Meta has recently expressed a strong belief that Community Notes represents the future of content moderation across social media platforms. However, its latest election integrity update for Australia indicates that the company still values traditional third-party fact-checking, despite having removed this system in the United States. With Australia’s federal election anticipated to be announced before May 17, Meta’s Head of Public Policy in Australia, Cheryl Seeto, has outlined the company’s strategy for combating misinformation during the campaign. Unlike in the U.S., where Meta has ended its partnership with third-party fact-checkers, it will continue to collaborate with these organisations in Australia.

Meta’s approach for the Australian election includes working with fact-checking agencies such as the Australian Associated Press (AAP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) to evaluate the accuracy of election-related content. Seeto emphasised, “We will continue to work with AFP and the AAP to independently review content through Meta Australia’s third-party fact-checking program. When content is debunked by these fact-checkers, we attach warning labels to the content and reduce its distribution in Feed and Explore so it is less likely to be seen.” This strategy sharply contrasts with Meta’s rationale for removing fact-checking in the United States, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that third-party fact-checkers were prone to bias and mistakes. Instead, the U.S. version of Meta has shifted to Community Notes, a crowd-sourced content rating system that bears similarities to X’s (formerly Twitter) approach.

This divergence has prompted speculation about whether Meta’s policy changes are politically motivated. In the U.S., the decision to eliminate fact-checking came shortly after a private meeting between Donald Trump and Zuckerberg, raising concerns that the company was acquiescing to Trump’s requests in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, Meta Australia has embraced fact-checking as an essential tool for the electoral process, leading to critical questions: Is Community Notes genuinely the best method for content moderation, as Meta insists? Or does Meta Australia’s strategy imply that traditional fact-checking is, in fact, more effective?

Despite claims that Community Notes will eventually expand to more countries, Meta has not provided a timeline for its rollout. For the time being, Australia will continue utilising third-party fact-checking alongside a media literacy campaign with AAP to empower voters in critically assessing online content. The postponement of Community Notes outside the U.S. reinforces the speculation that Meta’s removal of fact-checking in America is less about enhancing content moderation and more about aligning with Trump’s regulatory posture.

As the company grapples with global challenges related to misinformation, its contradictory strategies raise significant questions about political influence, the effectiveness of content moderation, and the future of fact-checking on its platforms. If fact-checking proves to be an adequate safeguard for the integrity of elections in Australia, why isn’t it considered sufficient for the U.S.? And is it possible that Meta will strategically delay the implementation of Community Notes in other regions until after the next presidential term?