Do Facts Meta on Facebook?
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we look at why Meta is bringing to an end the use of independent fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram - and replacing them with ‘community notes’.
In a video posted online Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were "too politically biased" and it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression". Adam is joined by Vivian Schiller, vice president and executive director of Aspen Digital, and former head of news at Twitter.
And, as Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to launch a UK-wide investigation into grooming gangs, Adam speaks to Tom Symonds, the BBC’s political correspondent, and Alison Holt, the BBC’s social affairs editor, about what was learnt from past inquiries into child sexual abuse.
You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers. You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Anna Harris and Teodora Agarici. The technical producer was Ricardo McCarthy. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, we're going to start off this episode of Newscast with a little quiz, so let's have some quiz music. |
| 0:15.2 | Name the top five biggest social media platforms in the world today. Your time starts now. |
| 0:31.7 | Okay, that's enough time. Here are the top five in reverse order. In fifth place, it's |
| 0:39.4 | TikTok. Fourth place, it's WhatsApp. Third place, it's Instagram. In second place, it's YouTube. |
| 0:47.1 | And in first place, is the daddy of them all, Facebook, with more than three billion monthly |
| 0:52.5 | active users, at least according to the sources that we've |
| 0:55.7 | interrogated today. And the reason we're doing that is not just because we miss doing Christmas |
| 0:59.9 | quizzes, but because we are going to do a big discussion about some big changes at one of |
| 1:06.0 | the companies that owns three of those platforms, Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, |
| 1:12.8 | and threads, which is also in there as well. And that's because Mark Zuckerberg, the tech |
| 1:18.0 | entrepreneur, has posted a very interesting video about some changes he is making. So we'll |
| 1:23.1 | discuss that on this episode of Newscast, which also is an excuse to remind you that we're now available |
| 1:28.5 | on the second of those platforms YouTube every single day, so you can watch as well as listen |
| 1:33.6 | to this episode of Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. I like landscape. I don't think I'm |
| 1:39.6 | being rude. Japping, unemployed people who are overweight. That is not the agenda. It's the fun police working overtime. |
| 1:46.1 | The star is born, Elon. |
| 1:48.0 | So hurt that a miracle let us happen. |
| 1:50.2 | Frankly, I think we need a British Trump. |
| 1:52.0 | Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. |
| 1:55.3 | Blimey. |
| 1:56.2 | Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. |
... |
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