Meghan Markle and Prince Harry call out Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘deeply deceptive’ move to end fact-checking on Meta
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have hit back at Mark Zuckerberg’s “deeply deceptive” move to end Meta’s fact-checking policy.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex called the technology company out in a lengthy statement posted to the couple’s Archwell Foundation website.
“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 pair wrote. “This should deeply concern us all. Contrary to the company’s talking points, allowing more abuse and normalizing hate speech serves to silence speech and expression, not foster it.”
Meghan and Harry, who recently launched their campaign Parents’ Network to address the dangers of online bullying, went on to claim that “in many instances,” Meta has been an “intentionally disruptive information environment.”
Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta is set to scrap its longstanding fact-checking program in favor of a community notes system similar to that on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. Instead of using news organizations or other third-party groups as it does currently, Meta will rely on users to add notes to posts.
In their statement, Meghan and Harry went on to call Meta’s changes “undoubtedly responding to political winds,” seemingly referring to Donald Trump’s Presidential inauguration on January 20.
“[The changes] once again abandon public safety in favor of profit, chaos, and control,” the statement continued. “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.”
They noted that millions of people use Meta’s platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, to “spread joy, build community, and share empowering information.” However, they claimed that positive online space will ultimately be impacted by the loss of fact-checkers.
“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,” the statement continued.
Meghan and Harry, who are the parents to a five-year-old son, Archie, and three-year-old daughter, Lilibet, added: “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 duke and duchess also claimed that the changes to Meta’s “do not protect free expression.” Instead, they “foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy.”
They concluded by urging Meta to reconsider its decision to get rid of the fact-checking rule and to reinstate “policies to protect all users.”
“We also call on leaders across industries to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying,” Meghan and Harry added.
Zuckerberg confirmed last week that the company will be getting rid of its longstanding fact-checking program. The policy change will affect major social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he said in a video posted to his Facebook on January 7. “More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
He claimed that after Trump first got elected in 2016, “the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.”
“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 created, especially in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg added.