This is an ongoing problem with Facebook that they won’t acknowledge by actually DOING something. Oh, they’ll issue a non-apology apology. Say it was a mistake or that an “algorithm” screwed things up. Except that the vast majority of mistakes and the screwups involve conservatives taking it in the shorts.
Related: Facebook Fact Checks an 11 sec. Video Three Times
Facebook can take some time to respond if you try to get it corrected, and when it happens, it’s like talking to a wall.
Who is serving who, here? It’s almost to the point of disdain that they just don’t like “your sort” of customer. So why do business with Facebook when the marketplace for social media is getting larger and several (smartly, I would say) are directly pitching themselves to conservatives and Free Speech types?
They’ve set the rules (after all, it is their private property) and we’re starting not to play.
All it would take is for President Trump to move and half their income-generating-eyeballs will move with him.
Anyways, I figured that I’d put this up from John Stossel as even he, with the highly recognizable name from decades on being on TV, is suffering the same hoity-toity SJW Facebook-gatekeepers as we have (along with a lot of others – few of our friends have NOT been in FB/Twitter jail at some point in the last year); reformatted, emphasis mine:
*****
Recently, I released a video that called California’s fires “government fueled.” A few days later, Facebook inserted a warning on my video: “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead.” Some of my viewers now feel betrayed. One wrote: “Shameful, John … what happened to you!!? Your reporting was always fair … [but] your … fires story was so … unfair, even Facebook tagged it.”
A “fact check” from Facebook carries weight. Worse, Facebook says that because my video is labeled misleading, it will show my content to fewer people. This kills me. My news model counts on social media companies showing people my videos.
I confronted the fact-checkers. That’s the topic of my newest video.
Facebook‘s “fact check” links to a page from a group called Climate Feedback that claims it sorts “fact from fiction” about climate change. It posted this complaint about my video: “Forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change.” It calls that claim “misleading.”
It is misleading.
But I never said that! In my video, I acknowledged: “Climate change has made things worse. California has warmed 3 degrees over 50 years.” I don’t know where Climate Feedback got its quote. Made it up? Quoted someone else?
Facebook lets activists restrict my videos based on something I never said.
Now, Facebook is a private company that can censor anything it wants. I understand the pressure it feels. All kinds of people demand that Facebook ban posts they don’t like. There’s no way Facebook can police everything. The site carries billions of posts. I wish it’d just let the information flow. People will gradually learn to sort truth from lies.
But to please politicians, Facebook now lets other people censor its content. Mark Zuckerberg told Congress, “We work with a set of independent fact-checkers.” That’s how Climate Feedback got its power. Facebook made it a fact-checker.
Facebook says I can appeal its throttling of my video, but my appeal must go to Climate Feedback, possibly the very activists who’d made up quotes from me.
I tried to appeal. I emailed Nikki Forrester, Climate Feedback’s editor. She didn’t respond. But two of the three scientists listed as reviewers agreed to interviews.
The first was Stefan Doerr of Swansea University. When I asked why he smeared me based on something I never said, he replied, “I’ve never commented on your article.” That was a shock. He hadn’t seen my video. I referred him to the Climate Feedback webpage that Facebook cited when labeling my video “misleading.” The page lists him as a “reviewer.”
“If this is implying that we have reviewed the video,” said Doerr, “then this is clearly wrong. There’s something wrong with the system.”
There sure is.
Doerr guessed that my video was flagged because I’d interviewed environmentalist Michael Shellenberger.
His new book “Apocalypse Never” criticizes environmental alarmism. Climate Feedback says Shellenberger makes “overly simplistic argumentation about climate change.”
Its other reviewer was Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute. He hadn’t seen my video either. “I certainly did not write a Climate Feedback piece reviewing your segment.” So, I sent him the video. After he watched it, I asked, “Is [misleading] a fair label?”
“I don’t necessarily think so,” he replied. “While there are plenty of debates around how much to emphasize fire management vs. climate change, your piece clearly discussed that both were at fault.”
After those confrontations, Climate Feedback’s editor finally responded to our emails. She gave us an address where we could file a complaint.
We did.
They wrote back, “after reviewing the video” (at least they now watched it), they stand by their smear because the “video misleads viewers by oversimplifying the drivers of wildfires.” And both scientists I interviewed wrote to say, yes, we agree, the video downplays the role of climate change.
That’s what this censorship is about. In my video, Shellenberger dares say, “A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe.” Climate Feedback doesn’t want people to hear that.
It’s wrong for Facebook to give these activists the power to throttle videos they don’t like.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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It is wrong but if you are trying to make a living from being a content provider, it’s like that old saying that you rob banks because that’s where the money is. Ditto FB, YouTube, and others. It goes further back to “He who has the Gold makes the Rules”. Doesn’t mean that the Rules are right but you either play by them or die with them.
We pay a pretty penny, so I’ve been told by The Webmistress, for leasing a server from our ISP and that we should move to a “free” platform. The problem with that, I pointed out, is that some of those (like Blogspot and TypePad) have also shut down sites that are “problematic” as far as content. Pretty much, they were just like us.
NH State Rep and Nashua Alderman Jan Schmidt tried to get our hosting company to shut us down. Their decision was that on Free Speech and First Amendment issues, they’d come down on the side of Free Speech.
She got pissed and then wangled HB1159 to give those Democrat ladies that do and say stupid stuff a way to get us shut down legally via Lawfare (Cyberbullying, cyberstalking, and the rest simply because we quoted their words or pointed out their actions and then commented upon them. Over and over again – they hate that.
These outside activists are just like HB1159’s sponsers NH State Reps Jan Schmidt, Wendy Thomas, Sherry Frost, and Debra Altschiller – they don’t like what you say but won’t debate you. Instead, they want to SILENCE you in any way possible. Fortunately, the other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee figured out that this was not a good thing and killed it.
That doesn’t mean, however, that like the FB and Twitter “fact-checkers” they won’t stop trying.
And that is Tyranny
(H/T: Daily Signal)
