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Hey folks, Asha here. Here's a recording of my latest cafe note, Meta's Pay to Play Gambit. As always,

please write to us with your thoughts and questions at letters atcafe.com.

Dear listener, if the first Trump administration marked the beginning of the post-truth era,

then the second Trump administration marks the beginning of the post-giving a crap about the truth era.

Two weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Mehta would dismantle its independent third-party fact-checking program,

which was implemented in the wake of the exposure

of Russia's disinformation operations in the 2016 election to reduce the amount of miss and

disinformation that was amplified on the platform. In his statement, Zuckerberg said that

META will be, quote, going back to its roots and focus on reducing

mistakes, simplifying its policies, and restoring free expression on its platforms, end quote.

In other words, meta is one big shrug emoji, and the rest of us are on our own.

Before diving into what this all means, a few caveats.

First, fact-checking is not a silver bullet for false or misleading content on social media.

Research shows that, depending on the political salience of the issue, in other words, how much

of your political identity is tied up in whatever the false claim is, corrective information

won't necessarily change a person's mind and might even make them double down on their beliefs.

In addition, Betta is technically not abandoning fact-checking completely. Rather, it is instituting

...