Meta’s fact-checking partners claim they were “blindsided” by the company’s decision to abandon third-party fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in favor of a Community Notes model, and some say they are now scrambling to figure out if they can survive the hole this leaves in their funding.“We heard the news just like everyone else,” says Alan Duke, cofounder and editor in chief of fact-checking site Lead Stories, which started working with Meta in 2019. “No advance notice.”The news that Meta was no longer planning on using their services was…