<\/p>\n
Claire Bernish
\nThe Free Thought Project.com<\/p>\n
As you\u2019ve likely heard by now, Facebook has taken its war against \u2018fake news\u2019 to a whole other level \u2014 employing third party media and fact-checking organizations to judge whether news items are legitimate \u2014 to the consternation of countless users who see the platform overstepping red lines.<\/p>\n
Servile corporate media immediately parroted the wealth of benefits Facebook\u2019s plan<\/a> will ostensibly provide, from an alert and gateway system forced onto articles deemed \u201cdisputed,\u201d to the organizations<\/a> making the \u2018kiss of death\u2019 judgment call: Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ABC News<\/i>.<\/p>\n Anyone with passing knowledge of bias in media is probably spitting out their coffee \u2014 all four organizations are notoriously<\/a> left-leaning and liberal, and the list includes no outlets with any other of myriad ideological tilts.<\/p>\n Indeed, right-leaning outlets from Breitbart<\/i> to the Drudge Report<\/i>, as well as the sizable alternative media community \u2014 who, collectively, held to higher journalistic standards throughout the election cycle than \u201cold media\u201d titans like the New York Times<\/i> and Washington Post<\/i> \u2014 quickly condemned the unabashed bias imbued in Facebook\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n Mark Zuckerberg, a large consensus concluded, just declared war on dissent \u2014 if not information, itself.<\/p>\n But in an article intended to criticize purveyors of \u2018fake news\u2019 and applaud the social media platform\u2019s oh-so-noble efforts to strike such outlets from the American interwebs, The Atlantic<\/i>\u2019s Kaveh Waddell posited, \u201cWill Facebook\u2019s Fake News Warning Become a Badge of Honor?<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Waddell asks this question, the reader doesn\u2019t discover until more than halfway through the article, through a lens of myopic bias \u2014 if not outright scorn \u2014 against anyone who dare question the motives of Facebook or its choice of fact-checkers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a danger that people who are disinclined to trust traditional sources of information will treat Facebook\u2019s warnings as a badge of honor,\u201d<\/i> Waddell clarifies. \u201cIf fact-checking organizations deem a story questionable, \u00a0they might be more likely to read and share it, rather than less. There\u2019s reason to believe this group might think of itself as a counterculture, and take the position that anything that \u2018the man\u2019 rejects must have a grain of subversive truth to it.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n For a journalist in a nationally-regarded publication to display such seething condescension toward a category of people perhaps most critical to preventing a narrowing of news media to a single viewpoint is criminally self-interested, indeed \u2014 evincing the paranoia among old media to validate its reporting in the wake of horrendous election coverage.<\/p>\n Regardless of his patronizing tone, Waddell\u2019s question presents what might be the thinnest silver lining to having a Facebook-approved information gatekeeper \u2014 news deemed \u201cdisputed\u201d will be viewed by non-establishment thinkers as bearing the Scarlet Letter C<\/i> \u2014 censored for being problematic for the political elite.<\/p>\n In other words, this soft censorship could facilely create a Streisand Effect \u2014 whereby efforts to suppress content backfire and instead draw greater attention to something than it ever would have received otherwise.<\/p>\n Waddell and the Atlantic<\/i>, among others, like the Daily Beast<\/i><\/a> \u2014 known mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment scrambling to blame Hillary Clinton\u2019s loss on everything but the kitchen sink of a horribly flawed campaign \u2014 realize to some degree the threat posed by legitimate criticism of the accepted narrative.<\/p>\n This battle has literally nil to do with fake news \u2014 or even Russia \u2014 and everything to do with the power of dissent.<\/p>\n Of course, a brazen irony in Facebook\u2019s purge of random items is CEO Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s comments<\/a> on the subject prior to mass Democratic and corporate media hysteria over iterations Donald Trump won because Russia:<\/p>\n \u201cOf all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Zuckerberg\u2019s protestations and resistance to acknowledge \u2018fake news\u2019 as influencing the outcome of the election quickly melted under pressure from the pro-Hillary camp \u2014 and evaporated as Clintonites and a smattering of miffed Republicans switched gears and ratcheted up New Red Scare propagandizing.<\/p>\n When utterly unfounded, un-researched, and unverified reporting<\/a> by the Washington Post<\/i> termed the collective body of independent, right-slanted, or pro-Jill Stein media organizations as either active agents of Russia or the Putin\u2019s \u201cuseful idiots,\u201d those outlets formed an implicit bond for having been scurrilously blacklisted.<\/p>\n Once the Post\u2019s thinly-veneered paper tiger went down in flames for it being impossible to substantiate, the outlet threw journalistic integrity out the window and proffered another unprovable paragon of irresponsibility: \u201cSecret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n This gem swears CIA officials have performed an extensive assessment of the election and can prove individuals with ties to the Russian government as responsible for submitting documents on the Democratic Party to Wikileaks for publication \u2014 an allegation Julian Assange emerged from the shadows to dispel in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday.<\/p>\n Wikileaks \u2014 whose published documents have never been proven inauthentic \u2014 found itself on the Post\u2019s \u2018Russian agent blacklist.\u2019<\/p>\n In other words, by relying on user-reporting and biased outlets to flag articles means any \u201cdisputed\u201d contents feasibly earned that label on a subjective \u2014 not hard and fast \u2014 basis.<\/p>\n But should there be any labeling \u2014 read: moderate censorship \u2014 of articles and items by a social media behemoth who claims impartiality while rubbing elbows with Democratic heavy-hitters. All grumblings on Facebook\u2019s status as a public entity aside, when your platform acts as the primary news aggregator for millions, there is a staunch obligation to preserve the rights of everyone to speak their version of truth.<\/p>\n To be honest, that includes outlets spewing horrendously false news items as the real thing.<\/p>\n