‘Fact-checkers’ in panic mode after Facebook dumps them for free speech
The nation’s “fact-checkers” are in panic mode this week after Facebook announced it has opted for free speech.
WND reported Tuesday that Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has announced he’s ending the social media site’s censorship practices.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S,” Zuckerberg announced.
Now Business Insider is reporting that the International Fact-Checking Network, a large part of the industry supporting Facebook’s previous censorship practices, is in turmoil.
The organization called an emergency meeting of all of its members following the announcement that involves all of Meta’s branches, including Facebook.
Zuckerberg said that censorship team will be replaced with “community notes,” similar to what billionaire Elon Musk installed on Twitter, now X, when he took it over.
The meeting “is expected to draw between 80 and 100 attendees from the IFCN’s network of fact-checkers, which spans 170 organizations worldwide,” Business Insider explained.
It confirmed, “The IFCN has long played a crucial role in Meta’s fact-checking ecosystem by accrediting organizations for Meta’s third-party program, which began in 2016 after the U.S. presidential election that year. Certification from the IFCN signaled that a fact-checking organization met rigorous editorial and transparency standards. Meta’s partnerships with these certified organizations became a cornerstone of its efforts to combat misinformation, focusing on flagging false claims, contextualizing misinformation, and curbing its spread.”
However, the end result of the so-called “fact-checking” has been for leftists to use the industry to call out what they have labeled as misinformation, disinformation and even malinformation and insist on censorship, regardless of the accuracy of the information. That has left many conservative individuals, web sites, comments and discussions in a black hole of suppression.
The meeting was called for Wednesday, but it was uncertain what results would be announced.
IFCN director Angie Holan confirmed the meeting was in response to Meta’s announcement.
“People are upset because they saw themselves as partners in good standing with Meta, doing important work to make the platform more accurate and reliable.”
The report explained, “An employee at PolitiFact, one of the first news organizations to partner with Meta on its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in December 2016, said the company received virtually no warning from Meta before the program was killed.”
It was only weeks ago that a congressional report confirmed that the censorship schemes assembled and implemented by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, working with social media platforms, were “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, already had admitted in a letter to Congress that he was censoring Americans on the orders of Biden.
In fact, he charged, “Senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor COVID-19 content, including humor & satire. … I believe the government pressure was wrong & I regret we were not more outspoken about it.”
Facebook firing fact-checkers! Claims it’s ‘completely’ ending censorship, restoring ‘free speech’