Facebook Admits in Court Its ‘Fact Checks’ Are Not Factual at All

By
Anthony Watts
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19
13212

As we have previously reported on Climate Realism, journalist John Stossel is suing Facebook after Facebook’s ‘fact checkers’ labeled climate change information that Stossel posted as “false and misleading”.

Facebook uses staffers from the website “Climate FeedBack” to apply “fact check” labels throughout its platform for postings that mention climate topics.

The Climate Feedback staff are supposedly fair and neutral climate scientists who, as part of their work, provide “fact checks” on articles, videos, news stories and claims made about climate change on Facebook and other corporate and social media sites.

Unfortunately, Facebook itself just blew the validity of “fact check” claims right out of the water in court.

In Facebook’s response to Stossel’s defamation claim on Page 2, Line 8 of its court filing the company asserts it cannot be sued for defamation (which is making a false and harmful assertion) because its ‘fact checks’ are mere statements of opinion rather than factual assertions. Opinions are not subject to defamation claims, while false assertions of fact can be subject to defamation.

The quote in Facebook’s complaint is,

“The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.”

So, in a court of law, in filed testimony, Facebook admits that its ‘fact checks’ are not really ‘fact’ checks at all, but merely ‘opinion assertions.’

In normal times this would be public relations disaster for Facebook, PolitiFact, and other leftist entities that engage in biased “fact checking,” but in the age of climate alarm this inconvenient admission will likely be ignored by the corporate media.

This and similar “fact checks” by other corporate media outlets and social media monopolists has now been shown to be simply an agenda driven attempt to censor free speech and the open discussion of science by disguising overt liberal media activism as something noble, by supposedly preventing the spread of false ideas and claims.

These so-called “fact checks” are the attempt to undermine the pursuit of knowledge and an accurate understanding of the state of the climate, because, as articles on Climate Realism show daily, the state of the climate is not alarming in the least.

Previously published by Climate Realism, a project of The Heartland Institute, publisher of The Heartland Daily News.

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