Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian called Meta’s decision to end third-party fact-checking a “pragmatic” move, suggesting the program was unsustainable and ineffective.
In January, shortly before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Meta announced it would discontinue third-party fact-checking on its platforms, a program critics claimed unfairly targeted right-wing content.
As part of broad policy changes at Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to replace third-party fact-checking with a community-based system.
“It was a very pragmatic change,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told CNBC at the Web Summit in Qatar adding “it is impossible to do fact-checking at scale, let alone in real time, as Facebook was trying to do.”
“In many ways, I think they were just winding back something that was a bad idea from the start because it was untenable,” Ohanian added.
Meta launched its global fact-checking program in 2016 to combat misinformation, partnering with organizations in over 100 countries.
The rollback will start in the U.S., but other countries remain unaffected for now, according to the company.
Ohanian, who launched the “front page of the internet” in 2005, also shared his thoughts on the future of social media.
“I think we’ll get to a place where we as users get to choose our algorithms, and because, without a doubt, these platforms, we’re all incentivized to have the best possible algorithm, not because of anything sinister, but because we want to keep people engaged,” he said.
Reddit, which went public in March last year with a $6.4 billion valuation, was one of the earliest social networking platforms, launching when MySpace was still dominant.
Over the years, it has faced challenges with moderation, eventually banning revenge porn and taking stronger action against racism and misogyny in its communities.
