A joint Oireachtas Committee has heard that Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, reduced the distribution of stories marked as false by third-party fact-checker, the Journal, and also that the platform had removed almost 1,000 pieces of what it deemed ‘misinformation’ in the first half of this year so far.
The Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media was told by Dualta Ó Broin, Head of Public Policy for Meta in Ireland, that the platform works with TheJournal.ie in order to fact-check content.
In June, a story on this platform was subject to a Journal.ie fact-checks, after we reported that a transgender cyclist was leading the female category of the Transatlantic Way bike ride. The situation had sparked controversy, with former Irish Times sports editor, Anne-Marie McNulty among those to draw attention to the situation.
“This is not fair. This competitor has a clear physical advantage. Bodies play sport; not identities. There are sex and age categories for a reason,” she said at the time.
However, fact-checkers at TheJournal.ie “debunked” the story, claiming that the TransAtlanticWay was not a competitive bike race, nor was there a female category.
Responding, Gript editor John McGuirk described the fact-check as “dubious.”
He pointed out that the event is a race, and when someone enters, they must sign up to the event’s rules, the ‘rider agreement’.
There was also a leaderboard for those partaking in the event. While the online media site said there were no categories in the event, on visiting the website, there were a number of gender categories. It was also true that the transgender participant was leading the ride over their female opponent.
Responding, Mr McGuirk said the incident was “a stellar example of how fact-checking can often be abused in order to suppress stories that some people would rather the public didn’t read.”
Last week, The Journal issued a highly dubious "fact check" on a Gript story. Our Editor responds and outlines the facts: pic.twitter.com/6RfhuSWamY
— gript (@griptmedia) June 19, 2023
Speaking after he was invited before the Committee, Mr Ó Broin addressed online safety, online disinformation, and media literacy. He said that along with limiting the distribution of stories marked as false by TheJournal, the company informed people that the stories had been marked as false “so they can decide what to read, trust and share.”
“As part of that effort, in the European Union we partner with 26 fact-checking organisations covering 22 different languages in the EU,” he continued.
“In Ireland, we work with TheJournal.ie. We add warning labels on posts that they rate as false and also notify the person who posted it, pointing them to the fact-checker’s article debunking the claim.
“For the first 6 months of this year, these labels were applied to 1.1 million pieces of content on Facebook originating from Ireland.”
The company’s head of public policy went on to tell politicians that “we also impose strict penalties on Pages, Groups, and Instagram and Facebook accounts which repeatedly share misinformation – like not recommending them to people, and moving all of the content they share, regardless of if it contains false claims, lower down in News Feed so fewer people see it.”
He said that while Meta “believes in freedom of expression, we also want our platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to be safe places where people don’t have to see content meant to intimidate, exclude or silence them.”
Mr Ó Broin said the company welcomed the publication of the Digital Services Bill 2023 – which was passed on Tuesday – adding that Meta looks forward to Ireland having this legislation and regulatory resources in place to meet its obligations under the DSA by the February 2024 deadline.
The legislation will mean that the specific obligations on EU Member States, provided for in the EU Digital Services Regulation, will be asserted in Ireland. Speaking this week, enterprise, trade and employment minister Simon Coveney said that the events of recent weeks “in Ireland and abroad” demonstrated “the risks posed by illegal and harmful online content and the spread of disinformation.”
Welcoming the publication of the Bill, Minister Coveney said that such events “have underscored the need for a comprehensive and effective regulatory framework to protect individuals as well as society at large.”
“This bill, once enacted, will be an indispensable component of that EU-wide framework.,” he added. Mr Coveney said that in what was a “clear demonstration” of the government’s commitment to the regulation of online platforms, €2.7 million was allocated in 2023 to specifically support the establishment of the Digital Services function within Coimisiún na Meán, in preparation for this legislation.
“Budget 2024 allocates a further €6 million to complete preparations and capacity building for the Digital Services function and to support initial operations,” he added.
In relation to content marked false by Fact Checkers TheJournal, Mr Ó Broin told Wednesday’s Committee that “informing people with more context” was crucial to Meta’s strategy, and an approach which “can be more impactful” than simply removing content.
“For example, we notify people to let them know when a news article they’re about to share is more than 90 days old and if they are about to “like” a Page or share content from a Page that has repeatedly shared false claims on Facebook,” he added.
Mr Ó Broin went on to reference Meta’s third quarterly report which published research relating to “deceptive activities originating from Russia, Iran, and China” – which he said were the three “most prolific” geographic sources of foreign interference campaigns to date.
“We’ve seen threats to the information environment develop, including the tactics we anticipate adversarial threats will most likely use to target civic discourse next year; and the risks and opportunities created by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we’re working on alongside our industry peers, governments, and researchers,” he added.
He also said that Meta were pleased to be signatories to the European Commission’s code of practice on disinformation – adding that the social media company was reporting every six months to the commission to “combat” mis and disinformation on its platforms in the EU.
As part of our work on this code, we are reporting every six months to the European Commission on our efforts to combat mis and disinformation on our platforms in the EU. We understand that it is the European Commission’s intention that this Code of Practice will become a Code of Conduct under the DSA next year.
Meta has come under scrutiny before for its use of fact-checkers, with critics arguing that the process is more about supporting powerful narratives, and censoring others.
In June for instance, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a podcast interview that his platform, Facebook, had restricted Covid information which turned out to be true.
He said that the information was censored at the request of the scientific “establishment” – yet such information ended up being “debatable or true.”
And in August of last year, Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that Facebook had suppressed the scandal involving US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. He said that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post after being approached by the FBI.
Zuckerberg told podcast host Rogan: “Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.”
He added that Facebook’s “third-party fact-checking program” was checking the story – but some of those appointed by the platform to adjudicate on disputes have been accused of bias. Zuckerberg further admitted that the ranking of the story was pushed down in Facebook’s ranking for news feeds so that “fewer people saw it than would’ve otherwise.”
Asked “by what percentage?” Zuckerberg said: “I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s – it’s meaningful.”