Meta is cutting payments to news organisations that fact-check potential misinformation on WhatsApp, a report by ‘The Information’ stated on Wednesday. The tighter budgets indicate that fewer fact-checkers will be monitoring political discussions right ahead of the elections.
Around half the world’s population is headed for election polls this year, including the U.S. and India. One of the sources revealed that the cuts could also affect news organisations’ ability to verify non-election content.
Meanwhile, Meta has been rolling out more features to allow larger groups on the messaging platform to chat, which could increase the chance of fake news spreading easily. Last year in November, it rolled out a voice feature for large groups on the app, as well as allowing users to pin messages on top of the chat.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company has been on a cost-cutting drive since last year with two rounds of layoffs totalling around more than 20,000 workers. The company’s widespread cutbacks impressed investors this year with fourth-quarter revenue of $40.1 billion beating market expectations of $39.18 billion.
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WhatsApp had introduced the factcheck feature back in 2020 to check viral messages and weed out fake news on their platforms.
