PolitiFact CEO hacks Meta’s Zuckerberg for announcing the end of fact-checking on his platforms

The CEO of fact-checking site PolitiFact ripped Meta’s owner Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday after the billionaire tech mogul announced that his platforms would end fact-checking.

In an X post, Aaron Sharockman criticized Zuckerberg’s decision to end his relationship with independent fact-checkers and the company’s allegations that these fact-checkers showed political bias when reviewing posts on Meta forums.

“If Meta got upset and created a filtering tool, it should look in the mirror,” Sharockman said in a statement to X following Zuckerberg’s announcement.

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In a video posted to X on Tuesday morning, Zuckerberg announced, “We’re going back to our roots and focusing on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms. Specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Public Notes like X, which started in the US”

For years, Meta platforms — including Facebook and Instagram — have hired reporters from PolitiFact and other outlets to fact-check and provide context to posts shared there.

Meta’s global chief executive, Joel Kaplan, told Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends on Tuesday that Meta turned to “independent, third-party fact-checkers” like PolitiFact, but has since realized they are too biased. PolitiFact has long been critical of the allegations it relies on in its articles.

“It’s become clear that there’s a lot of political bias in what they’re choosing to look at because, really, they’re able to evaluate whatever they see on the field,” Kaplan said Tuesday.

As Zuckerberg said in his video, Kaplan shared that Meta is ending the fact-checking project “completely” and replacing it with a “Public Notes” model similar to the one used in X, where regular accounts can contribute context and fact-check posts.

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“Instead of going to so-called experts, it’s up to the community and the people on stage to express their opinions about what they’ve learned,” added Kaplan.

Sharockman raged and said, “The decision to remove independent journalists from Facebook’s content moderation system in the United States has nothing to do with free speech or research. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision could not have been subtle.”

He dismissed Zuckerberg’s accusations of political bias, saying that Meta forums, not fact-checkers, are the ones vetting posts.

“Let me be clear: the decision to remove or punish a post or account is made by Meta and Facebook, not fact-checkers. They make the rules,” Sharockman said.

Elsewhere, he argued that Meta should create a space on its platform where independent fact-checkers “can provide more information and discourse to users who want to understand the whole picture behind a post.”

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President-elect Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Getty) (Getty Images)

“You can see all our work online at politifact.com,” he added. “We don’t use anonymous sources, and we provide a biblical version of all the information we show. If we make a mistake, there’s a process to correct those mistakes. And there’s also a process to make sure Facebook and Meta get the corrected information.”

In the text of his statement, he added, “.@PolitiFact will talk a lot about this. But these are my thoughts. This decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech or research. (PolitiFact is our first partner and has been working on this project for 8+ years).

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