A lot was written about the motto around the turn of the year, including on our magazine in Germany, PRO: “Test everything and keep what is good”. These days I ask myself whether Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has also risked a look at the motto for the year? I certainly wish he had.

Last week, Zuckerberg announced that the Facebook parent company Meta in the USA wants to do without fact-checkers, i.e. people who check content for accuracy, for its platforms in future. True to the motto: ‘We don’t check anything and hope for the best’.

In addition to Facebook, this new regulation will also apply to the Instagram and Threads platforms. Zuckerberg believes that the fact-checkers make too many mistakes. He also claims to have recognised an increase in censorship through their work. And I would add to that: Zuckerberg is pandering to the US president-elect, Donald Trump.

The purpose of fact-checkers

This new regulation does not yet apply in Europe. The European Union obliges social network providers to take action against disinformation or “negative effects on civil society discourse” under the Digital Service Act (DSA).

For Zuckerberg, this is institutionalised censorship. In his world view, the established media are also partly to blame for this alleged censorship - probably because they also check facts on Facebook. In Germany, for example, the German Press Agency DPA, the French news agency AFP and the research portal Correctiv do this.

Despite all the - possibly justified - criticism of overzealous checking, Zuckerberg seems to ignore or even deny the benefits of such mechanisms. Neither the fact-checkers nor the DSA aim to restrict the corridor of opinion. Rather, they serve to protect our civil society by labelling falsehoods as such.

An example?

A UN report published in 2018 states that Facebook - at that time still without fact-checkers - made a decisive contribution to the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar as an opinion platform.

The platform’s enormous reach, the population’s low level of media literacy and a lack of moderation led to the spread of hatred and incitement to violence.

The fact that Russia is trying to influence various elections in the USA and Europe via online platforms is another negative example. I also don’t want to imagine how much more Hamas propaganda would be circulating on social media after 7 October 2023 without the fact-checkers pointing out fake news.

“Test everything and keep what is good” is certainly not a suitable motto for fact-checkers on social media platforms. After all, they are supposed to keep what is “true” and name what is “false”. However, current developments show that the verse from 1 Thessalonians could have particular relevance not only for Christians in 2025, but for all users of Facebook, Instagram and the like, as they should now be even more careful when using social media.

Martin Schlorke, Berlin correspondent at PRO Medienmagazin in Germany. This article was first published by PRO, translated into English and re-published with permission.