Zuck Amok?
The Beginning of the End of the "Fact Checking" Industry
A few days ago, something happened to Mark Zuckerberg.
Either someone pressed the red button in the small of his back to reset him to factory standards, or he had an epiphany that censorship is bad, or he noticed that the world is changing – dramatically – and he needs to get with the program lest his new federal regulators get irked.
Or a combination of all three.
Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook (sorry, Meta) will no longer use third-party “fact checkers” is an inherently good thing and whatever the reason he made the decision it was the right one…finally.
Facebook will now be using a customer-based system, a la what Twitter/X has in place now. In other words, besides standard post replies and such, “community members” will be allowed to add notes and “context” to things that seem to be a bit dodgy – flat earthers beware!
This concept relies on two ideas: people are not inherently stupid and can typically tell the difference between what is true and what is not and that there is actually a difference between expressing an opinion and stating a fact.
Needless to say, the fact checking industry is having a bit of a meltdown. I wonder why.
“This decision will hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions with friends and family,” said Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network (related to PolitiFact and run out of The Poynter Institute – more on them shortly.)
“It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters,” she said. “Fact-checkers have not been biased in their work — that attack line comes from those who feel they should be able to exaggerate and lie without rebuttal or contradiction.”
Speaking of needing fact checking, Drobnic Holan’s statement is patently false as even a cursory look at PolitiFact shows.
The real problem for PolitiFact and the other tentacles of the censorship industry now face a massive financial problem.
While Google, one assumes, and other sleazy foundations and non-governmental organizations (like the National Endowment for Democracy, a federally funded outfit that does in public what the CIA used to do in private) will continue to pay for their “third-party services,” the amount Facebook had dumped into the industry has been significant, to say the least.
Just nine years ago, Poynter had a budget of $3.8 million and, unless you worked in the media, you had no idea it even existed. Today, thanks to massive support from the likes of Google, Meta (Facebook,) Poynter is a $15 million dollar a year nexus point for those who wish to control the press and, more importantly, what everyone else says.
By the way, guess what Poynter started doing nine years ago?
It is global elite swamp third-party validation machine that twists and turns and backflips to put its “FACT” stamp of approval on just about anything that needs to be buttressed.
Because of its vaunted past (actually it was pretty good journalism training and standards group), Poynter was the respectable (actually becoming less respectable with each passing million) face of the international movement to determine what the public can talk about.
And it seems being in the “fact” industry was good for business – budget tripled, staff doubled, got far more notoriety, and getting a bit of actual global power, all in the past decade.
Now all of that is in jeopardy.
So what did PolitiFact actually do? In a nutshell, it pretended to check up on information posted on-line and in the media to ensure that it was actually factual.
Pretended is the key word. Despite Drobnic Holan’s protestations, fact checkers are biased servants of the powerful, almost to the point of being painfully funny.
As it’s important to understand how powerful and unaccountable and slanted the industry is, here is an in-depth look at the “fact checking” process, a process Zuckerberg has decided to stop funding: a process Zuckerberg has decided to stop funding:
PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and each of the in-house media organs like CNN’s Facts First, etc. are merely confirmation machines, pig lipsticking apparatus that reinforce the original lie.
They are the ultimate deceptive “third party validator .”
To simplify deception detection, here are a few very common and very slippery techniques the fact checkers use to twist the truth into a lie – and vice-versa – to always look out for.
Let’s start with position. Oprah using a space laser to burn down Maui to build a smart city is stupid but questioning the impact smart cities will have on society is not.
And lumping crazy with sane makes sane look crazy, so having any concerns about fifteen minute or smart cities is just as crazy as thinking Oprah used her space laser to burn Maui - easy peasy.
Then there is asking the same people the same question that has been raised by someone else to make sure you get the same answer. That is an incredibly simple ploy:
“Joe says you’re guilty.”
“I am not guilty.”
Fact check headline: Joe is a Liar!!
Safety in numbers works well, too. A claim is made but called wrong by a bunch of people. The fact checkers only ask those people whether or not the claim is true and one or two of their number – typically those with the most letters after their name – confirm their belief that is not true.
This technique is the primary fact check of everything climate and COVID. Egregious terms like “settled science” spring from this; that and the vast majority of media types did not take even a basic “Golden Book of Science” overview class in school and never asked anyone what exactly the “scientific method” is because it sounded too hard (the same goes for anything involving math.)
Throw in the auto-kowtow to the heavily credentialed that the media takes and an actual fact has almost no chance of making it through; that is if they are saying the thing they want to – or are told to – write.
In other words, it’s right because we say it’s right and look at all of these other people who say it’s right, too, so we must be right.
And, therefore, you are a liar.
To be crystal clear: science is not a democracy and people don’t just get together to vote on what’s true and what’s not – just imagine if that’s how it worked…
There is no such thing as “settled science” – science is a process and you can no more “follow the science” than you can follow a car you are driving.
There is also the idea that odds can - when convenient - be used to denigrate a statement. For example, in the November 23 GOP debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said “Your minor child can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent, and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers and a sex change operation.”
That is in fact true - it unquestionably can happen. But PolitiFact deemed it "mostly false" because “experts” say it’s unlikely to happen. Whether or not that “unlikely” assertion is true is definitely up for debate, but what is not debatable is that something true does not become “mostly false” because the odds may not be in its favor.
Pedantry is also a go-to play for professional fact checkers. This involves taking a minor possibly erroneous detail of a position or statement and making it the main point to discredit the entire statement – see Joe got the date of the ally landing in Normandy wrong so he knows nothing about World War II and therefore anything he says about it – or any other historical event – is wrong and a lie.
Along these lines, the trick of temporal limiting is used quite often, too. Person A says something bad could happen - fact checker calls it false because that part of the law or regulation doesn’t take effect for five years.
The “Bob” trick is another example of purposeful pedantry. His birth certificate says “Robert” so you are wrong and/or lying when you call him “Bob.”
A recent example of this is the discussion over the car “kill switch.” . The fact checkers went out of their way to note that that specific term was never used officially by officials so it’s a lie. That it can stop a car while it’s moving is beside the point.
I think Sir Humphrey makes this process perfectly clear:
Fact checkers – very conveniently – get to choose which facts they check. This is not too much different from deciding where a story went in a newspaper when newspapers were still a thing, but the consistency of fact checkers to pick facts they do not want to be true to check is overwhelmingly obvious.
Scroll through any of the major fact check sites and it becomes readily apparent to anyone with a room temperature or higher IQ that certain people and topics are checked, um, more rigorously than others.
That phenomena is somewhat related to the idea of wishful checking. These facts are usually the most convoluted as they start with a preconceived political desire on the part of the checker and nothing will be allowed to stand in its way. Fact checker wants more people to commute by bicycle? There are numbers and studies for that.
In fact, there are numbers and studies to support practically every conceivable position on any issue – you just have to look for them. And this is one of the reasons why internet censorship – either outright or through throttling or algorithmic massaging – is so important: the studies and numbers that appear on page one of a search all tend to tilt the same way and it’s only by clicking through to page 432 that a different detail can be found.
And about 90 percent of all Google searchers never leave the first page – there’s a reason companies pay for those spots.
Also, when fact checkers get lazy or desperate they “self-source” the supposed truth - “See this link? We already debunked that notion so we don’t have to bother to do it again.”
It doesn’t matter if the original fact check was accurate or if it really relates to the new issue at hand - it’s been debunked, so move along.
And if all else fails, fact checkers can simply call something a conspiracy theory and be done with it.
The whole idea of fact checking is rather odd. Created to bolster trust in the media, it has instead contributed to its cratering, in large part because much of the public’s reaction was as follows:
“Umm, isn’t what’s in the paper in the first place supposed to be true? Why are you checking your own stuff? Wouldn’t it be easier to not print falsehoods in the first place?”
An editor once said to me “Just because someone says something doesn’t mean we have to put it in the paper.”
If only that standard were adhered to today.
The fact is that fact checking did no such thing, becoming an “I told you so!” industry that acted only to provide a veneer of respectability for the lies of the powerful.
And they are sticking to their story. From PolitiFact’s own delusional coverage of the decision:
Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, the journalism nonprofit that owns PolitiFact, said Zuckerberg’s statement was disappointing. Meta sets its own tools and rules, he said, while PolitiFact and other fact-checking outlets offered independent review and showed their sources.
"It perpetuates a misunderstanding of its own program," Brown said of Zuckerberg’s statement. "Facts are not censorship. Fact-checkers never censored anything. And Meta always held the cards. It's time to quit invoking inflammatory and false language in describing the role of journalists and fact-checking."
And just to make sure everyone knows PolitiFact is unbiased, the story ended thusly:
Nora Benavidez, the senior counsel for Free Press, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy organization, disputed Zuckerberg’s characterizations of the third-party program and said he was "dodging accountability" by "wrapping his move in the rhetoric of the First Amendment."
"Content moderation has never been a tool to repress free speech; it is a principle that the platforms themselves developed to promote dialogue and protect truth for users," Benavidez said. "While Zuckerberg characterized the platform giant’s new approach as a defense of free speech, its real intentions are twofold: Ditch the technology company’s responsibility to protect its many users, and align the company more closely with an incoming president who’s a known enemy of accountability."
A ”known enemy.”
Now that’s a fact check.