(Reuters)

Meta will start testing “Community Notes” in the United States using technology developed by Elon Musk-owned X, the Facebook parent said on Thursday (March 13), two months after scrapping its fact-checking program amid pressure from conservatives.

From March 18, it will let users write and rate notes to flag false or misleading content on Instagram, Facebook and Threads, shifting fact-checking from third-party teams to a crowd-sourced model.

Around 200,000 US users have signed up to become potential contributors.

The switch to Community Notes is Meta’s biggest overhaul in its approach to managing content in the recent past and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries to improve his relations with the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump, who has criticized social media firms for allegedly silencing conservative viewpoints on their platforms, had welcomed Meta’s move in January.

To roll out the new system, Meta will use the open-source algorithm from X as the basis of its rating system. The rival social media platform had revamped its community-driven fact-checking feature Birdwatch to Community Notes in 2022.

Meta’s Community Notes would be capped at 500 characters and initially available in six languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Portuguese.

These notes will not have author names and will be published only if contributors with differing viewpoints agree that it provides helpful context.

Contributors must be more than 18 years old and should include a supporting link to post notes, Meta said, touting the system as “less biased” than the third-party fact-checking program.

Once Community Notes go live, third-party fact-check labels will no longer appear in the United States, Meta said.

The company, which has more than 3 billion users worldwide, partners with nearly 100 certified fact-checking organisations in more than 60 languages, according to its website.