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Shadowy Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg Credit: Win McNamee/Getty
What do you do when your sources of information get corrupted? That is one of today’s great questions, as UnHerd discovered this week. On Wednesday, Facebook censored an article on these pages which was critical of the World Health Organisation, labelling it as “misinformation”. It was not UnHerd’s first run-in with the online censors, but it is perhaps the most baffling.
In the article in question, Ian Birrell suggested that there are very many reasons to be suspicious of the WHO’s recent report into the origins of the coronavirus. Its investigations were brief, its research was flimsy and the composition of its team was questionable. But most glaring of all was surely its attempt to exclude from consideration anything which might be inconvenient for the Chinese Communist Party. It concluded, for example, that there was no evidence that the virus had come either from the Wuhan wet market, or from the government-run laboratory in the area.
Birrell remarked on all of this and much more in his piece. All of it is public information — and in any healthy society it would be part of the public debate. I suspect that this eventually dawned on Facebook, which last night apologised and reinstated the piece. But why did it decide that the article constituted “misinformation” in the first place?
It’s worth noting, of course, that Facebook does have form in regards to censorship involving the Chinese Communist Party, and it does seem a remarkable coincidence that the one UnHerd article to receive such a content warning was deeply critical of the world’s most powerful totalitarian state. Moreover, a pattern of Big Tech censorship has emerged in recent years where dissident voices are smothered until the embarrassment caused becomes too much of a PR own goal for a platform, at which point it is announced to be a simple mistake. Someone pressed the wrong key. Perhaps.
That certainly seems to be the gist of Facebook’s very brief explanation yesterday: “a fact-checking label was wrongly applied”. But in the absence of a more detailed statement, it’s still worth exploring what the company would say if it ever did decide to try to make a genuine effort at accountability. If that were to happen, I suspect it would go something like this: “the world is going through a pandemic and it is therefore exceptionally important that internationally recognised health organisations such as the WHO do not have their credibility undermined.”
Of course, that is just my conjecture — though, in light of Big Tech’s behaviour over the past year, it certainly seems conceivable. However, the problem with such an explanation is two-fold.
First there is the presumption that an international body like the WHO is not only not corrupted by the Communist Party of China, but that such a scenario is impossible. To see how naive this view is, we need only look at that other international organisation so often viewed as beyond reproach: the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
To an outsider, the UNHRC (like the WHO) may well sound like a venerable organisation. But look a little closer and it becomes clear that the entity is a farce. Only last month it allowed the North Korean representatives at the Council to spend their time expressing concerns about the human rights record of Australia. The truth is that these organisations are far less virtuous than one might think — and if we’re not allowed to criticise them, then what can we criticise?
The second problem with Big Tech censoring material critical of the WHO is more obvious: there is simply no consistency in the position. If it were the case that Facebook censored or flagged all online material which questions the WHO’s narrative then that would be one thing. But that is not what is happening. For in reality, Facebook only tends to censor material which goes against the advice of the WHO if it leans in a particular direction.
For instance, since the start of the pandemic the WHO has supported the introduction of lockdown measures. But it has also repeatedly said that such lockdowns should be temporary, or otherwise short in duration. Yet in recent months, Big Tech censorship has only been aimed at people arguing against lockdowns, or urging people to break the restrictions — while completely ignoring the many people still arguing for their extension. The problem, in other words, is a double-standard. If the WHO’s advice is sacrosanct, why is one alternative view worthy of censorship but another one permitted?
Ultimately, such an approach is entirely self-defeating. For if the credibility of the WHO is not as sacrosanct as Facebook seems to think, then by censoring dissenting views the platform is essentially protecting a polluted information source — all while claiming to be doing the very opposite.
The UK, among other countries, is now coming close to the first anniversary of the moment since everybody was first consigned to their houses. For much of that time we have been deprived our social antenna — unable to hear from friends and family in person or gather in large groups to exchange ideas. Instead, we have had to increasingly rely on the online world to communicate and share our thoughts. It is in light of that situation that sinister decisions such as Facebook’s this week need to be considered. This was not the first time that social media giants have shown themselves to be unaccountable, let alone incompetent. And I predict that it will not be the last.
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SubscribeThe giveaway about the social media censorship is that it is always in one direction.
E.g. for upwards of 4 years, the Democratic Party in the United States, its shills and propagandists (most of the media, ditto academe) SCREAMED that the General Election of 2016 in that country was ‘fixed’ by Vladimir Putin and his henchfolk in the Kremlin; or at any rate that the Trump campaign had been in cahoots with the Russian authorities – which would be very serious and disgraceful if true.*
Facebook, Twitter and Google did not jib in the least at any of this.
This uproar (as designed) gained such traction that nothing less than a Special Counsel was appointed to investigate the allegation. From May 2017 19 top lawyers (all but one of them donors to the Democratic Party) interviewed hundreds of witnesses, combed through piles of documents, emails and all manner of social media entries, cast their fine-mesh net far and wide – and after tens of millions had been spent on the project, came up 2 years later with nothing.
These past 3 months, a large majority of Republican voters (approx. 78%), some Democrats (c. 20%) and many commentators have uttered the view that the 2020 election in the USA was rigged by masses of fraudulent votes.
I do not know whether or not that is true; but what is significant is that within 2 months Facebook, Twitter and Google – not least on Youtube – have either cancelled or (with editorial warnings) deprecated any mention of such a view.
——————-
* Indeed if President Trump were a Russian puppet, then the Kremlin got
a very bad deal for their sponsorship. He upbraided the NATO countries
(19 of the 26) who are not spending anything like what they should on
defence; he bombed Russian troops in Syria; he scolded Angela Merkel for
making her country energy dependent on Russia; and he went all-in for
energy independence in the USA.
Excellent points. The double standard will not end until citizens quit this social media sewers in large numbers.
I’m so glad someone brought that up! I wasn’t holding my breath, but was sort of waiting for a mention of big tech manipulation of the US elections and subsequent banning of you-know-who and friends….which seems to me to be worrying in just the same way, though more so. But no. We’re already censoring ourselves it seems – what next?
We know it is all true – many of us have painstakingly combed through the mountains of evidence and the hearings of sworn affidavit witnesses.
Jillian Assange says that wars only are fought if the media wants it. So without media manipulation there would not be war, because the people want peace by standard.
What we see here is the same thing, it is a cartel that has a grip on the narrative of what is true and what is not. But these truths are no more than conspiracy theories. If any of the conspiracies where true, the Cayman Island would have been several feet under water, there would not be any glaciers left, no ice on the North Pole (in summer and winter), and the UK would have had Siberian climate by 2020 (all predicted by what the media calls ‘the science’) But the truth is there is no change in sea level rise (or fall) recorded anywhere on Earth. If you look at the change in sea level over the cause of years, the chart shows a straight line (going up or down, because land can rise and sink). Global warming because of increasing CO2 has made no change. If man made global warming was a fact, we should see a change in sea level everywhere on Earth (everywhere because if water rises, it does so everywhere, same as adding water to your fish tank).
Fun fact, the New York Times predicted in 1920 that Glacier National Park would not have a glacier left by 1940. And last year they made the prediction again, exactly 100 years later, stating that there will not be any glaciers left by 2040.
Also, there is no ‘the science’ only science. Scientists with a different opinion than ‘the science’ are also being cancelled, or being defunded.
Good movie to watch in this respect is The Dallas Buyers Club, it is about a guy who made up his own mind, did not listen to ‘the science’ and other bullshit, and saved lives in the process. He would have been kicked out by social media if it existed back than (the eighties), in no time.
a pattern of Big Tech censorship has emerged in recent years where dissident voices are smothered until the embarrassment caused becomes too much of a PR own goal for a platform,
I’m not sure about this pattern. It is sporadic at best. Yesterday alone, big tech put the clamps on RFK Jr for being a vaccine skeptic, on James O’Keefe for not being a leftist, was the basis for firing an actress who compared today’s political pogroms to the nazis, and that’s just one day.
The most disingenuous part is when the explanation of stupidity by social media relies on blaming an algorithm, as if those create themselves. They don’t. A human being, or multiple human beings, write the algorithms which then go do exactly what they were programmed to do. It is ultimately a human failure, some wanna-be hall monitor who inner totalitarian gets exposed.
He is like Murdock or Maxwell but without the regulation or responsibility. Facebook and twitter are publishers and should be treated as such.
Spot on. Then make it a rule that the platforms – including this one – have to validate the identities of contributors, who may not be anonymous. It would be good if we could also persuade the broadcasters that twitter storms were not news. Giving the oxygen of incremental publicity to variegated shouty minorities is not helpful.
It would be good if we could also persuade the broadcasters that twitter storms were not news.
Hear, hear. Twitter has enabled the lazy to call themselves journos. Why bother calling someone, setting up and conducting an interview, and all the rest when you can just sit idly by and wait for tweets to do the work instead.
The world must get a grip on these maniacs or the world will become their slave compund.
These self appointed internet left wing elitists keep pushing the anti white, anti west agenda, just the type of organisation fit for the likes of Nick Clegg and it is all part of the same constant onslaught on normal values being conducted by the MSM and pretty much every advertising and PR company in the West now. They are collectively brainwashing the public into their perceived sense of reality and relentlessly shut down any other view immediately until it or the person behind it have been re-programmmed and re-educated.
We desperately need proection from them!
The are the new 1930s Dictators in the making.
The dependence on social media and Californian big tech is indeed sinister since their aims are heavily and exclusively left leaning. They are increasingly using their global power to steer and manipulate debate, while providing huge sums of money to militant Marxists and some would argue racist organisations such as BLM.
As Douglas Murray points out in his excellent book “The madness of crowds” Google abuses its power regularly and engages in clear race and other identity politics with its image presentation and the content prioritised in user searches. Manipulation of people’s views by these corporate giants is not just sinister but is a flagrant abuse of human rights and free speech.
These companies must be stopped or be censored themselves but the problem is how when you have Democrat dominance in the States and a corrupt autocratic regime in China. There seems little chance in the near future that these corporations will be censored rather they will be allowed to sophisticate further their hold on the global population.
Maybe China is not the immediate problem maybe instead the greater threat is from FB, Google, Twitter, You Tube etc.
If free speech continues to evaporate around the world we may actually be too late to stop the left wing corporations from the wholesale brainwashing of populations, particularly Western democracies. Then it’s not just Big Tech but Big Brother ruling.
Yes “The Madness of Crowds” is an excellent book, along with “Islamophilia a Very Metropolitan Malady” by Douglas
They say in the States that “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.” To that observation I would like to append, “Or when Big Tech removes the ‘OFF’ button from your mobile device.”
The problem is that Unherd is posting to Facebook at all. There are alternatives that respect free speech like Gab and CloutHub. I’ve cancelled my Facebook and Twitter accounts and so should unherd.
That’s a good point, Bryan. From Gab and CloutHub to the good ol’ fashioned Speakers’ Corner, the right to exercise one’s viewpoints on all manner of topics is alive and well.
Facebrexit, anyone?
I understand the emotions [and ‘logic’?] that drive this kind of thought, but I’m not certain this is the solution. Turning off the other side and listening only to what you/I believe: we’ll each simply keep re-inforcing our narrative. Better to find a way to have genuine, liberal, dialog; and that best done in person.
The Facebook “fact checker” was probably a 25 year old failed post-doctoral student being paid minimum wage in some sweat shop in Asia. At least it was when they censored Carl Heneghan on the issue of efficacy of masks three months ago.
Trump really did miss a trick with these tech giants and I doubt Biden will do anything about them. I live in hope that some civic-minded youngster will find a way to take down FATGA, using their own technology against them, but I think we’re a long way from that!
Closer to home, if you google The Scottish Postal Vote, you are directed to an SNP website extolling the virtues of voting for them! This SNP dictatorship must be exposed for what it is, before the Scottish elections on 8th May.
It’s the insidiousness of the process that should cause alarm.I recall reading Christopher Booker on the way that the Communists insinuated their way into power In Czechoslovakia and Poland. The way in which dissent became impossible makes very disconcerting reading for our current situation.
Zuckerberg – stupid, arrogant, dangerous and far too rich – do I get banned for saying it?
Too many Tech megalomaniacs causing damage in the world!
Anyone familiar with Lord Acton’s dictum ( All power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely) should not be surprised at this development. The question, as Comrade Lenin once wrote, is: what should be done?
Answering this question means looking at what makes these companies tick. And what makes them tick is money. They are American companies and most of the large ones have only one goal: making more money, no matter what the consequences. This isn’t new: Henry Ford continued to do business with Hitler during the second world war. The sludge that is the social media companies have monetary ties to China and do as they are told.
It’s amusing to look at the rationalisation for removing critics of WHO. It’s the argument from authority and goes back to the Dark Ages. Strange for hi-tech companies whose by-word is ‘innovation’.
Not until the social media companies feel the monetary pinch will there be any substantial change. Recently Jeff Bezos announced his retirement from Amazon. Putting aside the standard publicity release about his wanting to spend more time on ‘development’, there have been reports that he was forced out by some of the conservative shareholders angry at the removal of Parler from the Amazon store and concerned about the possibility of legal action.
Similar action needs to happen at the other corporate giants. There is some indication that they may be in trouble: facebook is facing suits in 33 US States and in the EU. The ones in the States are brought by the attorneys-general.
The main trip-wire remains financial and competition. As these companies either lose customers and advertising or face competition from newer start-ups, they will change. If memory serves me correctly, Mr Trump indicated that he was going to be involved in creating rival platforms. Whether it is he or someone else, this is the best way to deal with this issue.
Once again: the old American maxim rings true: follow the money.
I agree with the general suspicion of the tech giants, they are too powerful and cleave far to much to one political viewpoint. However we do need to be a bit more forensic in our criticism. It has little or nothing to do with China directly.
Facebook is banned there and Chinese consumers overwhelmingly use Chinese tech platforms.
The fact that WHO has been indicated as only source of information and interpretation of data not only by Facebook, but as well by Alphabet, Twitter, Amazon etc. is more concerning than question if they are strict in following WHO standpont in their coordinated behaviour. While that may not be collusion to control the market in strictly legal sense, effectively it is a cartel behaviour which manipulates politics steering naratives and eventually flow of economy in their direction. One should be reminded that originally antitrust laws were not introduced to fight market power per se, but to protect society from its spillover into political, social and cultural sphere. Indeed, freedom of speech is originally freedom of individual’s thought expression from any state interference. Yet, in case where 95% of information goes through couple of companies it is time to reinvent the crux of the freedom, which is to restrict interference of power with free speech notwithstanding the source of such power.
We have had Freedom of Information for public information for 20+ years, but we’ve also seen the rise of social media companies that are in many ways more important, but are completely beyond FoI control. When Zuckerberg and Dorsey are subject to the same interrogation and scepticism as leading politicians then I will relax a bit.
Its noteworthy that when Big Tech giant Google encountered the marxist Chinese govts censorship control demands which clashed with its Dont Be Evil motto , it’s own marxist liberal progressive censor cult drives is now specifically targeting , censoring and completely deplatforming any and all political opposition under the pretext of “misinformation ” spread,aping the very tyrannical systemic human right violation of free speech censorship they once pondered as evil.
The deluded hypocritical marxist progressive tyranny and harms its inflicts on the free democracies of the west in its fanatical attempt to destroy and control it is evident by now.
The question for it’s peoples is , what are we going to do about it?
If Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were truly concerned about the content posted on their platforms then they should start charging a subscription fee. It would go a long way in getting rid of the left-wing race-baiters and right-wing trolls that infest them.
Coverage of the WHO’s coronavirus investigation is pitiful even by the groupthink standards of most modern media.
There is hardly a word of criticism or dissent out there. Even Fox News offered only the mildest note of skepticism in its coverage.
Is China now so powerful, is its ability to confer business opportunities and, in the case of the media, advertising revenue, so great that there is now, by tacit agreement, a ‘don’t criticize China’ policy throughout the media?
While this phrase is conjecture: “the world is going through a pandemic and it is therefore exceptionally important that internationally recognised health organisations such as the WHO do not have their credibility undermined.” – it is ‘spot on’ – that is the attitude now; nothing and nobody (promoting Covid orthodoxy) must be questioned lest we undermine them – even if they are demonstrably wrong.
But the world is not going through a disease pandemic. The only pandemic is irrational and hysterical Government responses to claims of a virus threat.
Unlike, say, Jack ‘Rasputin’ Dorsey, Zuckerberg didn’t ever want this power, isn’t comfortable with it, and only accepted it under duress. I think that makes him persuadable. He has an understanding of the importance of free expression and enquiry. He’s just been backed into a corner and made to subjugate those values by powerful governments and special interests. We should focus on rescuing him from that corner. In return we will have won an important ally.
Indeed, when I saw a recent photo of him, I couldn’t help thinking that he looked like a deeply disturbed megalomaniac.
I think he looks like late-life Howard Hughes.
Well Douglas, if you want to talk about censorship how about telling us about how, as Associate Editor of The Spectator UK, you either agreed with or colluded with the decision to not give ANY coverage of the 2020 US election fraud allegations, evidence or hearings. A censorship of an epochal event, every bit as complete and obvious as the MSM decision not to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
I know because I looked every week for it as a subscriber. Is that the Andrew Neil effect? The Spectator loves to bang on about commitment to fearless, bold journalism but it is no different to the rest actually. Credibility gone, subscription cancelled.
If FB and others censor posts, they must be held to account to potentially censor ALL posts. They should be outed as publishers and responsible for all dribble on their platforms.
Surely Facebook’s censorship is not accidental but quite deliberate and extensive.
Any organisation that employs an absolute fool like Nick Clegg is immediately suspect.
‘Twas ever thus.
Facebook and the CCP are faces of evil and are dangerous to democracy. We should look for reparations from CCP for the damages to the world and sanctions against Facebook or at least it should be broken up on anti competitive grounds and held accountable for damages on untrustworthy and damaging content.
Opinion – Corruption of facts has been on going since humans began to communicate with each other, and to suppose a mark of the fertility of our intelligence and imagination. Then later and with knowledge of this age old scenario, and knowing the need for it to be harnessed. Information was passed down through scrolls, tombs to modern day lending library books and tagged fiction, modern day history, maps, and so forth. With all thoroughly researched before going to print. Though to see the human dilemma to have returned and gone full circle as with the restraints removed. The human tendency to exaggerate, fictionalize or just plain lie has reached fertile ground once again. But stifling free speach is not the way. Does any one have any ideas?
One question is how much does Mark Z control his own company? With a company of this size, “trust and safety teams” (or some other name) tend to take over, and like so called “independent fact checkers” they are always from the far left – they go from university to these Corporate jobs. Their “Woke” ideology is total – and they tend to know nothing else.
I have been told he is not as left wing as the people under him. Unlike Dorsey. For what it’s worth.
Facebook/fakebook does not vet its employees for homeland security, though it probably does for crimimnal records or drug use as do most big US corporates. Its quite likely that a lot of their hired censors have loyalties outside the US govt in particular and the western democracies in general. That would explain the current skew of their censorship, and also why they were so happy to let Trump run amok.
On the original article, about how the virus was created in China, I posted an extremely important information that the Wuhan Lab is not Chinese, but under control of Pentagon DARPA. That was censored out by you, guys, by UnHerd. It never saw the light of the day. The information is 100% backed up by hard evidence and is not a “conspiracy theory” – but even if it were, it is not good to censor some things and then complain that someone else censors you.
The Wuhan lab is not under Pentagon DARPA control. It is a conspiracy theory, pure and simple. The idea that a totalitarian state like China would let its largest rival’s MILITARY create and run a virology lab in China — one that was founded in Mao’s time — is risible on its face.
Well said. I also saw data saying the world’s major science-medical bodies were involved in the Wuhan research, including the WHO and that it began in the US and was moved to China given potential dangers and inferior security in the US. That disappeared long ago but would explain irrational Govt. hysteria.
Grating to encounter so many incorrect uses of the word “which”.
really? did you also find a typo or two? everybody’s an editor.
That’s and incredibly pedantic observation.
Yet correct…
Another fine piece of work from Douglas Murray, thank you! I should note here that Apple’s browser Safari is refusing to open your website. I have to go to Firefox to get it to open. But then, Apple is part of the Evil Empire….
Try taking a little time to reflect before descending into paranoia. Safari is my browser of choice and I have no trouble opening Douglas Murray’s website.
If you start with the belief that the tech giants are trying to control every aspect of our lives a slight glitch in connecting to a website becomes more conspiracy theory fodder.
Millions died in two world wars fighting to defend freedom including freedom of speech and no American twit is going to destroy that right. Own goal Facebook. There are alternatives.
I cannot understand the objection to requiring people to post in their own names or not at all
Ha you have all been Zuckered with a Democratic clean sweep in the US. Chaos will ensue.
The destruction of Parler was a watershed whereby a group of tech companies colluded to destroy a competitor through direct withdrawal of services and intimidation of suppliers to do the same, all with the complete approval of the Democratic administration and the tacit approval of most governments worldwide, and with no popular protest. “Oh but they were right wing” said my friends.
Facebook is thus free to be as unaccountable and incompetent as it likes. It has a government assured monopoly and acts as part of the state (eg. $400m spent on electoral engineering).
There is nothing “baffling” about Facebook’s censorship. It works for the US government which is in the pay of the CCP and US corporates, who are shovelling money into the families of the POTUS and VP.
I love Murray but of late he has insufficiently alarmed. Things are much worse than he appears to think.
Well argued.