WASHINGTON: The head of the world’s main fact-checking network said on Wednesday she was “deeply concerned” by Meta’s decision to begin testing its Community Notes system in 16 Latin American countries, a step towards ending the fact-checking programme it runs in the region.

“The community notes programme alone is simply not adequate when it comes to reducing the impact of harmful falsehoods on social media platforms,” Angie Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network, of which AFP is a member, said in a statement.

Meta said it had begun testing Community Notes in 16 Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, a step toward replacing the professional fact-checking programme it runs with partner organisations across the region.

The crowdsourced notes system, modeled on the one used by Elon Musk’s X, is designed to supplant checks carried out by accredited newsrooms and fact-checking agencies, which Meta ended in the United States last year.

Meta said it hoped the notes would become the standard way it adds context to misleading posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, ending the need for the fact-checking programme.

The company gave no timeline for that transition, saying only that full rollout would come when it was confident the product worked. Users in the 16 countries can sign up as contributors from Wednesday, but Meta said no notes would be visible to the public during the test and that independent fact-checking would continue unchanged in the meantime.

The list covers Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the region’s largest market for Meta’s platforms, was left out.

Right-wing surge

The announcement lands after a run of elections that has pushed Latin America sharply toward right-wing parties. Hard-right conservatives, including in the United States and Europe, are largely against fact-checking programs on social media, accusing them of political bias.

The new leaders in Latin America rely on social media to burnish their image and spread disinformation. In some cases, they have been accused of deploying troll armies to simulate popular support.

Just days before Trump took office for a second term, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would end its US fact-checking partnerships and replace them with Community Notes. In line with Republican views, Zuckerberg cast the shift as a return to free expression.

Testing began in the United States that March. Three weeks later the notes started appearing publicly and the US fact-checking programme was shut down. Meta said that the Community Notes in the US now had more than 1.4 million contributors.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2026