Gasp! Facebook admits in court ‘fact-checks’ are really just leftwing corporate groupthink

While most people are taught the very basic difference between fact and opinion at a young age, some time in elementary school, Facebook is still struggling.

Journalist John Stossel brought a defamation suit against Facebook for flagging a post from him about California wildfires as false information. However, in a tuck-and-roll maneuver to try and evade the lawsuit, Facebook took a page out of Rachel Maddow’s playbook. Maddow defeated a similar lawsuit filed by One America News in 2019 after she alleged the news network was Kremlin-paid propaganda. While Maddow was knowingly making a false statement and treating it as a fact, in court, her lawyers played up the opinionated nature of her show claiming that most viewers understand that what she portrays is often exaggerated. This argument proved fruitful for Maddow and she won the case.

Similarly, Facebook tried the same tactic in its defense against Stossel; however, the tech monopoly seems not to have thought through the consequences of such an admission. Facebook claimed in court that their fact-checkers are third-party companies who are entitled to exercise their “protected opinion.” In other words, Facebook admits the fact-checking companies they employ are permitted to pick and choose which posts to target based on those companies’ opinion and political persuasion. This confirms what many knew all along–these companies are not so much “fact-checkers” as propaganda peddlers.

Of course this is not a revelation to any right-leaning person who uses social media. Conservatives have often found themselves falling prey to the tech overlords in the social media inquisition while progressive Antifa loyalists are allowed to threaten and blatantly promote violence unchecked. All the while, these tech companies ensure us that they apply their rules and regulations fairly and equitably. Well now the veil has been removed, and Facebook has confessed to their partisan behavior in a court of law.

What are the consequences of this biased propaganda peddling? According to a Gallup poll, a paltry 7% of U.S. adults claim to have “a great deal” of faith in mainstream media, and only 29% have “a fair amount” of faith. If people are not relying on the mainstream media for their news and information on current events, then they must be using social media to keep up. Pew Research Center claims that over half of Twitter users regularly get their news from the site, and almost half of Facebook users do the same.

This means that half of the undoubtedly millions of Twitter and Facebook users are ingesting news that is highly cultivated and groomed for their consumption. These “fact-checking” companies are allowed to run amok labeling only choice posts with the scarlet letter of “misleading” or “partially false,” completely removing or censoring others, and letting blatant lies remain unsullied. These millions of people then go out into the world thinking that Hunter Biden is an upstanding business man with an affinity for parmesan cheese.

This begs the question: is this a problem, and if so how can it be fixed? Some say the partisan nature of social media is not a problem, contesting that these are private companies with the freedom to run their businesses and platforms as they see fit. The knee-jerk reaction is to create new platforms owned and operated by conservatives. But that begets an even worse problem.

A hallmark of a civilized and evolving society is debate and diversity of thought. Segregation on social media along the lines of political leanings creates echo chambers. Actual false information would perpetuate unchecked, and reality would become more and more divergent for both sides until peaceful coexistence is impossible. The fear and responses to Covid are a perfect example of divergent realities caused by segregated mainstream media narratives. Things would only be worse with social media segregation added.

Facebook brazenly said the quiet part out loud by admitting to allowing partisan politics to run rampant on their platform. They admitted that they have redefined fact to include opinion and by doing so facts are now debatable, and proof is irrelevant. And that’s the postmodern way, as anyone who has endured higher education in recent decades would understand. Facts and reality are malleable, according to the whims of those in power. The worldview of woke academics is now so infectious in our society, no one bats an eye when it’s used as a legitimate defense in court.