According to The Daily Mail, a document from a meeting with the European Commission revealed that Facebook Vice President Nick Clegg admitted that his company’s ‘fact-checkers’ could be politically biased.
While many on the left have supported steps the social media giant took to try to stamp out “misinformation” and “fake news,” conservatives have warned all along that that the fact-checkers would likely be biased and left-wing.
Conservative outlets – like The Political Insider – have been deeply and negatively impacted by Facebook’s biased “fact-checking” partners.
Facebook’s reversal of their policy to block content suggesting that COVID came from a Wuhan lab is just the most recent example.
Facebook fact-checkers could be politically biased, admits the tech giant’s vice-president Nick Clegg https://t.co/Bfnpf3ZmQ1
— Daily Mail U.K. (@DailyMailUK) June 13, 2021
The Daily Mail: Facebook’s Clegg ‘Stressed That Independent Fact-Checkers Are Not Necessarily Objective”
The Daily Mail reported, “Facebook vice-president Nick Clegg has admitted the company’s fact-checkers – employed to root out alleged ‘fake news’ from its social-media platforms – could be biased and pursuing their own political agendas, according to a European Commission document obtained by The Mail on Sunday.”
“The document shows that Mr Clegg and Vera Jourova, vice-president of the European Commission, discussed how Facebook countered disinformation during the 2020 US Presidential election two weeks earlier,” the Mail detailed.
The news outlet then observed, “However, the minutes add: ‘He [Mr Clegg] also stressed that independent fact-checkers are not necessarily objective because they have their own agenda.”
The Mail noted, “Former Cabinet Minister David Jones described Mr Clegg’s comments as ‘deeply worrying’.”
Jones said, ‘The admission completely destroys the credibility of Facebook’s own procedures. It offers news organisations no right of appeal when it censors them, even though it may have acted on the advice of fact-checkers who are motivated by ‘their own agenda’.”
Conservative outlets like The Political Insider have seen heavy censorship since Facebook rolled out their policies in 2016 – blocking our readers from seeing content, and having Facebook heavily throttle our reach.
Facebook Response: ‘Nick Never Suggested There Is Bias’
Facebook responded by saying, “Nick never suggested there is bias in our fact-checking programme.”
“He did describe that one benefit of having a range of independent fact-checking partners is the variety of specialisms in different countries and issue areas that they bring,” Facebook added.
Facebook first announced they would begin heightened process of fact-checking in 2016, after liberals claimed that not doing so prior to the presidential election that year helped Donald Trump win the White House.
FACT CHECK: How Facebook’s ‘independent fact checkers’ cited letter secretly organized by Wuhan lab funder Peter Daszak to ‘debunk’ leak theory and punish news outlets that explored it 🤬🤥🤥🤥🤥
Daily Mail Online https://t.co/2SsiDbr22o— TheCyberChick (@warriors_mom) June 6, 2021
Facebook ‘Fact-Checking’ First ‘Debunked’ Wuhan Lab Leak
To underscore how politically biased “fact-checking” affects real news and American’s ability to get the facts, look no further than Facebook’s treatment of the so-called Wuhan lab leak theory – that COVID originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
As early as April 2020, Facebook would institute fact-checking warnings to posts about COVID, for example suggesting that the coronavirus global pandemic might have origins in a Wuhan lab in China, where it was possibly created synthetically.
It was not until May 2021, as more mainstream reports emerged suggesting that the lab theory may have substance, Facebook announced it would remove the “Facebook and Instagram false allegations” tags from such posts.
Facebook’s Wuhan lab policy change is just the latest example of facts being forced into the light. Facebook’s fact-checking regime has been telling the public which information to trust and distrust for years regardless of accuracy. They punish outlets they disagree with politically and yet face no repercussions for their own bias or inaccuracy.
This article was originally published by the Political Insider. Read the original article.
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