Joe Biden on Facebook fact checking decision – Biden slams Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook decision to end fact-checking

US President Joe Biden has said that Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program, previously criticised by Donald Trump, as “really shameful”. In a wide-ranging media interaction days before he demits office, Biden said the move by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, would allow “things that are simply not true” to be read by millions of people.

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about. We want to tell the truth. We haven’t always done it as a nation. Telling the truth matters,” Biden said.

Earlier this week, Meta announced that it would end its fact-checking program and replace it with user-generated community notes, similar to what Elon Musk-owned X has been doing.

The announcement, just before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, has come in for criticism from some quarters. Trump has previously lambasted Zuckerberg over its fact-checking program, alleging it to be nothing but a bid to censor right-wing voices.

“The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say, ‘By the way, we are not gonna fact check anything’, and you know, you have millions of people reading, going online, reading this stuff… I think it is really shameful,” Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race against Trump midway last year, said.

Biden’s scathing remarks come a day after Zuckerberg said in a podcast that his company was pressured by the Biden administration to remove content on side effects of Covid-19 vaccines.

“While they were trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it,” Zuckerberg said on the Joe Rogan podcast.

In another sweeping change to the company’s policies in recent days, Meta has asked for the removal of tampons from men’s bathrooms in its offices, according to The New York Times (NYT). It has also decided to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.