Facebook claims to be cracking down on “fake news”, but in a press conference with journalists to announce their great progress, the Facebook flak was asked one simple, penetrating question. What about Alex Jones’ InfoWars site? Is that going to be blocked?
Guess what…no. They aren’t touching this one extraordinarily prominent source of patent bullshit. Nope. This one is an obvious no-brainer, yet somehow they make excuses to avoid an easy target that would demonstrate a real commitment to cleaning up their service.
During yesterday’s session, Su argued that Infowars operates in a gray area — often toeing the line of provably false but not always crossing it — and, according to CNN, suggested that the company was focusing its takedown efforts on outlets that “can be proven beyond a doubt to be demonstrably false.”
Huh. Which one of these InfoWars claims can’t be demonstrated to be false? How stupid are the people at Facebook?
- Hitler is still alive, under the protection of the US government
- Human-pig chimeras are talking
- NASA is running a child slave colony on Mars
- The Democrats are running a pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza parlor
- Michelle Obama is actually a man
- Sandy Hook was a false flag operation
- Barack Obama is the global head of Al-Qaeda
- Kids are being turned gay by juice boxes
- Lady Gaga used the Superbowl halftime to perform a Satanic ritual
I would like to know which of these Mark Zuckerberg thinks might be true. I want to see his personal testimonial for each and every one of them, or I’m calling shenanigans on the frauds at Facebook.
I would be more surprised if they actually did block or close down sites that promoted fake news and real bullshit.
uncle frogy
Thank you for reading my “thoughts” below:
Only thing I can think of is that they are worried that InfoWars may be satire of the Poe’s Law variety. That many think it is real when it is actually satire making fun of “conspiracy theories”.
Sometimes Jones tried to claim “acting” as his schtick, which I don’t buy.
To me InfoWars is pure fiction entertainment which I avoid. Allowing him his own website for gullible to frequent is allowable while referencing him as a credible source of any information is a big mistake. even presenting instances of him presenting a fact gives the rest of his ranting some credibility it does not warrant.
thank you for reading this pointless viewpoint (contradiction of terms)
I’ve been seeing billboard ads for Facebook around here, claiming that they’re changing their feed to show less clickbait, and more stuff from friends. Geez Facebook, who do you think is posting the clickbait if not my friends?
I can accept that this is a really difficult problem that they can’t solve any time soon. But their marketing department is totally overselling whatever changes they’re making, if indeed they are making any major changes at all.
They’re simply getting rid of site links to sites that don’t generate advertisement income for Facebook.
Whatcha hafta understand is, this is opposites day. Fake news is really true, and “the news” is really fake. Well, opposites week. Opposites month. Opposites year. Opposites decade. Uhhh what century is this?
“Even the lies?”
Although that’s maybe not fair to Garak.
That’s absurd. Lady Gaga’s satanic rituals are infamous for overrunning their allotted time slot.
Facebook was never going to cut off its main revenue streams. The only fake news providers they’ll block will be low-income generators.
I’ll say one thing in Facebook’s defence — it’s not like established media sources have been doing a great job weeding out fake stories. If Hannity can keep his spot on cable TV after those Seth Rich conspiracy rantings, then why should Facebook be held to a higher standard when their users merely repost those rantings? (Answer: because they should want to.)
That Mars one, Jebus wept the hurtful stupid in that one.
That’s ridiculous. There not even the remotest chance that Facebook doesn’t know that Alex Jones’s 20 year career isn’t satire in any shape or form.
Someone called Alex Jones the “greatest entertainer of our times”. Well, even if he would only put on a show, he sells lies to very real, very “confused” people who do take him serious. Jones is just another symptom of the epidemic of people who believe whatever pleases them, even if it is utter B.S. (The left has less of them but they are not bug-free either…) Facebook has to be harsher (it won`t). They should take “Info Wars” down.
But as chrislawson in post no8 says, the “established” media like Fox News is hardly better than Jones. If I would be H. Clinton or Obama, I would have suit for defamation, slander and libel for all the nasty things that were said about them on screen, poisoning people`s minds. Criticising someone`s politics is one thing (absolutely needed and allowed), saying that one is actually a murderer (“Killary”) is another. One has to draw a line, otherwise “free speech” gets misused and we end up in the same situation as 1920ies Weimar.
Personally I am much more interested were this mania of “I believe what I want to believe!” originates from in the people who lap all this B.S. up so eagerly. And is there a way to de-bug them/our society from it?
Why? To take just the most obvious case, this scumbag has inflicted agonies on the parents of the children massacred at Sandy Hook school. That’s not “entertainment” except in the sense that the public torture that went on in Roman amphitheatres was.
“Lady Gaga used the Superbowl halftime to perform a Satanic ritual”
That one might be true, but how could you tell?
Obviously, shutting down the internet equivalent of pamphlets is fine, but going after its version of the National Enquirer might result in lawsuits, or something, and we can’t have that. So, Infowars is merely “skirting the edge”, like any really popular, possibly litigious, and heavily backed by crazies, penny dreadful. Same reason no one will touch Faux News.
I like the idea of Facebook.
It’s a great idea.
Everyone gets their own website.
I don’t like the reality of Facebook Corporation.
Way too much wrong with how it ended up being run.
Your “free” account is ending up costing you a lot in intangibles.
I’ve noticed that some people I know from the past, who were frequent long time Facebook users, have now deleted their accounts.
I have no idea why, but can guess.
I have to go with what’s been said above. It’s so patently bullshit that they likely don’t count it as news. It’s basically like the Weekly World News or Furry Fandom stuff.
He was but a simple tailor, just trying to make his way through the world, a political refugee overwhelmed by a lifetime of devastating wars, with few options left due to his government’s extensive corruption and incompetence. I don’t think you can really fault him for not always jumping at the chance to side with the Bajoran terrorists and the like, who were very consistently prejudiced against his entire species.
He’s really a pretty decent guy. I’d say he’s also the funniest character on DS9. That should count for something.
I think after the Comet Ping Pong flap, a log of people are afraid of crossing the very paranoid, and very well armed, Alex Jones fanbase.
Susan Montgomery @16: Has anyone ever walked into a restaurant with a gun and threatened the people working there because of something they read in Weekly World News or Furry Fandom?
Jones isn’t popular with people who think his antics are funny, he’s popular with people who think his antics are real.
I thought that Lady Gaga was a sane interruption of the satanic ritual of the Superbowl.
uncle frogy
I don’t do Facebook.
@microraptor there are people who go on killing sprees for all sorts of fucked up reasons. Like, I dunno, some guy starting a killing spree because he thought the Beatles told him to.
@Susan:
Yes, there are absolutely people that go on killing sprees for no reason that makes sense to others while insisting that they got inspiration from a source common to all.
But it does not follow that no person is ever responsible when someone commits violence and says that violence was inspired by someone else. You look at the totality of the circumstances. The guy who attacked Comet Ping Pong wasn’t citing some secret message (a la playing the Beetles backwards, or forwards for that matter), and also wasn’t citing some verbal order by a mafia boss for whom he worked. But when he did cite influences, he was citing the plain meaning of the words of the people who spread the conspiracy theory.
Verbal expressions – contained within a song or not – can communicate a broad range of things and as such different verbal expressions can create varying degrees of responsibility on the part of the speaker for the actions of the hearer. The responsibility of Jones isn’t all or nothing. The responsibility of Jones lies between that of the Beetles for recording Helter Skelter and that of a mafia boss for explicitly ordering a hit. Our analysis isn’t over as soon as someone says that they were inspired, rather than directly ordered, by someone else. Not every attempt to pass of responsibility is as crude and unwarranted as Manson’s. No, when someone attempts to pass off responsibility, that’s where our responsibility for analysis begins.
That first one… change “alive” to “reincarnated” and I’d believe it. Hitler’s absolutely under the protection of the US government, he’s just shorter, and orange-r, and less eloquent.
Possibly, but there’s also the question of how much censorship we’re willing to tolerate and how much there can be before diminishing returns set in.
Oh, and it’s The Beatles. B-E-A-T-L-E-S. Because it sounds like “Beetles” but since they were musicians who used beats, they called themselves The BEATles. And, like pretty much everyone’s internet screen name, they were stuck with it long after it stopped being funny. Can you tell I like The Beatles?