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Does Mark Zuckerberg decide the truth? (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”
In other words, Facebook now believes that its censorship of millions of posts in the preceding months had been in error. There was, of course, no hint of apology in its most recent statment; though its tone proved quite the contrast to Facebook’s boast last year that, in April alone, it displayed “warnings” on 50 million “pieces of content related to Covid-19”. That was just the start; in February this year, Facebook even placed a warning on a piece for UnHerd by Ian Birrell, an award-winning investigative reporter who has been writing about the origins of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.
“When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content,” the company says. Moreover, if an article is rated “false” by their “fact checkers”, the network will “reduce its distribution”. This means that, while an author or poster is not aware that censorship is taking place, the network could be hiding their content so it is not widely disseminated.
The second announcement — released on the same day — was that Facebook is now extending its policy of “shadow-banning” accounts that promote misinformation. “Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners.” So now, if you share something deemed to contain misinformation multiple times, your account could be silenced; you won’t be informed, you won’t know to what degree your content will be hidden and you won’t know how long it will last — all thanks to group of “fact-checkers” whose authority cannot be questioned.
The fact that this announcement was made on the very same day as Facebook’s admission of error shows how unaccountable these global superpowers are, as well as the extent to which they can act as they please without fear of repercussion. Indeed, it’s hardly surprising that they have increasingly adopted the paraphernalia of governments: Facebook’s “Oversight Board” includes ex-politicians (who it appoints), has its own constitution and passes down “binding” judgements on the company.
Yet imagine if a similar error had been made by a democratic government. There would be consequences; a public inquiry, perhaps, as well as demands for a change in policy and for people to resign. But Facebook — the sixth largest company in the world, whose apps are a source of information for 3.45 billion people, over half the world’s adults — doesn’t simply continue with its programme of cleansing “misinformation”; it doubles down on it.
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SubscribeWhat has been truly disturbing about the response to Covid-19 in the West is not so much that our governments copied what the Chinese government did, with lockdowns, but that the media did what the Chinese media did, with suppression of any narrative not congenial to the powers-that-be.
The Chinese media have an excuse – you’d end up in gaol writing too independently.
The mainstream media in the West, including newer media manifestations such as Facebook have no excuse whatsoever. Their behaviour has been contemptible.
It is pitiful that Donald Trump talked more truth than our free press. Absolutely pitiful.
Shame that Trump accompanied that truth with all sort of other “truths”.
Problem is, as time goes by, Trump’s ‘truths’ seem to become ‘truth’.
He regaled us so many “truths” that statistically some are bound to be right.
OK, thats now the stock response to a very serious issue or issues along with “stopped clock” Good to know.
An argument that actually demands that any of the former POTUS’s statements that were not obviously false should be investigated.
All too often that did not happen. Fringe scientists says “x“; Trump repeats “x“; mainstream scientists and political opponents of Trump condemn x as false without examining it first. Maybe x was baloney, maybe it was not, but without looking into it properly we can never know.
Most of what Trump said about Covid was true. Most of what Fauci and the Democrats and the media said was false. Do some actual research.
Look at the positions on the virus’ origin. Trump was right.
On opening the schools. Trump was right.
On opening businesses. Trump was right.
On mask mandates. Trump was right.
On how transmissible it was outside. Trump was right.
Hydroxycloriquin. Trump was right.
If we listened to Trump, there would have been less deaths, less businesses shuttered, less teen suicide, more people recovered from Covid. Ron Disantis in Florida followed much of what Trump said, and his state fared the best per capita than any other state. NY, NJ, CA, Mich governors, all rejected and did the opposite of what Trump said and they were all disasters. Fact.
Maybe he was right, but that is not my point. To me he was the worst possible advocate for his own cause.
If you keep spitting stuff out endlessly, day in and day out without any restraint or thought, how can one distinguish the wheat from the chaff. In the end it all becomes wheat or chaff, depending on your personal inclinations.
“To me he was the worst possible advocate for his own cause.”
Of course he was to you, you are a TDS Loon.
A problem is that Trump is clever but not intelligent
One can distinguish the wheat from the chaff the way most people do with most things that life presents us with. We THINK, we do some research, we check with other people we read. If you can’t do that, I suspect Trump is not your problem.
You’re both right.
Trump undoubtedly did tend to spout some things which were either not true, or deliberately inflammatory toward his opponents (or both). It is interesting that Thomas Sowell, who is not exactly a man of the Left, has stated that Obama and Trump were two consecutive presidents who had him immediately turning his television off the moment that they appeared on screen. Therefore it is in the general region of human nature to dismiss whatever he said if you were not an enthusiast.
That said, if you are in a position of responsibility, it is incumbent upon you, before you dismiss anything as tripe, to make sure that is really is tripe.
Thus the problem is partly Trump, partly his opponents. Another thing Thomas Sowell said was that if you look at the results of Trump’s policies, whatever his rhetoric, which Dr Sowell deplored, he actually did more good than harm.
Meanwhile Biden’s family makes millions from insider trading and things Hunter has done, which would get anyone else jail time, go unpunished.
“If you keep spitting stuff out endlessly, day in and day out without any restraint or thought,” ?
You must have been very frustrated with the 2.5 years of the Russia hoax, right?
So you’re referring to all the Bolsheviks in the DemoKKKrat party, MSM, etc, right?
Or is it acceptable when members of your filthy, anti-American, Bolshevik party do it, right?
I am genuinely curious to know why you write with such vitriol. Do you know?
Ha ha ha ha ha ….. Imbecile. Trump continually said stupid things, for example that some sort of treatment could be devised in which disinfectant could be injected….
You’re a typical lying demoKKKrat. Trump made an obvious, sarcastic joke and your stage 5 TDS is still taking it seriously. Take your meds, baby killer.
dg8114777, regardless of your view, which I don’t have an opinion on either way, have the decency to show your actual name before you type vitriol to a stranger. It’s cowardice to do otherwise, howver in the right you feel.
He also, at the very same time, mused that ultra violet might be used to combat the Covid 19 virus. Of course, the entire media shrieked with laughter and said what a clown he was.
Just a few days later it came out that research was in fact going on in the USA into that very possibility.
Well, let’s see: he was right about the virus being of Chinese origin. He was right about both HCQ and Ivermectin. He was right that individual states if not cities should be free to have their own rules on masks and lockdowns – and the results of both strategies are there for anyone to see. He was right that the media would manipulate the virus into something it isn’t. And the same folks who love to point to Trump’s untruths are comfortable with the Potato President.
Andrea, how many babies have you killed or facilitated the killing of?
You’re a demoKKKrat, right?
How many slaves did your great grandmother own?
Blacks weren’t people then and a ready to be born baby isn’t a person now. You demoKKKrats are great!
Down vote? Which Part didn’t you like, the disagreeing with slavery, baby kiIIing or both?
Again….dg8114777, nothing that is being debated justifies the abusive tone you are using. Declare yourself by giving us your actual name or get your nasty comments off the otherwise interesting discussion string.
So, ‘statistically’ Trump has an infinitely higher rate of being correct than you do, obviously.
You’re NEVER right, no matter how much Bolshevik vomit you spew. Keep trying, and prove my point, baby killer.
Dirgate I think you are on the wrong forum – we are attempting to maintain a reasonable level of civility here- where one can have a differing opinion without being slandered/bullied (we might also not want to frequent an echo chamber) . If you must have your angry rants best to go somewhere else where they are into that sort of thing – or at least get back on your medication (like many of the rest of us).
Funny how the MSM immediately went full on oppositional defiant when President Trump suggested that maybe this wasn’t a natural occurrence, but instead a manufactured virus. CNN, ABC and NYT are all backpedaling as fast as they can. So many of the things people such as you called lies have been debunked. What else will we see overturned in months to come?
Still suffering from stage 5 TDS, apparently.
How much rent does Trump pay to live in your brain? Or does he live there rent free?
Surely it is a reasonable attitude that if someone in a position of power is caught out lying myriad times that anything he might say be treated as suspect- Trump’s behaviour was/is contemptible regardless if occasionally he may have been closer to some truth. Habitual lying results, in a sensible world, to losing ANY respect in ANY discussion on ANY subject – it is called integrity.
Perhaps you could list those “truths” for us. Maybe you might be able to reduce the size of that list of downvotes you’re attracting.
I’m not sure which parts of the UK free press failed you. The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Express and The Times have certainly not shied away from pointing the finger at the Wuhan laboratory. The BBC has been more circumspect but even it has voiced the suspicion that we all have, namely that the virus was manufactured. Where you are right is in the disgraceful failure of the scientific periodicals to debate this issue.
They shied away from it, but let some speculation percolate through, unlike the ‘New World Order’ Social Media tyrants.
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are just Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria in spirit, and now Bill, the virus, Gates is finally being revealed for the evil thing he is, Bezos will be next hopefully, in being shown how bad a force he is on freedom.
“Zuckerberg and Dorsey are just Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria in spirit, and now Bill, the virus, Gates is finally being revealed for the evil thing he is, Bezos will be next”
=
eComintern
Please feel free to correct me, but I read on Politifacts that the US were providing funds for the Wuhan Lab, but then I also read that a regular blowhard on Fox News was calling out Fauci on this. Trump stopped the funding apparently. Who to beleive!
It could be the Wuhan lab bit is ‘acceptable’ but not that it was least part sponsored by the US, and this is driving the narrative?
Gain of function research was banned in the US under Obama, but those American bodies which had previously carried it out merely outsourced it to other labs, some of which may not have had the same bio-security standards as American labs. One lab that was used for this was in Wuhan.
Trump lifted the ban, but whether all such research was then repatriated, I have no idea.
Wuhan was largely funded by Remainers favourite Monsieur Barnier…EU fame
China bought part of a big MSM Company in Brasil, Bandeirantes Group. I do not listen to their jornal anymore.
Far be it from me to defend FB, but weren’t they simply falling in line with the official mainstream narrative and therefore, isn’t it the the sudden change by and hypocrisy of those espousing and determining this narrative that is the real story here? We were all told we were delusional to think C19 was man-made. The WHO told us, as did our trusted scientists (the ones we were supposed to listen to, at any rate), as did Biden, as did all the MSM, and they all kow-towed to the CCP. Trump was a racist, remember? This is real 1984 stuff when they can bend reality with such ease, and we’re all supposed to forget the words they stood by only a few short months ago. It’s like globally coordinated gaslighting.
The point is they shouldn’t have fallen in line. They should have stood up for free and open discourse (on this and many matters prior to and following it) because that is their responsibility as an open forum used by half the world’s population.
They and Twitter shouldn’t be a source of news for billions. They and Twitter shouldn’t be where news reporters cull most of their stories and information from. They shouldn’t be how politicians engage with us, and we with them. But they are. And if they are, then they have a responsibility to uphold open discourse.
But if tomorrow three billion people closed their accounts, I would consider that a satisfactory resolution.
An organization that uses Nick Clegg as its adviser is hardly likely to have ‘free and open discourse’. He has helped to weed out anyone he disagrees with politically , which means they don’t have a platform. They have acted with a political agenda which means they shouldn’t have the code which protects them from liability -they were being questioned by congress about this last year.
“Nick Clegg… has helped to weed out anyone he disagrees with politically…”
That’ll be almost everyone, then, including most of his own party.
The system then showed they were attempting to silence certain voices by preventing them moving to Parler. Its one thing saying I don’t want you eating in my restaurant’ its another saying ‘I don’t want you eating in anyone’s restaurant’.
Want Evil? Check out the Milliband family, who grew up sitting on the knee of Hobsbawm, the unrepentant Stalinist Academic Communism University Lecturer (and the father Milliband, a communist radical)
David works on the Rothschild Trilateral Fund, “Miliband is one of six members of the Global Advisory Board of Macro Advisory Partners, which advises multinational corporations, sovereign wealth funds, investors and governments” “David Wright Miliband is the president and chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee”
The list is huge of ex-British politicos who are behind the scenes as massive Swamp Creatures, Blair himself is king of one part of the darkest swamp….
It seems a very long time ago that Cameron and Brown were regularly using the formula “I agree with Nick”.
Remember the official Facebook slogan “You can’t handle the Truth, so we will protect you from it.”
I take your points but I’m not clear as to why, simply because they’re popular and used by so many people, they ought to stand up for free speech? Aren’t they a private company? I guess I might not like that they have a monopoly and if they’ve cheated to get that monopoly then they’d rightly be subject to censure or legal action, but I don’t see how being popular means they’ve got some sort of guardianship on free speech? Again, I’m not defending them (I don’t have a FB account, and what little knowledge I have of Zuckerberg suggests that he and I would not see eye to eye on most things), but surely their only obligation is to their shareholders. Their aim is to make money, pure and simple.
Related, i can tell you I find it laughable that so many companies have got all warm and fuzzy with their advertising in the past few decades – they want to convince us that they care about us, that we’re precious to them, which is why they want to heat our homes, or sell us cars, or groceries, or provide us with financial services… um, no, they want to make money, and sentimentality is good for the bottom line. In the case of FB what was good for the bottom line was to acquiesce, especially given the very vocal criticism they got for supposedly spreading Russian sponsored disinformation and handing Trump the presidency. They upset the wrong people.
But this is all a digression. My exception to this article is that it misses the bigger picture which is to ask how come it’s now okay to suggest that C19 came from a lab when previously that thought was shut down (and from the pieces I’ve read, we’re also supposed to be grateful that this is now permitted)?
FB, in this respect, seem to me to have been caught unawares. That’s quite funny, actually – there they were, doing what they were bid to, reinforcing the mainstream narrative, so as not to get into trouble… and all of a sudden, the narrative changed … but no one sent them the memo.
To my point, we are being gaslighted on a grand scale, we must forget our own memories, deny our own cognition on this matter. It is so blatant I cannot help but think that they believe us all to be that stupid, or that apathetic, or themselves so powerful (and we so weak). Irrespective, if things are this broken, if truth really is this malleable, then we’re in big trouble.
The points raised in this comment are correct. FB and Twitter absolutely should not be relied upon as sources of accurate information and news. Similarly, they should not be used as a forum for serious discourse. At least, not until their apparently partisan and arbitrary censorship policies are radically altered.
It’s the job of the media (in free countries anyway) to question what politicians are saying. FB may not think that’s their job, but they should at least facilitate debate. The way they all fell into line, in order to make the public at large fall into line, was sinister and bodes ill for healthy political debate.
Facebook and Twitter are evil, they are purposefully corrupting the truth to drive the world to a Neo-fas* ist-Communist-Global Elite run Feudalism. 1984 will be found to be a history book, written before it even happened. Zuck and Dors are ‘Big Uncles’ in the forming system – why else do you think they promote global lies, and suppress global truth?
Because they are LibDems who think the democratic vote should be ignored?
Not “falling in line with the official narrative” is part and parcel of a free society. It’s not the role of FB to determine, shape, or alter the narrative. It is a platform and nothing more. FB was all too willing to silence people that govt itself could not silence.
Which raises the question of whether FB in silencing those who question the official government narrative is actually acting at the behest of the government.
In the American context, even though they are a private corporation, if their censorship is at the behest of the government, there are Supreme Court precedents that could be put together to support a suit against them: Norwood v. Harrison (a case about segregation, not free speech) quotes the district court finding in Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, “”[i]t is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Together with the precedent of Marsh v. Alabama which applied the First Amendment to private property in the context of a company town seeking to suppress speech disfavored by the company’s owners, this provides at least a reasonable argument at law that, Section 230 notwithstanding, acts of censorship by corporations, even of content on their own servers if the public is invited to place content on them, if they are done at the behest of the government or persons in the government, represent a violation of civil rights which could be brought before a court for redress.
You ask the wrong question – both are the same. Try reading ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve’ https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X to see how the entire world is run by the invisible people who run the world’s debt. (all money is debt actually – and the Central Banks run much of it, and then the non-gov debt, debt is all)
The same people who were behind the throne of every king are now behind the capital of every nation – manipulating the money and are the most powerful things in the globe. They own the MSM, FB, all Political Parties (the Donor Class). Davos, Bilderberg, G-7, G-20, World Bank, the IMF and its Fiat currency the SDR, Basel III, World Bank, and everything else which controls money and political opinion.
“It’s not the role of FB to determine, shape, or alter the narrative”
FB (and the MSM and Twitter) is 100% about shaping, or altering the narrative. They are like the Brown Shirts 1930 Germany, they are creating the fake truth so tyranny may take over.
They ALSO have a second, very dark, side. They harvest your life like e-vampires. Every picture with names linked is run through facial recognition, the GPS and date read, then they know more names and relations – and their pictures and narratives have been read, and pictures face recognized. Google Building is used to place every person in every location – it is EXACTLY like the CCP Social Credit Score methods where they own your history and every bit of you. Everyone you know, are related to, where you live, go, what you buy, do, your net searches, your fetishes – they know it all. That is what they do. They are the New World Order. They are not good.
Fair point, but they don’t get a pass for ‘falling in line with the official mainstream narrative.’ They know damn well that they have a great deal of say over what the narrative is.
Social networks should have to choose between being regulated as publishers or as telecoms platforms. They’d have to choose the latter and, like telephone companies, would have no right – nor duty – to censor anything. If a post breaks the law, let it be up to the authorities to point it out and ask for its removal.
You’re right, and in that context, Facebook is straddling two stools deliberately and taking advantage. Zuckerberg is a liberal, and nowadays, that means illiberal. It’s not hard to see why Facebook acts the way it does.
And his henchman, Nick Clegg, used to lead the Liberal Democrats, a party that, these days, is neither liberal, nor especially enamoured of democracy, especially when it doesn’t go their way.
THIS!! If desired, and well marked, they could have two parts: an open forum and a managed forum.
Most importantly, they should have easily understood terms of service and should be strictly held to these by the courts.
An excellent article. I hope Unherd will also publish articles on how to combat the power of the big tech companies. Should they be treated as monopolies and broken up using antitrust law? How exactly could that happen? Who or what will ensure the big tech companies don’t misuse their power of censorship in the future.
Much like the discussion around progressive politics and cancel culture, Unherd (and other outlets) provide excellent analysis of the phenomenon and its history but devote much less effort to proposing workable solutions.
“Should they be treated as monopolies and broken up using antitrust law?”
Absolutely! Hitting them with a punitive tax bill is perhaps the way to start
NO!! That’s merely oppression by the gov.
If desired, and well marked, they could have two parts: an open forum and a managed forum.
Most importantly, they should have easily understood terms of service and should be strictly held to these by the courts.
My personal choice, effective immediately, is to take every possible action to eliminate their ability to make any money off of me and to quit using their services.
Excellent idea – withdraw support for psychopathic corporations – it is the only way to retrain them. we must start in our own lives-EG I buy cheap clothes from Bangladesh NOT CHINA, I AM NOT ON SOCIAL media, i dont buy imported food , i dont invest in abusing corporations , dont buy any new stuff, minimize power, petrol,Dont eat meat cos every farmed animal is a corporate etc horror story etc etc etc ALL WE NEED IS TO GET THE NUMBERS UP AND THE CORPORATIONS WILL BECOME A LOT KINDER because they want our money and we get to choose how we spend it- Joe average does not realize how much power he has and he certainly is not using it !!
As said by others, better tax enforcement.
Also, they should have to display prominently what they do with people’s data. Their business model is heavily based on the data they collect.
This , as always, is the issue – figuring out corruption these days is like shooting fish in a barrel. Giving people a place to moan and share info is only the first (simple) step. The tenticles of the octopus are solidly entrenched in the fabric of our lives – esp the banking system (we can turn off social media tomorrow if we want – I never turned it on – just smarter I guess). So the point of a meeting place needs to be focussed on how to SURVIVE (or better thrive) in the belly of this beast – or does UNHERD remain just a venting platform for rightfully pissed off informed folk. The starting point of survival/thriving might be the reinstigation of the extended family unit (does not need to be biological) to ensure the well being of all members rather than relying on any state sanity etc Immigrant families operate in this way and often do very well because they dont expect governments to be very wise-they just take responsibility for their own families and get on with life. ( I do know that this somewhat simplistic etc). HOW ABOUT MORE PRACTICAL IDEAS AND LESS WHINGING ??
However did the nasty social misfit, known as Zuckerberg, (beautifully pictured in the movie “The Social Network”, with all his evil and devious geekery on full display) end up controlling the world ? To add insult to injury, his henchman is former deputy PM and political nonentity Clegg. What a world we live in ! I’m happy to retreat to rural France, or for that matter, to rural Cote d’Ivoire.
Zuckerberg would make a great James Bond villain with his obsession with controlling the world via data and the media.
Easily as big a story as the Wuhan leak, is the smearing and censorship of Ivermectin. Hear Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying discuss this (without even going into the detail of the meta anlalyses already done and the big ‘trial’ being done by by interested parties. Shocking on many levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMWYmTl-qI
Yes, I always watch Bret and Heather. We’ve know for some months that Ivermectin is very effective against Covid, but there’s no money in it for Big Pharma, and thus no money it for the political parties who are partly funded by Big Pharma.
They wanted to create the narrative that everyone has an equal chance of getting covid & then an equal chance of dying (there was even a BBC Radio from a children’s ward where ‘matron’ claimed the ward was overwhelmed with children ill with covid-a claim later retracted) .By allowing that the virus may be manufactured, it will just induce more fear-possibly what is required to get people to take the vaccine.? The news wasn’t very happy when Trump got covid then recovered quite quickly using this treatment. They even started to claim he hadn’t had it-one minute he accused of being a super-spreader , the next of fibbing. Under normal circumstances wouldn’t you want people to feel reassured. Instead we are shown something that is normal ,old people who go from being old and able to old and unable, usually due to a variety of things that join together , as though it is unnatural and a national tragedy. Various celebs keep posting that their parent has died of covid-would they normally tell us about an elderly person’s death?
I only picked up very recently that Trump had been given Ivermectin. Here we have an old, obese person who rallied in days.
Which does make you wonder about Boris. He was very much the exception not the rule as everyone else around him just got better normally . Perhaps he has underlying health issues? The media certainly wanted to stress his being overweight was a factor ( thereby claiming all over weight people are at risk) , yet as you say Trump was ok after about 48 hours.
Lots of people of Boris’s age and younger needed significant hospital treatment. Trump was pumped full of everything (except disinfectant) it was not a randomised controlled trial. When they started testing all care home residents, some completely asymptomatic ones tested positive. Age is the most significant factor followed by sex – men are twice as likely to die as women. The only age range where more women have died is 90+ because there are far more women 90+ than men. The life expectancy of women has been greater than men for decades. It is all probabilistic and not deterministic.
Amazing to me that so few of the Unherd community (which is mostly UK and US) seem to have so little interest in this story – yet it is huge and speaks to all the rotten organisations inter alia WHO, social media, corporate media, big pharma and governments. Including the UK and US governments who are willing to see their citizens die rather than roll out a cheap, ultra safe drug that has had such promising results against Covid. They are simply ignoring results of meta analyses sent to them.
If their concern was getting people better , they had a funny way of showing it. Theres a crisis so the GPs disappear, everyone elses health problems are put on hold but they assemble then dismantle Nightingale hospitals?Won’t prescribe a cheap drug or recommend vitamin D? The police even stopped people from going out in the sunshine , the media don’t do a mass exercise for health or dig for victory but instead want everyone cowering indoors afraid.Possibly wanted to see how many extra people they could kill off & save on their pensions?
And so many of the citizens enable this. I would have thought that a site like this (in the main push back) would have leapt on this, but they disappoint.
Its as though they are discussing an abstract problem , not something that has been used to try to destroy much of the private economy.Its more important for some to make a cheap joke about Trump & disinfectant than wonder what our health personnel think they are doing
In today’s conservative woman is the resignation letter from a nurse-listing many sad things that have happened this year
Facebook is merely an unelected, unaccountable law unto itself. It clearly doesn’t give a toss what people think about its pronouncements.
It simply suppresses any ideas or stories that it doesn’t like and gives undue attention to its own pet causes.
Thus the Russia/Trump nonsense was allowed to be speculated on for years. But any suggestion that there is a Biden/Ukraine link was quickly suppressed.
Cancel culture is one of the Left’s favourite weapons, but Facebook is doing it on a worldwide stage. It really needs reining in at some point.
You obviously ALL are addicted to social media-if it is so bad why not just turn it off- rather like telling the alcoholic to just stop drinking. Why is it so hard to turn off-I truly dont get why intelligent people keep using malevolent social media. I really would like to know-is it some kind of desperate need to be ‘connected’ to many others every minute of every day – a kind of global loneliness – cant people handle being solitary for part of their day. Has social media shaped human’s psyches so quickly that they can no longer tolerate any degree of solitude ??? I truly dont get it – but then i have never been on social media – so i must have missed out on the brain washing ???
Not just FB. Also LinkedIn and YouTube, the latter of which took the extraordinary step of taking down the video of a Senate committee hearing where an MD was talking about the use of Ivermectin. In the US, we keep being lectured how “it’s only censorship if govt does it,” which may have legal standing but is otherwise nonsense.
Free speech isn’t just a matter of law, it’s part of a larger societal construct to promote the exchange of ideas. FB and others have appointed themselves gatekeepers in stifling this exchange, and many in govt are quite happy to outsource the job of silencing critics to entities who can get away with it.
When I tried to post an article in the Mail on line of 24 April 2021 they banned me from using Facebook for one month! So much for freedom of speech.
One point I would like to add which pre-dates the apparent lab-leak dated to November 2019 was that a Chinese hospital doctor was already blowing the whistle about the epidemic in September 2019, which means that for him to have noticed the repeated characteristics of the disease, it must already have been in circulation for at least a couple of months, pre-dates it to July 2019. The Chinese authorities silenced this doctor, whose name escapes me, by threatening him with prison if he published any further notifications about the epidemic. Sadly he died of COVID19 in February 2021, having caught it while caring for patients in Wuhan’s main hospital
Another oddity was that directly after the scientists at the Wuhan Virology Institute also blew the whistle about COVID19, the Institute was shut and all their mobile phones and computers were disconnected from the web and phone networks.
So this clearly shows that China has done its best to cover and hide its ‘mistakes’ or as I would call it, it’s acts of bio-terrorism/biological warfare. They don’t care how many of their own population they kill off, since their population is so large any way, and as it first affected the elderly and weaker members of society who were unproductive, this was a useful cull for the Chinese authorities.
I think you are talking about Chinese ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who died in February 2020 (not 2021). He tried to raise the alarm in Wuhan about Covid-19 in late December 2019, with the first email we have from him about it dated December 30. Not September 2019.
Freddie, as ever, bravo!
I have a question, though: how do you define “outlandish medical quackery”?
I believe *this* is the question that needs answering.
Mallard imaginaire?
Presumably any ol’ canard.
Where the bill’s too big?
But Facebook, Twitter, etc. will continue to duck the question.
Anywhere Nick Clegg is involved is bound to be a disaster characterised by incompetence, wokeness and dishonesty.
In the crux of an idea of freedom of speech is not relation between the state and individual, but, between the power and individual. If power to supress individual freedom is clout by private entities with sufficient leverage to restrain the individual freedoms the law should act upon. This is more so if a company effectively controls traffic of information, data and ideas.
Facebook is a cancer on our democracy – along with the the cellpool that is twitter. Facebook should be made strictly legally liable for every single thing posted on their site. Yes, they would probably go out of business. Tough.
I think only incitement to direct and immediate violence should be censored – with everything else it’s a case of ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ as my latin teacher used to say nearly 70 years ago, proving that this problem is as old as time.
I always imagined the truth-intermediaries, fact-checkers, protectors of earth and justice at Faceblook as wise and old, dark-robed, tortoise-like, ferocious, and tall-than-average, when they’re probably 23-year-old Ivy League grads who don’t know in what century the Civil War was fought.
Extremely woke 23-year-old Ivy League grads who don’t know in what century the Civil War was fought.
FaceBook uses third-party factcheckers like PolitiFact.
I’m sure there is an entire floor at One Zuckerberg Plaza dedicated to keeping heterodox opinions from finding the top of the news feed. Plus, “third-party factchecker” has the ring of objectivity when we know they’re all batting for the woke team.
I deleted my FB account a few years ago and have never regretted doing so or missed it, in fact I had a sense of relief having done so. I would recommend others to try it, there is life outside social media, and it’s good.
YES join the revolution – I promise the survival rate is quite high !
Facebook’s Covid-19 policy is very odd. Had not read it before Freddie’s article. Many of the things it bans have changed over time.
“Claims that the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 are much lower than the official figure (requires additional information and/or context)” Carl Heneghan pointed out death recording had problems last year and it was changed.
“Claims that wearing a face mask does not help prevent the spread of COVID-19”. We were being told not to wear them early last year.
“Claims that COVID-19 vaccines kill or seriously harm people (such as causing blood clots)”. Pretty certain clots kill some, though a very small number of, people.
There are many others
I never joined Facebook or spent any time on its website. And I never will.
But I have spent the occasional hour writing comments on New York Times articles, including a couple of hours last night on an opinion piece by Charles Blow on the “insurrection” at the Capitol on January 6.
In a comment I made the point, delicately rather than stridently, that it’s hard to call the event an insurrection when no one has been charged with that crime (under 18 USC § 2383 — Rebellion or insurrection). A couple of other commentators countered my point, and we had a good discussion going.
My comment disappeared during the night. So did the 7 or 8 comments under it. They’re all gone.
The New York Times says that “comments are moderated for civility”. My comments were civil, and were posted by the Times accordingly after moderation. However, the Times also says that readers can also flag comments: “If a comment is inappropriate, contains deliberate misinformation, or you suspect that a comment has been posted by a political propaganda network, please flag that comment for spam.”
As one of the rare conservatives who comment on the New York Times, I see my comments removed regularly. Though most comments survive, if I contend that there was no insurrection on January 6, that comment does not last long. If I argue that there is little evidence that non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns, masks and handwashing help mitigate the Covid-19 epidemic, my argument disappears.
I can understand the liberal bent of the New York Times, even though I think it should be more liberal in allowing conservative opinions from commenters. Facebook, though, seems like it should be different. More moderate in its moderation. More and more, it’s not.
All the “liberal” newspapers are similarly illiberal and censorious. The Guardian is an utter joke in this regard.
I think you are somewhat naive as to the true nature of the NYT and Guardian etc. I would give them my money if I were you (I assume you are subscriber if you can leave comments).
I’m not shocked, or even surprised, by the New York Times’s petty practices contradicting its professed principles. More bewildered and bemused.
I do not pay for a subscription to the New York Times, but get access for free through my public library.
I like to read a variety of news and opinion sources, but don’t like Google News or other aggregators. My hometown newspaper is the San Francisco Chronicle, but I gave up on it years ago.
Facebook and Twitter I never go near.
Choose your preferred propaganda carefully. The major ‘news’ outlets are all propaganda now. Goebbels has won.
Happened to me all the time with the Guardian. What usually happened was that I took issue with the censorship with increasing vehemency, and then my ability to comment would be removed. I would then change identity and have another go, always with the same result. Last time it took less than 48 hours for my posting privileges to be revoked, and I finally lost my appetite for engaging with the people who write for that paper. I only kept it up because I read it religiously for thirty odd years, and had come to think of it as ‘my paper’. Not any more it isn’t – now it is a …well, I don’t know what it is. Not meant for me, anyway.
The Telegraph, by comparison, is far more tolerant, but not perfect.
Unherd, though, seems to allow one to sail closer to the edge, and seems to actively avoid the impulse to censor. It feels like breathing clean air again. A little while longer and I will be paying for the privilege to read and contribute.
That’s interesting. I occasionally comment on articles at the Guardian, and have never had a problem. My comments there seem to get little attention from censors or readers. Too bland, I suppose.
I found Unherd a couple of weeks ago when I saw an interview with Matthew Crawford on the corruption of science. I too find the air here very breathable. It’s like taking off a facemask and feeling free.
I don’t know if it’s physiological or psychological, but I can’t breath right with a mask on. Two more weeks here in California, and the masks can come off for good. I’ve been vaccinated for months now. June 15 can’t come too soon for me.
Don’t you have the option to declare yourself medically exempt? I guess US law doesn’t mirror our own in all respects.
Here he could declare himself female or black.
All you need to do is be mildly critical of the author of a piece. The author is, of course, entitled to be as foul as he or she likes about an approved target, but must be protected from criticism at all costs.
Try this experiment: be as vitriolic as you can be about Boris Johnson. Then try the same with Kier Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn or Dianne Abbott. See what happens/
You better pay your UNHERD membership !
Congratulation World you have all been Zuckered by Mr Zuckerberg organization!!
Who, though, is listening? Zuckerberg? Doesn’t look like it.
There is a question the world’s governments should be asking themselves: how necessary is Facebook?
It is just a platform at the end of the day, a place where people hang out. Does it need to provide news?
My guess is that governments want to keep Facebook happy for the same reason the UK government doesn’t want to ditch the BBC – it is, potentially, a useful propaganda channel.
In order to be able to expand into every corner of human life Facebook in turn keeps governments happy by showing willing to censor information that is not government approved.
It is an unholy alliance. It ought to be possible for a government (hello Australia) to tell facebook it cannot provide news in its country. Others may follow suit. It hardly matters if governments like the Chinese or Russian permit Facebook to disseminate approved news since it makes the company just another arm of the state broadcaster. It matters to us, though, because if we are not careful the endgame is countries like China deciding what news we can receive.
“we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”
Is that true, then, that Covid was manufactured from Facebook apps? Wow, no wonder they wanted to keep that quiet.
What’s worse, idiots or idiots who can’t construct sentences?
Umm, the lab escape hypothesis, for which both the US intelligence establishment and the WHO want to see China allow proper investigation on account of obvious safety issues, doesn’t subsume any claims the virus is artificial. It just proposes that an unrecognized infection occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology during studies of SARS-like bat coronaviruses the lab is known to have been engaged in shortly before the pandemic started. Not hard to see how: Covid often leads to vague, nonspecific symptoms and this happened in the middle of flu season. So a worker got infected and went home to infect family, and it took almost a month for public health to notice the cases of atypical pneumonia that followed. Hospitals, especially in a city where the air is as bad as it is in Wuhan, treat a bevy of patients for respiratory problems every winter.
I don’t recommend getting news from Zuckerberg’s empire of rancor, confusion and secrecy, a website once intended to help college students keep in touch with friends—I still remember the “Facebook wall” users put their mementos on about 12 years ago. If curious, silent censorship can be detected by asking someone who’s not befriended you on the site if they can see your posts.
The top multidisciplinary journals Science in the US and Nature in the UK have reported suspicions regarding the WIV since April 2020; Science finally carried an open letter on the matter with China stalling so long. They rate the hypothesis unlikely but not improbable enough to dismiss out of hand. But we shouldn’t forget the element of national pride here. Would America turn over samples from its US Army AMRIID on the WHO’s request while submission raised a firestorm in our media, even if a new disease had spread from Maryland to Shanghai?
Unlikely the US would turn over samples, but almost certain a transparent investigation would be conducted, and international participation might be solicited.
FB was meant to be a way for college age people to socialize. The problem is that as social media spread, FB never really grew up. They sought to be immature and petty regarding opinions with which the FB heirarchy disagreed, which is fine when you’re twenty-something, but an attitude one should outgrow by the time they reach 30. The problem is the original users think they should be able to surround themselves only with people and opinions they like. As my Mom told me when I was 14-you aren’t the bellybutton of the Universe. The ability to read all sides and make a qualified judgement is a critical part of maturity. How fragile are those values if some anonymous editor feels the need to shut down all opposing views? As Americans, we used to be better than this. Instead of being the means of conveying ideas, FB administrators seek to be the originators. That’s not the way this freedom thing works.
Sentient Android #6 needs his power cell disconnected, permanently.
What is alarming for me as that the constitutional law basics of law school should trigger a conversation that the first amendment does apply to social media platforms. I’ve been stunned that such critiques are rare and in fact the newspapers carry columns stating why it doesn’t apply. This itself is disinformation. Once you open your business to the public, constitutional scrutiny is triggered. If this wasn’t so, you could still have country clubs banning Jews. This is basic. When it comes to the first amendment, the US Supreme Court in its seminal case Pruneyard v. Robbins, a case out of California, held, “..First Amendment does not prevent a private shopping center owner from prohibiting the distribution on center premises of handbills unrelated to the center’s operations — does not ex proprio vigore limit a State’s authority to exercise its police power or its sovereign right to adopt in its own constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution.” Important to note is that the Supreme Court held that a state can confer additional first amendment protection. This is what Florida is doing. Accordingly I think they have a right to reign in the social media platforms. The question will be if it is tailored enough to withstand constitutional scrutiny.
The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech”. It seems hard to take that as imposing any obligation on social media platform providers.
At what point do beople get arrested?
So… I seem to remember Zuckerberg just wanting to be left alone and Congress hauling him in to answer questions about why Facebook was allowing “misinformation” to be posted. What else was he suppossed to do in the face of governmental threats?
Could it be argued that the censorship carried out by Facebook and Youtube and others directly caused deaths, and could they be sued for this? More generally, could the censorship of all activities not deemed to be illegal be banned?
Farcebooks wokery knows no bounds, whilst we are distracted they’ve changed their algorithms and any comment that shows your a thinker and/or not hard left means comments made sometimes years ago are being hidden and you get a ‘warning’ against you, I fully expect to get banned shortly once enough ‘warnings’ have been accumulated.
This is what the liberal media establishment wanted — and in many ways they were right. My personal conviction is they have no right and should not even think about this but we all know a doofus uncle or friend who gets all their misinformation from Facebook and other dubious sources. Not all of us are equipped with adequate judgement and the experience of being natively online and knowing how scams and fake news generally look like.
Facebook didn’t want this power and tried to avoid responsibility but the fact is they’re a news aggregator and publisher and they need some sort of filter. When they’re wrong, they’re wrong but they couldn’t just let misinformation and disinformation flourish, as it would have.
“couldn’t just let misinformation and disinformation flourish”
Like say counting being stopped for the night. Then hey in the morning 50000 votes found for the other guy?
Like say censoring comments such as a pandemic is when 40% die not when 2% die.
I have other examples, but the auto censor here will take them down…..
You can disagree with the amount of censorship (and I do) but you cannot claim a news aggregator and publisher should let *any* comment and bit of “news” be published with any responsibility for its contents.
There were pogroms in Sri Lanka a few years ago where the Muslim minority were rounded up and attacked — it was based on some faked and doctored videos shared through whatsapp that riled up a crowd. Information and data flows freely and quickly and without brakes and checks on it these things are bound to happen.
Which goes back to my earlier question, how do you define “outlandish medical quackery” (or any other quackery)?
Perhaps they simply need to stop pushing content and let the feed be some kind of stream of consciousness. But then FB (and others) would simply collapse.
Exactly. They’d lose a lot of traffic and money and they don’t want that. Facebook wanted to have their cake and eat it too – but they were forced to regulate and censor because that’s what the government needs. Where the line is drawn is up for debate, and clearly they were wrong (and continue to be wrong) but I don’t think it is reasonable to expect them not to comply by the law.
but they were forced to regulate and censor because that’s what the government needs. So govt outsourced the silencing of opposition to FB because govt itself could not do it. Please explain how this is a feature of a free society. When the govt sees itself as needing to cut off debate, that’s a problem.
I wonder, there is wahtsapp that does not moderate, and you get 100% of what your contacts share: has a study been made on how things circulate on the various platforms?
One thing for sure, FB, Instagram and WhatsApp cannot be owned by the same individual.
Facebook might not have wanted this power. But they have gladly accepted and wielded it for overtly political ends. I knew from the start that social media would spawn nothing but narcissistic nonsense and had nothing to do with it, but I had no idea that Big Tech would become something so wholly political, censorious and tyrannical.
The fought hard to not accept the responsibility — Zuckerberg went to congress multiple times to deny responsibility and culpability. If you kept up you’d know this.
I know they’re tyrannical, that’s why they shouldn’t have this power, but they do have it and it was thrust upon them.
Nonsense….Zuckerberg denies, and that equals freedom from culpability? No one forced Facebook to censor. It wasn’t a requirement of their existence. No politician demanded it of them. They just decided to do it.
It was either they censor and regulate or they stop publishing and aggregating media. They chose the former.
I have been very aware of Zuckerberg’s trips to Congress and Jack Dorsey’s bizarre Zoom meetings with Ted Cruz etc. Quite frankly, the politicians don’t have a clue and the Big Tech overlords don’t give a damn.
Don’t talk nonsense. If he didn’t want the ‘responsibility’ for censoring the news so that it fits his own world view he could simply step away from it. Or better still, close it down.
Facebook didn’t want this power and tried to avoid responsibility but the fact is they’re a news aggregator and publisher and they need some sort of filter.
1) you’re going to have to provide evidence that FB “didn’t want this power” because it appears the opposite is true. This group is quite happy silencing certain people.
2) FB is a platform, not a publisher. If it were the latter, it would be subject to the same rules as newspapers and broadcast outlets.
3) why do they need a filter? They built a platform and invited everyone to participate, irrespective of ideology. In truth, users are the product, not the customer. Anything with free use implies that the user is not the client.
they couldn’t just let misinformation and disinformation flourish, as it would have. yet, their actions have done just, whether it is silencing talk about Ivermectin or HCQ or Chinese complicity in releasing the virus. Much like antifa and the ‘anti-racist’ crowd, FB has become exactly what it pretends to hate.
Not to mention that joining Facebook is free, which is the dumbest idea ever. Nefarious characters can create an endless amount of fake profiles and if one is shut down they simply open another hundred.
FB is not a platform because the content you see is curated.
WhatsApp is a platform.