Meta’s plan to abandon fact-checking, initially in the US but likely eventually across markets, removes another important guard rail against disinformation and misinformation on social media and will make it more difficult for users to sift through the noise online.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines joins our colleagues in denouncing Facebook parent Meta turning its back on its partners and, more importantly, its responsibility to its users, many of whom use its platforms as their main source of information and entertainment.

This measure benefits the powers that be, they who have the means to spend millions for influence operations, especially during elections.

While Meta is correct in saying it should not be the arbiter of truth, this change as well as the decreasing emphasis on news and the prioritization of emotion and engagement risks making truth trivial, inconsequential and just a distraction from being distracted by online noise.

This is a great disservice to the public, and an outright distortion of the essence of free speech and expression.

NUJP also notes, however, that — as verified fact-checkers have long said — fact-checking is not new and is part of the journalistic process.

That means that the act of fact-checking is and has been part of our profession’s work flow even before Facebook came online.

It will continue to be, despite social media platforms’ concessions to what they say is “free speech.”

Meta’s decision and the potential eventual loss of fact-checking as a service for users in the Philippines will make it more difficult for journalists and newsrooms to address false claims and unverified narratives, but it is also a reminder for us to be even more stringent in the practice of our discipline of verification and even more transparent in our processes and about our mistakes.

As social media platforms, including Elon Musk’s X, increasingly prioritize engagement and profit over their responsibility to their users, it falls on the media community to, hand-in-hand with academe, civil society and social media users, help make sure spaces remain for verified facts and for civil discourse on these hell sites.