — disregarding any responsibility to ensure that power is not abused and instead allowing either ego or profit, likely both, to guide decisions that affect billions,” they said.