Facebook Ramps Up Manipulative, Biased Content
For those who have been deplatformed, Facebook was never just a “platform,” it was always a publishing empire with an editorial agenda. That reality is becoming more explicit, as Facebook’s expressions of editorial prerogative move increasingly in the direction of producing its own content.
A new online resource working to expose Facebook’s status as a publisher, not a platform, is erasebook.info. The latest post on erasebook criticizes Facebook’s launch of a “climate change information center.” Like Facebook’s other “information centers” – which focus on COVID-19 information and “Voting Information,” there is an obvious political agenda – or editorial position – underlying the content they’re providing.
Offering one-sided, supposedly objective content that pushes for “zero net carbon emissions,” and claiming the information is all “science based” is manipulative, misleading, and dangerous. It fails to acknowledge the downside of draconian restrictions on energy choices, and it discredits science.
Facebook’s “information center” on COVID-19 is equally biased. Their agenda is exemplified by their recent flagging of posts from Tucker Carlson as “false information.” Carlson’s transgression? Having a Chinese virologist on his program who claimed “the virus is not from nature.”
Facebook is going to have a lot of explaining to do, the next time it faces a judge or a congressional panel that questions its status as a “platform,” exempt from publisher liability.
* * *