Social media companies are “unconscionable” for scrapping fact-checking on their website platforms

By Elona Malterre 

Social media companies are “unconscionable” for deciding to exclude fact-checking on their influential website platforms, says Yogi Schulz (photo at right), an IT and project management expert and author.

“Social media magnates say because they couldn’t control 100 percent of the misinformation posted on their platforms, they’ve removed fact checking, with the excuse that it hasn’t been perfect,” Schulz said during a talk at Platform Calgary.

“The real reason is the relatively small cost [of fact checking], which is unconscionable while they are making more money than they can count," he said, provoking a round of laughter from his audience.

“X is a little better [than other social media platforms] with its community notes, but not much,” said Schulz, co-author of A Project Sponsor's Warp-Speed Guide: Improving Project Performance.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this month that the social media giant will end its fact-checking program with trusted partners and replace it with a community-driven system similar to X’s community notes.

The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, two of the largest social media platforms in the world, each boasting billions of users, as well as Threads.

Schulz, who’s a regular op-ed contributor to Research Money, spoke to an audience of about 30 people of all ages about AI policy and IT project management for the executive suite, at an event hosted by Untapped Energy in Calgary.

He stressed the importance of management’s engagement in implementing AI systems because competencies in AI are ambiguous and not always well defined.

“Management must educate itself,” Schulz said. However, he added that it has been his experience that C-suite individuals are “ambivalent – afraid and excited.”

To illustrate his point, Shulz showed an evocative cartoon of an executive hiding under a desk, looking confused, anxious and crazed.

Businesses wanting to adopt AI acknowledge that the technology has huge potential to make their companies money if used properly, he said. But AI’s implementation comes with great financial and reputational risk to firms if not done correctly.

IT sponsors must maintain the illusion of control while being responsible for getting the maximum return on the organization’s IT investment, without ending up as a negative headline in national newspapers, Schulz said.

Most IT project sponsors “shoot from the hip,” said Schulz, who has more than 40 years’ experience at training “dragons” – his description of good sponsors. 

He noted there is a clear distinction between a project sponsor and a project manager. The project sponsor initiates the project, while the project manager executes the project.

To help project sponsors be effective in sponsoring an IT project, Schulz provided his audience with six takeaways for an AI risk framework, or a supportive structural scaffold:

• Comprehensive list of best practices.
• Decision-making protocols.
• Efficient use of resources.
• Contextual understanding (including workers’ adoption attitudes).
• Communication. 
• Evidence-based discussions.

Schulz emphasized that “no team has ALL the expertise” and that team members should prepare to be flexible when necessary.

A solid scaffold to guide decision-making must be in place before leaping into the rapidly changing and unclear AI-assisted or AI-conceived world and the illusions it may present., he said.

Schulz pointed to a risk framework and AI risk repository created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that highlighted seven risks of AI:  

1. Discrimination and toxicity.
2. Lack of privacy and security.
3. Misinformation.
4. Malicious actors and misuse.
5. Confusing human-computer interactions.
6. Not considering the socio-economic environment.
7. AI system safety, failures and limitations.

Ultimately, Schulz said, “Boards are responsible for the institution of AI policy.” He pointed to his article at Engineering.com for information about eight project sponsor “sins” that can sink a company’s digital transformation and how to fix them.

Most importantly, Schulz said, everybody should be aware that “every prompt that you type is shared with the service provider.”

Schulz was part of Untapped Energy’s “Hot Takes” initiative. Comments after his talk indicated that Schulz is definitely hot because, as one audience member said: “Yogi links the voices of west and east, old and young.”

Untapped Energy, according to its website, is a non-profit “grassroots-led community with representation from industry, government, academia and the broader public, seeking to collectively solve problems and generate innovation for the Canadian energy industry using data science and analytics.”

Platform Calgary is a non-profit member-based organization and Calgary’s home for innovators and entrepreneurs. Its mandate is “to bring together the resources of Calgary's tech ecosystem to help startups launch and grow at every step of their journey, from ideation to scale.”

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