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12/18/2016 11:23 am  #1


Conservatives Freak Out Over FB War on Fake News

Conservatives react with skepticism and alarm to Facebook's war on 'fake news'
 



Oliver Darcy 
Dec. 15, 2016, 2:45 PM     23,238

Conservatives reacted with alarm to Facebook's announcement that it will partner with fact-checkers to combat so-called fake news, expressing extreme skepticism the fact-checking would be applied equally to both sides of the political spectrum.

The social media giant said Thursday it would draw on an international fact-checking network led by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism, to label and bury fake news in the News Feed. Outlets in the network include Snopes, ABC News, and The Associated Press.

But the announcement was immediately met with fire from the right.

"Fact-checkers all seem to be from the left," Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist, wrote on Twitter. "Not good for conservatives."

Other conservatives quickly agreed, hammering Facebook for the move.

"This is a disaster for news coverage," wrote Ben Shapiro, a prominent conservative and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire. "It's an attempt to restore gatekeepers who have a bias as the ultimate arbiters of truth."

RBPundit, an influential anonymous conservative blogger, published a series of tweets expressing strong concern.

"It's going to be leftists reporting stories they don't like and leftists 'fact-checking' these stories," RBPundit wrote. "It's a fraud."

The blogger continued:

15 Dec
 RBe @RBPundit
Fake News is a thing because "fact-checkers" are biased towards liberals / Democrats. Facebook is compounding the problem.
 Follow
 RBe @RBPundit
If news sites would put some effort into not being biased, there'd be very little demand for alternate sources of news.
1:26 PM - 15 Dec 2016
  18 18 Retweets   35 35 likes
15 Dec
 RBe @RBPundit
But NOOOOO. What do they do? They put the people who made Fake News possible in charge of fact checking it. Hello?
 Follow
 RBe @RBPundit
Do they not get it? Fake News cropped up in response to people feeling like the media AND the fact-checkers weren't being fair.
1:28 PM - 15 Dec 2016
  29 29 Retweets   45 45 likes
The sentiment seemed to be nearly universal across the conservative spectrum.

Charles Cooke, editor of National Review Online, the premier conservative news outlet for decades, told Business Insider in an email that he "agreed with everything" RBPundit said.

Mark Hemingway, a senior writer at the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, reacted with three blunt words when he saw Facebook's announcement: "OH HELL NO."

"Facebook is bringing in Poynter/PolitiFact to police 'fake news'? They're INCREDIBLY biased," he wrote.

Alex Griswold, a media reporter for Mediaite, piled on: "Snopes is great... 90% of the time."

This was not the first time Facebook received criticism from conservatives over its handling of news that appears on its website.

Earlier this year, after Gizmodo reported that members of Facebook's Trending News team were biased against right-leaning news sources — a report Facebook disputed — the social media company invited top conservatives to its California headquarters for a meeting with CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The subject of fake news has been discussed in the media since President-elect Donald Trump's surprise victory over Hillary Clinton. Some observers have suggested the prevalence of misleading or outright fake stories could have swayed some people to vote for the Republican real-estate mogul.

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fake-news-conservatives-2016-12


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

12/18/2016 11:25 am  #2


Re: Conservatives Freak Out Over FB War on Fake News

Generally, anything that pisses off Ann Coulter is a good idea.

Hey, in the words of Steven Colbert.
“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”


 


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

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