Meta has announced major changes to moderation. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has decided to end its fact-checking program. The Menlo Park group will now entrust content moderation to the user community.
Meta is thus modeling itself on the approach favored by X, formerly called Twitter. According to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, this new strategy should promote freedom of expression on the group's social networks. The Facebook creator believes that "the recent elections seem to be a cultural tipping point that once again prioritizes freedom of expression," citing Donald Trump's return to the White House to justify his change of strategy.
A change confined to the United States... for now
Faced with the outcry caused by this announcement, Clara Chappaz, the Minister responsible for Digital Affairs in France, contacted the French subsidiary of Meta. On her X account, the minister assures that she "spoke with the management of Meta France".
As Meta had announced, "this feature will only be deployed in the United States for now", reports Clara Chappaz. Until further notice, Europe, and therefore France, is exempt from the changes promised by Meta. Moderation will continue to be entrusted to moderators and the fact-checking program is not expected to disappear.
The DSA obstacle in Europe
For the moment, the American giant will not violate the Digital Service Act, the European regulation on digital services. The minister assures that in Europe, "the Digital Service Act will be respected. She undertakes to be vigilant on the subject.
Fully applicable since the beginning of last year, the DSA includes a series of specific obligations in terms of moderation. It requires platforms to implement simple and effective tools allowing users to report illegal content, to publish regular reports detailing their moderation actions, to identify and analyze the risks associated with the dissemination of illegal content.
Above all, platforms, especially the largest ones, must do everything to reduce the spread of illegal content, in particular by stepping up their moderation. In concrete terms, the regulation recommends increasing the use of human moderators or advanced technologies, such as algorithms, to detect hateful content.
At first glance, the European regulation does not fit well with Meta's new ambitions, which seeks to give ground in terms of moderation. Our colleagues at Wired have also noticed a series of changes in the rules in force in the United States, particularly concerning hate speech. Meta now authorizes Internet users to make "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when they are based on gender or sexual orientation". In short, it is permissible to suggest that homosexual or transgender people suffer from an illness. For the moment, the group has not mentioned how its new approach will be structured in Europe without violating the DSA. Questioned by Wired, Meta simply indicates that its moderation guidelines will be much more flexible worldwide...
0 Comments