Meta claims news is not the antidote to tackling misinformation and disinformation.
The parent company of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram has shot back at the conventional wisdom that well-resourced and accurate journalism is a vital tool in the fight against the spread of fake news, amid a push from the Australian government to make them compensate media companies for their material.
Steven Jones, the assistant treasurer of Australia, is considering exercising the powers granted by the news media bargaining code legislation to “designate” Meta.
However, in a submission to the federal parliament’s inquiry on social media and Australian society, Meta stated they were “unaware of any evidence” to back up a Canadian expert’s assertion that news disappeared from social media.
Meta added that they “never thought about news as a way to minimise misinformation/disinformation on our services”.
The submission continued: “With or without news content, we are incentivised to – and do – remove harmful misinformation and reduce distribution for fact-checked misinformation, and we remain steadfast in our commitments to ensure the integrity of information on our platforms by countering this type of harmful content.
“Canadians can continue to use our services to access authoritative information from a range of sources, including government agencies, political parties and non-governmental organisations, which have always shared information with their audiences in engaging formats, in addition to links to news content.”
Meta highlighted its third-party fact-checking schemes with other partners and how they mark content as false in Canada.
They said: “News is substitutable.”
