Social media's war on "fake news" has some basis in reality, since there is such a thing as fake news, misinformation, disinformation or false information. But it's also being used to censor and remove real facts as well.
Source1, Source2
YouTube and Facebook are working on initiatives to display the "authoritative" news on their sites in order to defend the mainstream consensus narrative. They are relying on pseudo-"fact-checking" sites like Snopes, Politifact and Wikipedia to overshadow and overrule counter-narrative alternative media news stories from gaining popularity. Information that is counter to the mainstream narrative is considered false and "fake news" and dealt with as such by promoting the official "authoritative" mainstream narrative.
With the blind reliance on these half-assed "fact-checking" sites, informational content that contains actual facts can be targeted as "fake news" and silenced by being censored or flagged and removed from their sites. This is what recently happened to a Paul Joseph Watson article that was talking about a real U.N. paper from 2001.
Watson's article was called Revealed: UN Plan To Flood America With 600 Million Migrants, which might sound like a false claim. BUt he also provided a quote from the document itself, titled Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?
"It would be necessary to have 593 million immigrants from 1995 to 2050, an average of 10.8 million per year. By 2050, out of a United States total population of 1.1 billion, 775 million, or 73 per cent, would be post 1995 immigrants or their descendants."
Source
How is that fake news, when it's a factual statement from the U.N. document itself? No one made that shit up.
Politfact said the document was "not meant to be recommendations in any way, but illustrations of hypothetical scenarios." Therefore, Watson was putting out fake news. Really? But the opening of the UN report says:
The new challenges of declining and ageing populations will require comprehensive reassessments of many established policies and programmes, including those relating to international migration.
Source
Seems like they are writing this report in order to warn of required "comprehensive reassessments". It's not a hypothetical, but a desired outcome to correct this alleged problem they are talking about. The U.N. wants this to happen. It's a plant they want to have happen. Which is what Watson was talking about.
Facebook is blindly targeting factual informational content because they automatically take what a BS "fact-checking" site says is false information. It doesn't matter that it's real information about a U.N. document. The people at Politifact don't care if it's real, they don't want to accept it as real, so they declare it to be false information "fake news".
As a result of Politifact's denial of facts, Facebook's policy to "reduce the distribution of misleading content" means it will reduce the distribution of the "pages of websites that publish or share false news". Those who monetize their content can be denied that ability as a result, all because of a pseudo-"fact-checking" site denying facts. What an Orwellian move that just proves how much these authoritative "fact-checking" sites are not to be blindly trusted, or trusted at all.
Source
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
References:
- The 'Fake News' Fallacy Used by the Media Monopoly
- Fake News Fail: Facebook Flags Accurate Infowars Story Citing UN Docs
- Revealed: UN Plan to Flood America With 600 Million Migrants
- Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?
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Those who control the narrative, will ultimately define what's written in the history books. It has always been this way.
We need to consider that maybe 50% of our "factual human history" might be false narratives to control and lead the public opinion.
Fact checkers are just the next step in controlling the narrative. In the end, no one will be able to distinguish fact from fake news, and that is exactly what they want. Now with enough repetition any false shit statement can become "history".
Yup, we don't know how much of the past is made up or skewed to favor a monarchies' power. Fact checkers are going to limit ppls access to info and ppl will disregard it.
What TPTB still fail to realize - the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle ...(feel free to think of others).
This is rearguard action in an attempt to revert back to the status quo of yesteryear and the MSM being the source of news.
That time has gone, and is never coming back.
It just ain't gonna happen....
Dinosaurs are gonna do what dinosaurs do...
...And scurrying mammals are gonna do what they do, to.
We all know how it ends...(well, the dinosaurs don't, but hey).
The 'MSM paradigm' is finished.
Well it won't go down easy. Most ppl still by into it and will be influenced by the "fact checking" measures.
Oh I agree. Dying animals never just 'stop'...
The best solve for the information problem - root your thinking in principles. This will cut a huge swath through a wide variety of problems without the need for reliable facts.
It’s irrelevant - individuals have the natural law right to associate or not associate with anyone for any reason, as long as they’re not committing an act of unjustified force or fraud.
Doesn’t matter - government is slavery and thus unacceptable under any conditions.
It’s not a solve for every problem - sometimes we need sound factual information to apply a principled approach - but in my experience, it’ll probably clear the table of 80% of the public and private issues, if not more.
I prefer to have my principles based in thinking, and I hope most other people too. We had enough religious zealots in humanity's history, thank you very much.
The rest of the comment illustrated my intent, which was not to suggest blindly adhering to religious dogma. When I said root your thinking in principles, it was implied that I meant your thinking in regard to matters such as those in my examples, and those which companies like facebook could have a hand in obfuscating.
Obviously critical thought must precede recignition of valid principles; and invalid “principles” (such as those promoted by the popular religions) are, in fact, not principles at all.
Indeed, principles of truth that are reasoned as a guide to keep one on a path that rejects falsity.
Having some authoritarian company decide what's fake news or not is very scary
Yup, not looking good for the future of information access there :/
"But it's also being used to censor and remove real facts as well."
I think that is the real goal. They will take down some stuff that is super crazy so they have something to point to while they claim to be doing good but they are pushing the establishment agenda. That is why the censorship is hitting "alt" voices on both the left and right.
This is off toppic (kind of) but the new ad that Facebook put out is supposed to come off as though it is them saying that they "will be better" but it totally serves to try to justify their ongoing political censorship. Garbage, I say.
Yeah, that's the end game, but they are being coy about what their doing, alleging it's for everyone's betterment. But the right way is for ppl to learn to think for themselves.
Yea man that’s the thing, people want to belive what they want! They hate to accept the truth, or mostly, pull up the veil that is blinding them and question their news to find out what is real or fake!
The ‘fake news’ stuff is really just fake news! It’s a shame as so many people are confused, or well not confused but getting the wrong information.
I wonder if in the midst of all of this it will lead to lots of people (sheeple) taking a step back and asking ‘what is going on?’ Or if this will just keep everyone even more dumbed down and flouride brained than ever...?
Ppl need to want to be curious, doubt and question things on their own. When the "authoritative" info just feeds you what you're supposed to accept, then you don't think. The fake news hype is indeed the real fake news. I posted on that b4 :P
This is very scary. The elite has spent a lot of time and energy to bring their world view to the established print media. The internet changed the flow of information and these media are quickly turning useless.
Realising that we now see the first wave of trying to gain control over heavily centralised internet news sources. But this time it is different. The internet flow of information cannot be controlled. Just stay away from the main channels and we should be fine.
But the masses that just consume mainstream will always be mislead as long as there is a huge power asymmetry.
Yup, now the social media market places are no longer allowing the growth of independent media to compete for visibility. Mainstream media will dominate some more :/
Doesn’t surprise me, leftist sites and people in my experience only want to believe what they are told by these central sources such as politifact. The right is guilty of it as well but it has been a bit more obnoxious on the left because they feel they are educated and if there is something that is against their beliefs it is inherently wrong, educated people can’t be wrong.
Polarization like this will be the end of their platform, in my opinion. It’s been failing for a while but this will speed up the process.
LOL, yeah. Both polarized political angles can be wrong. The far side of each has issues, but the left is even more violence when the right is the one that's depicted as more violent.
As long as most of the sheeple continue to consume the narrative they have power. Not many in my circle have given up the Fakebook, Twitter etc. They may bitch about it sometimes, but they continue logging in for their daily dose of censorship and mind think propaganda. Can't save people from themselves.
Yup, ppl keep going to the market because that's where ppl are. If you want to interact, then you go to the market where ppl are ;)
Well, it isn't a plan. Definitely not in the sense of "we plan to do that".
As your screenshot shows, there is a question stated and potential results of actions.
The "news" make this into something with a headline that is factually wrong.
Or do you really think it is the UN plan to triple the inhabitants of the US in the next 40 years? But this is the scenario the headline talks about.
(Which is also proof that it is not an actual plan but a scenario overview - you always have "impossible" models in them)
It is the same as if you would write:
REVEALED: US plan to nuke the whole world!
Because the US has those "plans". But I sincerely hope Trump does not get to see them, he might be the only one who believes they are actual planning and hits the big red button.
Fair point, a plan laid out but not necessarily in effect.
Truth is stranger than fiction, thus any algorithmic fact checking will always fail. Thus, fact checking is only censorship by another name.
Good way of putting it ;)
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This is a good article, thanks for news
if they really wanted to get rid of fake news they would ban CNN, NYT, WaPo and the rest.
Ugg, what the fuck do we need a billion people in America for?
Social Media has become a place to breed hate and insecurity for the past few years. Now it becomes a place for fake news to become real. I wonder what's next for Social Media? I hope steemit would stay the same of better yet become much better than what we have today.