How Meta’s U-Turn On Fact-Checking Renews Reputational Risks In The Age Of Misinformation
How Meta’s U-Turn On Fact-Checking Renews Reputational Risks In The Age Of Misinformation
Meta’s sudden scrapping of its fact-checking programme brings reputational risks back into focus for organizations relying on the platform as a crucial marketing and communications channel. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2025, misinformation and disinformation is the number one global risk facing firms over the next two years. With the guardrails significantly eroded, false attack posts, hoax news announcements and audiovisual deepfakes will thrive unless chief risk officers embrace new digital monitoring practices
The shared online reality is that a fragility in public trust has nurtured an environment where user engagement takes priority over accuracy, sensation over substance, and speed over verification. But for firms attempting to navigate Meta’s piece of the digital pie, reputational risk vulnerabilities are increasingly multifaceted. While trusted third parties such as PolitiFact once held the centre of the fact-checking programme, their role is now replaced by individual users. As a result, the digital lifespan of deepfaked misinformation will undoubtably extend. The reason for this is twofold: individual users are seldom equipped with the training or access to quick external verification tools, and Meta’s algorithm may prefer false sensationalist media to linger at the top of newsfeeds. Without the efficacy that third-party fact-checkers bring to the table, disinformation is able to embed itself in the online ecosystem more easily. This is reflected in the market, with a reported 92% of firms seeing quantifiable brand harm because of deepfaked disinformation campaigns.
Although doubts have been cast on the operational capacity of fact checkers, the fallout from Meta’s decision is exacerbated by an underestimation of disinformation risk by business leaders – despite a study by international law firm WilmerHale showing that the cost of reputation repairs have skyrocketed to over $9 billion globally as of 2022. According to a study by Business.com, almost two-thirds of small to mid-size business executives still have no protocols in place to tackle deepfake-fuelled disinformation campaigns, nor do they believe their employees can spot disinformation with a moderate level of accuracy.
It is precisely this evaluative disconnect between what needs to be done about reputational risk and how the risks are developing that helps paint a wider picture of corporate unpreparedness and cognitive dissonance in an evolving threat landscape. To overcome this, CROs should look to build partnerships with firms equipped with social listening tools – such as Polecat Intelligence or TSC.ai – to leverage real-time social media monitoring to trace keywords and narratives. This allows predictive models to benchmark results and reflect a standardized scorecard throughout the market, pushing firms away from passive crisis planning and towards active real-time management.
The fact checker problem will not be localized to Meta; an increasing number of social media giants are likely to roll back on policing accurate information in the coming years. To learn more about reputational risk management and how firms can prepare, check out Verdantix Strategic Focus: Tech Solutions For Reputational Risk Monitoring or Verdantix Smart Innovators: Reputational Risk Software.
