Facebook’s Flip-Flop

Facebook’s Flip-Flop
by Carl Heneghan at Brownstone Institute

In the days leading up to the incoming Trump administration, Mark Zuckerberg reversed his stance on fact-checking. 

In a video announcing these changes, Zuckerberg admitted that their efforts to address this issue had created more problems than they resolved. 

He stated that he would be replacing fact-checkers with community notes, similar to those used on X (formerly Twitter). “The fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have eroded more trust than they have built,” Zuckerberg said.

Facebook filters scanned posts and took down any possible policy violations.  “The problem is that the filters make mistakes, and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn’t,” said Zuckerberg. They sure did when it came to the pandemic. 

In November 2020, Facebook marked one of our articles published in the Spectator as potential misinformation with the explanation: “Independent fact-checkers reviewed the information and said it was missing context and could mislead people.” Then, they included a link to a mysterious website called HealthFeedback.org, one of the groups of self-appointed censors and witch-hunters they used. 

We posted the original text that was submitted to the Spectator in February 2023.

The pandemic saw censorship, disinformation, retrofitting of evidence to bolster policy, and the political use of masks as a visible symbol that governments were seen to be doing something. Facebook ensured that drunk on power, the politicians and their advisors went unchallenged. Whether the policies worked or not didn’t matter. 

Without dissenting voices challenging the government’s pandemic policies, the process of exiting lockdowns would have taken much longer. The removal of Facebook content for our article sparked a hostile campaign of criticism that included personal attacks, the loss of individual posts, complaints made to our institutions, smear campaigns, and websites supported by government ministers aimed at discrediting dissenting academics and journalists.

We repeatedly commented when the current Cochrane Review was updated on why observational studies should not be used to assess intervention effectiveness against respiratory viruses.  Amongst all the abuse, we have yet to spot a substantial comment proving or pointing to wrong methods, errors in analyses, wild assumptions, or extremist interpretations of facts.

Isobel Oakeshott also revealed that the attacks were partly orchestrated by Matt Hancock, who harnessed the full power of the state to silence “dissenters.”  

“As far as Hancock was concerned, anyone who fundamentally disagreed with his approach was mad and dangerous and needed to be shut down.”

Zuckerberg concluded, “The bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems, and getting back to our roots.” He describes this as “a cultural turning point.” 

It is time to assess the damage caused by pandemic censorship and reveal to the public the political interference that supported the Facebook takedowns. If Facebook wants to make amends, it needs to revisit its past mistakes and assess the impact its mistaken policy had during the pandemic.  

This post was written by two old geezers who think a public apology to all of Zuckerberg’s victims would not go amiss. We are Trust the Evidence, no one silences us. We are here to stay.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Facebook’s Flip-Flop
by Carl Heneghan at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society