Posted on 05/27/2021 12:34:18 AM PDT by Mount Athos
oday, we’re launching new ways to inform people if they’re interacting with content that’s been rated by a fact-checker as well as taking stronger action against people who repeatedly share misinformation on Facebook. Whether it’s false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we’re making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps.
More Context For Pages That Repeatedly Share False Claims We want to give people more information before they like a Page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated, so you’ll see a pop up if you go to like one of these Pages. You can also click to learn more, including that fact-checkers said some posts shared by this Page include false information and a link to more information about our fact-checking program. This will help people make an informed decision about whether they want to follow the Page.
Expanding Penalties For Individual Facebook Accounts Since launching our fact-checking program in late 2016, our focus has been on reducing viral misinformation. We’ve taken stronger action against Pages, Groups, Instagram accounts and domains sharing misinformation and now, we’re expanding some of these efforts to include penalties for individual Facebook accounts too. 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. We already reduce a single post’s reach in News Feed if it has been debunked.
Redesigned Notifications When People Share Fact-Checked Content We currently notify people when they share content that a fact-checker later rates, and now we’ve redesigned these notifications to make it easier to understand when this happens. The notification includes the fact-checker’s article debunking the claim as well as a prompt to share the article with their followers. It also includes a notice that people who repeatedly share false information may have their posts moved lower in News Feed so other people are less likely to see them.
>>Whether it’s false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we’re making sure fewer people see misinformation on our apps.
what if it is false information about what Trump said at Charlottesville?
What if it is false information about what really did and did not happen on January 6th 2021?
Facebook Lifts Censorship of Posts about Possible Manmade Origins of COVID-19
NN ^ | 05-27-21 | Jay Greenberg
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3962848/posts
Facebook is lifting its ban on posts about COVID-19 potentially being manmade and will limit censorship of theories about the coronavirus possibly originating from a Chinese Communist Party laboratory.
The move comes as support continues to mount for investigations into the theory that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab.
Facebook initially put the ban into place on February 8 after the social media giant consulted the World Health Organization (WHO).
Now, the ban will be removed to allow debate around the true origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, “in light of ongoing investigations.”
Scoop: Facebook will no longer remove posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made, as support mounts for probes into the virus’ origins & the Wuhan lab-leak theory https://t.co/siVvfWDb2I tip @Techmeme
— Cristiano Lima (@viaCristiano) May 26, 2021
Claims that COVID-19 was manmade were blocked from appearing on Facebook and targetted by “fact-checkers” as “false information,” despite the lab-leak theory never being disproven.
Have your say - ⇓ Hit the comments below ⇓
former secretary of state mike pompeo led an investigation into the chinese lab theory but it was shut down by biden
© press
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led an investigation into the Chinese lab theory but it was shut down by Biden
Posts about China’s role in the origins of the coronavirus were a list alongside false information like assertions that the virus doesn’t exist or that the vaccines cause autism, according to The Daily Caller.
In relying on the WHO to initially add this claim to the list, Facebook relied on an investigation into the pandemic’s origin that was compromised by Chinese Communist Party influence.
TRENDING: Biden Shut Down Investigation to Prove COVID Originated from Chinese Lab
A number of articles and posts about the lab-leak theory, which was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory by corporate media, were flagged and deleted by Facebook until now.
Facebook has taken an aggressive stance toward alleged disinformation during the pandemic, stating that it put warning labels on more than 50 million pieces of content in the month of April 2020 alone based on articles from “independent fact-checkers.”
Some of those fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact, are now retracting fact-checks that declared the lab-leak theory to be debunked.
In recent weeks, more and more corporate media outlets and government officials that once dismissed the possibility that COVID-19 is man-made have granted the theory newfound legitimacy.
In the wake of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, liberal media “fact-checkers” were quick to label reporters and lawmakers who supported the lab leak theory as conspiracy theorists.
“Fact-checkers” repeatedly labeled comments and reporting that referenced evidence of a lab leak theory — the hypothesis that coronavirus came from a Wuhan, China lab instead of a food market — as harmful misinformation.
Recently, however, evidence that three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers were hospitalized with an unknown illness in November 2019, has been revealed suggesting the theory isn’t baseless.
“Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan ‘wet market,’ where wild animals were sold,” Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote in an April 2020 Wall Street Journal editorial.
“But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January.”
“This evidence is circumstantial, to be sure, but it all points toward the Wuhan labs,” he said.
“Thanks to the Chinese coverup, we may never have direct, conclusive evidence—intelligence rarely works that way—but Americans justifiably can use common sense to follow the inherent logic of events to their likely conclusion.”
In response, Cotton was labeled a conspiracy theorist by many liberal outlets, which dismissed his arguments, according to The Daily Caller.
A Vanity Fair article accused Cotton of adding a “scary new layer to Donald Trump’s blame-China strategy,” the BBC reported that his claims were “unfounded” and a Snopes “fact check” characterized his allegations as “speculative.”
president trump and his allies were attacked for bringing attention to the theory
© press
President Trump and his allies were attacked for bringing attention to the theory
President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were also criticized for bringing attention to the lab leak theory.
Washington Post fact check editor Glenn Kessler criticized Cruz in May 2020 after the senator suggested the virus might’ve leaked from the Wuhan lab. Kessler said it was “virtually impossible” the virus jumped from the lab.
“We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves,” Kessler added.
Altogether, The NYT, Reuters, CNN, The Washington Post, NBC News, NPR, PolitiFact, Snopes, The Guardian, Vox, Vanity Fair, and other left-wing “fact-checkers” all published articles casting doubt on the lab leak theory.
Some have recently posted editor’s notes, backtracking on their original reporting.
While liberal news outlets and “fact-checkers” repeatedly downplayed both the lab leak theory and those who supported it, outlets like The Washington Times and Daily Caller News Foundation investigated the theory rather than dismissing it.
But Facebook suppressed such reporting by labeling it with a “False Information” tag, according to various outlets.
In February 2020, Facebook suppressed a New York Post editorial that called the lab leak hypothesis “a possibility,” the Post reported.
The social media platform’s “fact-checkers” also labeled a Washington Times article as “false,” which has since been confirmed by other outlets, reporter Bill Gertz recently said.
Same goes for a dime spent at Amazon or Whole Foods or Netflix or ABCDisney or on professional sports or...
It also includes a notice that people who repeatedly share ****information****
Fact check completed
The lab leak allegation failed in too many people’s minds because of the proposed mechanism. Perhaps it was deliberate trolling as we have seen done in election fraud allegations. The most popular genetic engineering claims that I read here on FR even from some well-meaning people were patently absurd, pure science fiction stuff. Good folks did not realize that they were actually falsifying their own contention by suggesting that the Wuhan lab has genetic engineering capabilities that eclipse the best we would dream of. Have they beat us to the moon?! I kept asking, “If they can actually do that, we have GOT TO get in there and steal that technology NOW!”
Now we know that they have been just dumping from one dish to another in very low tech gain-of-function experiments and stupidly spilled it out into the community and into the world. This is... (prepare for the understatement of the day) ...very believable. The natural selection took place in the cultures (of course then it ain’t natural, but you know what I mean.) Sen Tom Cotton calls this the “good science bad safety scenario.” His fourth scenario is good science, good safety, meaning they released it deliberately, it was not a leak. Please keep this option open.
As we said last year you cannot do this stuff and not leave a mark. So now from David Baltimore*, a virologist and former president of Caltech: “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun...” He’s right. They did it and they left their bloody fingerprints on it! (”Madam foreperson, I call for the jurors to vote without further discussion.”)
___________________________________
*Here is the article, kinda long, but quite comprehensive:
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
IOW, they intend to see that nobody sees thru, accurate, or factual information on their site.
Facebook: we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
The problem with Facebook is that it has Section 230 coverage under the Communications Decency Act. It is protected from lawsuits related to what other people post. But there is an obligation under Section 230 to protect most forms of speech. There are exceptions, such as racism and other forms of hatred, incitement to violence, etc., but regular political and non-political speech — COVID-19 origins should fall under the latter, IMO — should be protected on that platform.
Facebook isn’t living up to that obligation, and thus should be treated as a publisher instead, and its Section 230 protection revoked.
We all got family. We all want to keep in touch. There are options. Free ones. i know you said they didn’t work for you. But they are there and new ones all the time. All I am saying is easy and convenient come at a cost.
You want to feed Zuckerburg and his merry band of fascists feel free.
Have a nice day.
The Law in Florida is a good place to start. All states need to enact the same sort of law for these carriers of public speech.
Sometimes I believe in something so strongly that it becomes part of the Constitution.
It is already part of the constitution. When a communications system becomes large enough, it is a defacto public communications system, regardless of what it was when it began.
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