Facebook moves to hold politicians to lower standards than the rest of us, saying that politicians will be exempt from its fact-checking system.
Facebook uses independent third-party fact-checking organizations to help identity fake news, misleading claims and misinformation. However, it said posts made by politicians would not be fact-checked. It said it did not want to be the “referee” in political debates or prevent politicians’ posts from reaching their intended audience. However, it did not define who it counted as a politician.
Mark Zuckerberg won’t fact-check politicians but he’ll gladly take their political advertising money.
Check It Out: Facebook Refuses to Fact-Check Politicians
The really sad thing is that a lot of people still treat the crap they get on the Facebook news feed as in any way factual. Even after it has been clearly demonstrated that they do only the most casual check for authenticity.
/s
In related news a recently released report from researchers at Oxford University estimates that the number of countries with active political disinformation campaigns has doubled to at least 70 in the last two years, with Facebook continuing to be the primary target platform. It’s a bit hard to say just what the effect of these campaigns is since Facebook never followed through on their promise to make more data on disinformation campaigns available for analysis. Details on both:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/29/technology/facebook-disinformation.html
So… Thanks Facebook?
It’s a good thing that FB took seriously their role in the 2016 US elections, and agreed to clean up political misinformation. No doubt, no political actors will abuse the privilege of having no fact check.
Mercenary, thy name is Facebook (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene II; 2019 Edition)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/politics/facebook-trump-impeachment/index.html