| 29 August 2023 Senator James Paterson Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Shadow Minister for Cyber Security Liberal Senator for Victoria Dear Senator, I refer to your letter dated 24 August 2023 and wanted to provide you with an update about some changes with respect to Meta’s fact-checking program that is taking effect from today. As you may know, at Meta we have a strong commitment to combating misinformation. Under our policies we remove harmful misinformation that could cause imminent physical risk or interference in electoral processes, for example. And we invest in a third party fact checking program and reduce the distribution of any content that is labeled false by third party fact checkers. In Australia, we rely on three fact checkers – AAP, AFP and RMIT. A key part of our fact-checking program is that our fact checkers must be certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which requires participating organisations to demonstrate a commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness. We have recently become aware that one of our Australian fact-checking partners – RMIT – did not have current IFCN accreditation and that there have been complaints made to the IFCN about possible bias or unfairness in some of the fact checks being applied by RMIT with respect to content relating to the upcoming referendum on the Voice to Parliament. |
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In light of these allegations and the upcoming vote on the Voice referendum, we are suspending RMIT as a partner in our fact checking program, effective immediately. Once the IFCN has considered whether RMIT FactLab’s expired
certification should be reinstated, we will again review their participation in our fact checking program.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Mia Garlick
Regional Director of Policy | Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand & Pacific Islands
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