Oversight Board Statement on Meta’s Community Notes testing in 16 Latin American countries
10 septembre 2026
The Oversight Board co-chairs issued the following statement in response to Meta’s recent announcement that it would begin testing community notes in parts of Latin America:
“The Board is paying close attention to Meta’s planned testing of its community notes program in 16 countries across Latin America. In our policy advisory opinion regarding community notes issued earlier this year, we noted the ways that community notes can add information to important debates and boost free expression, but we cautioned that in certain circumstances, including in repressive human rights regimes, contexts where there is complex division and disagreement that drives political violence, countries with large-scale disinformation networks, high-risk electoral contexts and ongoing crisis and conflict situations, community notes could contribute to real-world harms that Meta has a responsibility to avoid or remedy. These factors certainly exist in some of the countries Meta says it intends to test.
"While we appreciate Meta is following the recommendations laid out in our report to test carefully and monitor results before expanding the rollout, there are three actions we would like to see from Meta, as highlighted in our report.
"First, the decision to move from testing to implementation should be driven by country-specific analysis of risk factors. We have yet to receive the first requested report on the specific criteria that Meta intends to use for this purpose and any relevant measures to reduce risk. We look forward to receiving this information.
“Second, any expansion of community notes should be done only after judicious review of how well the program is performing in its first market, the United States. The Board called for transparency, reporting and researcher access to data on Meta’s community notes program, and reiterates that information should be made available prior to expansion to other, potentially higher risk, countries.
“Finally, Meta conveyed to the Board that it views the community notes program and fact checking program as serving two distinct purposes. Any decision to phase out factchecking, as referenced in Meta’s recent announcement, should not be based on the existence or success of community notes since they are designed for different outcomes, and community notes often rely on fact-checking.
"We urge Meta not to consider community notes a direct replacement for factchecking, and to use all the tools that best address the challenge of misinformation on its platforms in ways that both protect free expression and address potential harms.”
You can read the Board’s full Public Advisory Opinion, Assessing Meta’s Plans to Expand Community Notes here.
