Meta is poised to introduce a significant overhaul to its fact-checking system, launching Community Notes, a crowdsourced feature, on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the US on March 18. This move marks a major shift in the company's approach to combating misinformation, as it transitions from relying on third-party fact-checkers to a community-driven model.

The Community Notes system, inspired by Twitter's similar feature, will allow users to suggest notes that fact-check claims in posts. These notes will then be rated by other contributors as helpful or not helpful, determining whether they appear to other users. Meta's system will only display a note if contributors with opposing viewpoints agree that it's helpful, aiming to promote a more balanced and trustworthy approach to fact-checking.

According to Meta executives, the company is focused on getting Community Notes right in the US before expanding the feature to other countries. This cautious approach may be influenced by the European Commission's ongoing investigation into X (formerly Twitter) over the effectiveness of its Community Notes feature.

The launch of Community Notes is part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's broader effort to give more oxygen to diverse perspectives on his platforms. Since 2016, Meta has relied on third-party fact-checkers, but Neil Potts, Meta's VP of Public Policy, has criticized these systems as biased, not scalable, and prone to mistakes. For instance, Meta applied false fact-checking labels to an opinion article on climate change, and Zuckerberg has acknowledged that the company should not have dismissed concerns around COVID-19 vaccines as misinformation.

Community Notes aims to address public perception that Meta is biased, reduce mistakes, and provide a more scalable fact-checking system. However, Meta notes that this system does not replace Community Standards, the company's rules governing hate speech, scams, and other banned content.

The overhaul of Meta's content moderation comes at a time when tech companies are attempting to address historical biases against conservatives. X has led the industry's effort, with Elon Musk claiming to center his social platform around "free speech." OpenAI recently announced changes to its AI model training to embrace "intellectual freedom" and avoid censoring certain viewpoints.

Meta's Director of Product Management, Rachel Lambert, revealed that the company is basing its new fact-checking system on X's open-source algorithms around Community Notes. Meta opened applications for contributors to its Community Notes network in February, and contributors will be able to suggest notes that directly fact-check claims in posts.

While crowdsourced systems like Community Notes have been seen as promising solutions to address misinformation, they have drawbacks. Researchers have found that people tend to see Community Notes as more trustworthy than flags from third-party fact-checkers. A study on X's fact-checking system showed that posts with Community Notes attached to them reduced the spread of misleading posts by 61%, on average. However, the same study highlighted that Community Notes may be too slow to intervene in the early and most viral stage of a post's lifespan.

A recent study from the Center for Counseling Digital Hate underscored the challenges. Researchers found that contributors suggested accurate, relevant information on election misinformation posts 81% of the time, but only 9% of those posts received consensus among contributors, meaning that a large majority of posts didn't appear with any fact checks.

As Meta rolls out Community Notes in the US, it remains to be seen whether this crowdsourced approach will effectively address misinformation and bias concerns. The company's willingness to experiment with new solutions is a step in the right direction, but the success of Community Notes will depend on its ability to balance the need for trustworthy fact-checking with the complexity of scaling such a system.