Meta will no longer use third-party fact checking on its social-media platforms in the U.S., following X’s example in using community-based notes instead. WSJ’s technology reporter Alexa Corse joins host James Rundle to discuss the reasons behind Meta’s decision and what users can expect next. Plus, how investors are selecting the winners in the crowded field of artificial intelligence-powered healthcare startups.
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[00:00:19] Welcome to Tech News Briefing.
[00:00:21] It's Thursday, January the 9th.
[00:00:22] I'm James Rundle for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:00:25] Healthcare is being bombarded with startups claiming that artificial intelligence gives them an edge over their rivals.
[00:00:31] Venture capital firms are being forced to sort the opportunity from the hype.
[00:00:35] We'll find out what investors are looking out for and avoiding.
[00:00:38] And then Meta's decision to end fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram, starting in the US,
[00:00:43] has reignited the debate over the role social media companies play in monitoring what's posted to their platforms.
[00:00:49] Our technology reporter Alexa Course tells us how the change could affect users and advertisers.
[00:00:58] But first, amid a deluge of healthcare startups looking to solve everything from global pandemics to ultra-specific diseases with AI,
[00:01:07] the market is starting to look crowded.
[00:01:09] And when it comes to wooing investors, many companies make the same mistakes.
[00:01:13] WSJ reporter Brian Gormley joins us now to talk about what doesn't work and what does in the world of healthcare AI.
[00:01:20] Brian, what are some of the common pitfalls that startups face?
[00:01:23] Venture capitalists are looking for companies that have kind of a bright mix of data, technological expertise,
[00:01:31] healthcare expertise, and understanding of the healthcare marketplace.
[00:01:36] And not all companies have all those ingredients.
[00:01:39] Some of them don't have very strong data to train their algorithms.
[00:01:44] Some of them don't have enough expertise in healthcare to understand the dynamics of the marketplace.
[00:01:50] Some of them may not have enough understanding of the market opportunity and where is the best application for their technology.
[00:01:58] So those are some of the areas where companies can go wrong.
[00:02:01] And venture capitalists are looking for companies that have figured out where to apply their technology effectively across the healthcare landscape.
[00:02:09] So with that in mind, where have some of these companies stood out?
[00:02:12] And where have they found opportunities to really separate themselves from the crowd?
[00:02:16] Companies that generate proprietary data are those that stand out.
[00:02:21] Certainly generating the data that you need to answer a very specific question in healthcare is not something that is easy to do.
[00:02:30] Much of the medical systems information is siloed in insurance companies, health systems, pharmaceutical companies.
[00:02:37] So startups need to find a way to acquire that data or generate it themselves.
[00:02:44] And biotechnology companies can stand out by having a technology that generates biological data that no other company can develop
[00:02:53] and use that data to train algorithms to search for drugs that other companies wouldn't be able to find because they don't have that proprietary data.
[00:03:01] How much of an uphill battle do startups face taking on incumbent tech providers in this sector?
[00:03:06] They do face competition from the incumbents.
[00:03:08] The incumbents have their own AI strategies and they have the existing relationships and they're embedded in the medical system.
[00:03:15] But if a company can identify a weakness that is not being fully addressed by the incumbents,
[00:03:21] that's where the opportunity comes in for a startup.
[00:03:25] And that's where venture capitalists are looking to make investments,
[00:03:28] to find the companies that are addressing something that hasn't been fully resolved by an incumbent.
[00:03:34] And use that technology to resolve it fully.
[00:03:38] You mentioned earlier that it's important for companies to also have medical and healthcare expertise in their ranks as well.
[00:03:44] How common is it for these startups to have that kind of background within their employee base?
[00:03:48] The companies that are more likely to get funded are those that do have those right combination of technological and healthcare expertise.
[00:03:57] And it's not easy to acquire that kind of talent.
[00:04:00] There's a war for talent within the ranks of AI specialists.
[00:04:05] There's only so many people who have the expertise in the medical system.
[00:04:11] And you need to bring all that together into one company and marry the cultures of the two
[00:04:16] and bring forward a cohesive team that can solve a very specific problem.
[00:04:22] And those are the kinds of companies that venture capitalists are looking to invest in.
[00:04:26] That was our reporter, Brian Gormley.
[00:04:29] Coming up, Meta is dropping fact-checking in the US, saying it wants to promote free expression across its platforms.
[00:04:35] But what does this mean for the future of Facebook, Instagram and Threads?
[00:04:40] That's after the break.
[00:04:47] What then will the future reveal?
[00:04:50] There's one thing we know about the future.
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[00:04:56] The future.
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[00:04:57] The future.
[00:04:58] And the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a glimpse of what's on the way.
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[00:05:04] Join us as we dig into how science and technology are shaping the future.
[00:05:08] For that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.
[00:05:13] Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:05:21] Social media companies, long wary of content moderation, are cutting back on such efforts.
[00:05:27] Meta announced this week that it would end fact-checking in the US
[00:05:29] and remove several speech restrictions across its platforms.
[00:05:33] Instead relying on its user community to add context to misleading posts.
[00:05:38] Meta's decision is a huge shift in its thinking around how it manages what its users post to its platforms.
[00:05:43] Nearly 10 years after it started working with independent fact-checkers.
[00:05:47] Here now to explain what this change could mean for the industry is our technology reporter, Alexa Kors.
[00:05:52] Alexa, why do social media companies say they're doing this?
[00:05:56] The announcement was really framed as a free speech pitch.
[00:06:01] And a lot of what Meta talked about was that they've developed a lot of rules over the years
[00:06:09] and a lot of systems to try to address different policies and concerns.
[00:06:15] And the sense was that it's just too much and they're making mistakes that are resulting in censorship.
[00:06:22] So let's simplify and focus on free speech, more speech.
[00:06:27] Yeah, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his video announcement how recent elections played a role in this decision.
[00:06:34] After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy.
[00:06:42] We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth.
[00:06:47] But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S.
[00:06:54] How is what Meta is doing similar to what Elon Musk has done at X?
[00:06:58] There are a lot of similarities.
[00:07:01] And Zuckerberg actually specifically credited X in his announcement and said he wants to copy some of what X is doing.
[00:07:09] And he specifically said that about this community notes feature that X has.
[00:07:15] This is a feature on X where volunteers write fact-checking or contextual notes and they get appended to posts.
[00:07:24] And people actually vote on whether these notes are helpful or not.
[00:07:29] And people with differing viewpoints have to agree that this note is helpful for it to show up under a post.
[00:07:36] So what are the risks and the benefits of a community-based approach to content moderation versus hiring professionals?
[00:07:43] I've spoken to researchers who have studied community notes.
[00:07:47] And they say the system has some benefits, but it also has downsides and risks.
[00:07:53] So a benefit is that there are some people who trust fellow users more than professional fact-checkers.
[00:08:00] So this might appeal to that kind of user.
[00:08:03] Now think about some of the downsides.
[00:08:06] Virality.
[00:08:06] It takes time for this system to work.
[00:08:10] And X has said it's working on making it much faster, but it just takes time.
[00:08:14] And sometimes a post can go viral before a note can get attached.
[00:08:19] So there have been complaints in the past around content moderation on social media sites, specifically from the conservative right.
[00:08:26] To what extent has this been a political decision versus a commercial one?
[00:08:31] One thing I should say is that professional fact-checkers aren't always right either.
[00:08:35] No one is always right.
[00:08:37] But politics is clearly part of the equation here.
[00:08:41] We're clearly at a moment with the recent election of Donald Trump, where the narrative has really shifted to highlight concerns that people, especially conservatives, as you said, have had about what they see as censorship, what they see as big tech overreach.
[00:09:01] And this is meta responding to that.
[00:09:06] Zuckerberg actually said in a post that they want to remove rules that he sees as out of touch with mainstream discourse.
[00:09:14] And that's a nod to the mood in America right now among many people who've been frustrated by these rules.
[00:09:21] What about costs?
[00:09:23] Was that a factor here?
[00:09:24] Yeah.
[00:09:24] Meta has said it has invested billions on safety and security over the years.
[00:09:29] So you can definitely see the appeal of a company saying, maybe they can save money here by saying, OK, users, you fact check each other instead of us hiring people to handle all of this.
[00:09:42] Do you have a sense of how scaling back content moderation will affect what users see and experience on Meta's platforms?
[00:09:49] So this is very new.
[00:09:50] We're all like waiting to see exactly how this plays out.
[00:09:54] But Meta did give a few examples in their announcement, and they said that they're going to loosen restrictions when talking about issues like gender, for example.
[00:10:07] Meta said that users will start to see these changes in the next few weeks.
[00:10:12] And these changes are happening across Facebook, Instagram and threads.
[00:10:16] How have advertisers responded to Meta's announcement?
[00:10:19] So far, what we've heard from advertisers is that they're not planning dramatic changes.
[00:10:26] Meta is just so dominant in this space.
[00:10:29] It's such a huge player in the advertising space, and it's known for providing a good return on your investment.
[00:10:36] Meta has weathered other controversies around this before.
[00:10:39] We'll see how this plays out, but that's what we're hearing so far.
[00:10:43] And how is this decision on fact-checking likely to play out on an international level?
[00:10:48] The European Union, for instance, has been strengthening laws related to how social media companies such as Meta conduct their business.
[00:10:55] So we also asked the European Commission about this, and a spokesman said that they have no comment immediately since the changes initially are only rolling out in the US.
[00:11:06] But it seems pretty clear that this is likely to create a clash.
[00:11:13] It's just moving generally in the opposite direction of a lot of what the EU has been pushing for in terms of them having concerns about platforms hosting illegal content and other harmful content.
[00:11:28] To be clear, Meta has said that they'll still take down illegal content in serious violations.
[00:11:34] That was our reporter, Alexa Kors.
[00:11:37] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.
[00:11:39] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop.
[00:11:43] I'm James Rundle for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:11:45] We'll be back this afternoon with TMB Tech Minute.
[00:11:48] Thanks for listening.