Saturday 18th of January 2025
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loosening the screws...

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue its controversial third-party fact-checking program in the US. In a video address, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the services were “too politically biased” and “have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”

“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg said.

 

The company plans to implement a “Community Notes” system, allowing users to flag potentially misleading posts for additional context, similar to the model used by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter). It will also get rid of rules that had restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity.

Zuckerberg also noted that the changes were influenced by the recent political climate, including the election of Donald Trump. In December, the two had dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said, promising to reduce the amount of “censorship.”

The company acknowledged that its previous content moderation efforts had “gone too far,” leading to mistakes and user frustration. Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican and Meta’s new Chief Global Affairs Officer, explained the decision was made due to concerns over biases among independent fact-checkers and the excessive amount of content being fact-checked.

“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact-check and how... A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor,” he stated.

The Community Notes system is expected to be phased in across the United States over the next few months, with ongoing improvements planned throughout the year. Meta will also discontinue the practice of demoting fact-checked content, opting instead to use labels notifying users of additional information related to posts.

Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program, launched in 2016 in response to accusations over its role in spreading misinformation during the US presidential election, has faced persistent criticism for bias, lack of transparency, and concerns about the independence of fact-checking organizations. Conservatives have long claimed the program disproportionately targets right-leaning voices.

In 2023 Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in which he admitted that he faced external pressure, including from the Biden administration, to regulate certain topics, such as COVID-19, and even items like satire and humor.

In 2022 Zuckerberg admitted his platform worked to limit the reach of an explosive story about incumbent President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, after the FBI told him to be “vigilant” about foreign misinformation.

Trump used Facebook and Instagram extensively during his first term in office until his accounts were suspended following the January 6 riot at the US Capitol in 2021, due to concerns that he would incite further violence by denying Biden’s election victory.

While Trump’s accounts were reinstated in 2023, in March of that year he referred to Meta as the “enemy of the people,” and later suggesting that the tech mogul should be jailed for alleged election interference.

https://www.rt.com/news/610551-meta-fact-checking-program-end/

 

RT AND SPUTNIK SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO COME BACK TO THE WEST... THAT'S A LONG SHOT....

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME BIDEN.

 

censorship of facebook....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRUJkAE6hl

Facebook's Long History Of Censorship REVEALED

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMl4h9u3zb0

Fact-Checkers MELT DOWN After Zuckerberg's Free Speech Announcement

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.

 

 

no free flow.....

 

Zuckerberg’s sudden censorship thaw is not free speech
Facebook is trying to realign itself to stay relevant. But will it go beyond paying mere lip service to those demanding freedom?

 

BY Rachel Marsden

 

Why are some folks gobbling up the notion that having the newly restored right to fire off as many “c**ts,” *d**ks,” and “a*****es” as you want on Facebook is the best thing for free speech since the Magna Carta?

Facebook’s safe space for easily triggered mental midgets is now supposed to suddenly transform into a beacon of free speech and debate. But only for some. Sort of. Who are apparently now free to call transgenderism a mental illness, for example. Everyone else will have to wait for their potential future liberation from the virtual hall monitor.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and its parent company, Meta, has just announced that audiences won’t be subjected to thought policing through fact-checking anymore. Well, American audiences, at least. And not by professional gatekeepers designated specifically for the task. The language patrol will also apparently unclench a bit.

“Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model,” the company announced, citing the open collaborative model of Elon Musk’s X Platform. The move comes in the wake of Zuckerberg’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago where he met with incoming US President-elect Donald Trump – who was himself banned and restricted by Meta until last summer – and his perpetual sidekick, self-styled “free speech absolutist” Musk. 

Meta’s statement cites “societal and political pressure to moderate content,” claiming that it “has gone too far.” You think? It took Zuckerberg until August 2024 to admit to a congressional committee that “in 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” and that it led to “choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.” 

In the same letter, he said the FBI warned his team ahead of the 2020 US presidential election about a “Russian disinformation operation” involving the Biden family and Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, served. Zuckerberg says he now realizes that the story turned out to be legit, and not Russian fake news as the FBI claimed – but only after the New York Post dared to counter the official narrative that Facebook had colluded in protecting by censoring debate.

Until now, designated “professionals” in various countries have been working with Meta to ensure narrative compliance. In Canada, for example, partner AFP Fact Check has recently posted that there’s “no evidence linking methane inhibitors for cows to human health problems.” It’s a reference to the Western establishment’s new strategy, introduced in Canada and elsewhere, of suppressing cow farts with feed additive called Bovaer 10 – all in a valiant effort to save the planet from climate change. 

Some people have been asking whether the fart suppressor could somehow end up in milk or meat. But the fact checkers say that the government says it’s safe. So case closed. Until it isn’t, of course. But that would require alternative information to come to light, as is always the case when the public finds out after the fact that something officially authorized was in fact problematic. But good luck having that debate on Facebook, where you risk posting something that ends up being scarlet-lettered with an official message from the online Gestapo constantly scouring the website via algorithms for wrongthink.

At least in the US, this is all now supposed to be ending precisely where it began in the wake of the 2016 presidential election when Democrats and other assorted anti-Trumpers were in hysterics over the idea that Russia singlehandedly got Trump elected through social media. That led to pressure on outlets like Meta to censor fake news as defined by establishment-friendly fact checkers.

The slippery censorship slope then led to a move by Meta to then prioritize approved “trustworthy” information sources in 2018 – a system that expanded further under the pretext of the Covid fiasco in 2020. After the Capitol riots in January 2021, Facebook dumped Trump’s account indefinitely, citing the need to prevent violence and disinformation.

And in September 2024, amid the most recent US presidential election campaign, Meta globally banned Russian media accounts, like RT, citing “foreign interference” – a move that effectively reduces the odds of users being exposed to unauthorized or alternative views that risk challenging the status quo. RT news articles posted on Facebook warn the user to proceed with caution when reading. No such call to engage critical thinking accompanies Western news sources, because they’re always in unfailing alignment with the objective truth.

There’s no evidence yet that anyone outside the US will be spared from Meta’s digital thought safety patrol. Or even that Americans still won’t be subjected to less obvious censorship of information sources.

France is straight-up expressing concern over the rule loosening anyway. “France remains vigilant and committed to ensuring that META, along with other platforms, comply with their obligations under European law, particularly the Digital Services Act (DSA),” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, citing the same European law that led to the EU threatening Musk with 150 bureaucratic monitors ahead of his planned online interview with German right-wing populist leader Alice Weidel, currently polling as the voters’ favored choice for chancellor ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections.

“Freedom of expression, a fundamental right protected in France and Europe, should not be confused with a right to virality, which would permit the dissemination of inauthentic content to millions of users without any filtering or moderation,” the French government said. Yeah, well, it would also mean the dissemination of debate and an increased opportunity for contributions of all kinds.

France reiterates its support for civil society actors worldwide who are committed to defending and reinforcing democracies against information manipulation and destabilizing actions by authoritarian regimes,” France writes. Like yours, perhaps? The regime that’s clinging to the government levers with a prime minister handpicked by President Macron who didn’t even run in the election, and whose government sidelined both the populist party on the left with the most seats and the one on the right with the most votes?

Online state-backed censorship and Big Tech collusion by actors like Facebook can be credited with the growing disconnect between establishment rhetoric and lived reality across the Western world. The kind that leads to regime change at the voting booth. It’s also responsible for the shock and awe experienced by online bubble-dwellers, maintained in a state of ignorance by the digital information Gestapo, and who can’t comprehend how the rest of the world that doesn’t share their digital safe space could possibly not think or vote like they do.

Facebook is trying to realign in the interest of staying relevant. But the jury’s still out on whether it can actually go far enough or fast enough beyond paying mere lip service to the populist rise across that West that demands the free flow of information and ideas. 

https://www.rt.com/news/610679-zuckerbergs-facebook-not-free-speech/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.

 

on merit....

Meta and Amazon have ended its diversity, equity and inclusions (DEI) programs, citing political considerations and perceptions of preferential treatment, multiple news outlets reported on Friday, citing internal documents. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Axios published what it said is a memo sent to staffers by Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources.

“The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing,” the document reads.

“The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others,” the memo continues. 

“On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach,” Gale wrote, according to Axios. 

“We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it,” the document says.

Reuters cited a December memo from Amazon saying that the retail giant was “winding down outdated programs and materials” related to representation and inclusion, with the goal of completing the process by the end of 2024. 

“Rather than have individual groups build programs, we are focusing on programs with proven outcomes – and we also aim to foster a more truly inclusive culture,” Amazon’s vice president of inclusive experiences and technology, Candi Castleberry, wrote in a note to employees, according to CNBC. 

McDonald’s, Ford and Walmart are among the major corporations that abandoned or rolled back their DEI programs in recent months. The practice of “diversity hires” has long been criticized by conservatives as discriminatory and damaging to the companies’ performance.

In 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled that the policy of considering race during college admission is unconstitutional. The ruling encouraged more than 60 lawsuits challenging DEI in companies and institutions, according to the Guardian.

https://www.rt.com/news/610712-meta-amazon-end-dei/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.