UCL School of Management Associate Professor Colin Fisher recently wrote an article that was published by The Conversation UK discussing the changes in addressing online misinformation announced by Meta earlier this year. While the organisation previously utilised independent third-party factcheckers in an effort to monitor misinformation, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that Facebook, Instagram and Threads will be relying on “community notes” in a similar style as Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
Defining community notes, Colin refers to them as ‘crowdsourced contributions’ that ‘allow users to flag content they believe is questionable’. However, while this might initially seem a democratic solution to the spread of misinformation, Colin questions the efficacy of using social media users to police information accuracy when many people rely on platforms such as Facebook for their news. He also argues that social media algorithms also do little to support wiser and more informed users.
In his article, Colin then acknowledges the role of psychology - or, what he refers to as ingroup/ outgroup bias - in online human behaviour. People are more likely to trust and remember information from their in-group (those who are in their circle and with whom they can identify) and are more likely to distrust information from their outgroup. Too much disagreement within groups can hinder the efficacy of community notes. Using the example of COVID vaccines, Colin highlights that much of these community notes were never shown publicly on Twitter due to too much disagreement from users.
To combat the issue, Colin encourages social media users to diversify their information sources and actively seek information from trusted and reliable news sourcies and avoid using social media as a source of news. He also suggests that we collectively work to break down barriers of mistrust to avoid polarisation and further misinformation spreading online.
