{"id":178691,"date":"2018-09-17T20:26:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T01:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/17\/phuque-phacebook\/"},"modified":"2018-09-17T20:26:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T01:26:00","slug":"phuque-phacebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/09\/17\/phuque-phacebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Phuque Phacebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>In the annals of stupid sh%$ to come from Mark Zuckerberg, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/09\/14\/facebook-condemned-empowering-right-wing-magazine-drive-liberal-news-outlets-ground\">Facebook using <i>The Weekly Standard<\/i> to fact check articles is right up there with home colonoscopy kits<\/a>: (No, Zuckerberg has never to my knowledge invested in home colonoscopy kits)<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">When Facebook selected the right-wing, <a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/extra\/the-weekly-standards-war\/\">Iraq War-boosting<\/a> magazine <i><a href=\"http:\/\/lemonparty.org\/\">The Weekly Standard<\/a><\/i> <span style=\"color: black;\">[DO NOT CLICK THRU ON THIS LINK]<\/span> as an official fact-checking partner last year as part of its effort to combat &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.fb.com\/news\/2018\/05\/facing-facts-facebooks-fight-against-misinformation\/\">misinformation<\/a>,&#8221; progressives <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/facebook-weekly-standard-fact-check-8dfc1cba987c\/\">warned<\/a> that the conservative publication would use its power to suppress accurate articles published by center-left and left-wing outlets.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s precisely what happened. <\/p>\n<p>After ThinkProgress <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/brett-kavanaugh-said-he-would-kill-roe-v-wade-last-week-and-almost-no-one-noticed-c0e98494b06d\/\">published<\/a> an article by Ian Millhiser last week arguing that Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s comments during his Senate confirmation hearings combined with a speech he gave in 2017 eliminates &#8220;any doubt&#8221; that the judge opposes the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision in Roe v. Wade, the Weekly Standard deemed the article &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/facebook-weekly-standard-fact-check-thinkprogress-6176df1d5749\/\">false<\/a>&#8220;\u2014a designation that, given Facebook&#8217;s rules and the platform&#8217;s enormous power, cuts off <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/mark-zuckerberg-protecting-democracy-is-an-arms-race-heres-how-facebook-can-help-win-it\/2018\/09\/04\/53b3c8ee-b083-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html\">80 percent<\/a> of the piece&#8217;s future traffic and penalizes other pages that dare to post the article. <\/p>\n<p>Expressing opposition to Facebook&#8217;s decision to hand the factually-challenged <i>Weekly Standard<\/i> the power to decide what is and isn&#8217;t fact-based news, The Intercept <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/09\/14\/facebook-weekly-standard-suppressed-a-story-about-brett-kavanaughs-opposition-to-roe-v-wade-were-republishing-it\/\">republished<\/a> Millhiser&#8217;s piece on Friday with a statement from The Intercept&#8217;s editor-in-chief Betsy Reed, who condemned the social media giant&#8217;s decision to tank &#8220;a fairly straightforward legal analysis&#8221; at the behest of a right-wing magazine.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>By way of perspective, the <i>Weekly Standard<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/stevegilliard.blogspot.com\/2005\/01\/speak-like-conservative.html\">gave full throated support to segregation in the 1950s and 60s<\/a>, and Facebook has made them arbiters of &#8220;Truth&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Way to go Mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the annals of stupid sh%$ to come from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook using The Weekly Standard to fact check articles is right up there with home colonoscopy kits: (No, Zuckerberg has never to my knowledge invested in home colonoscopy kits) When Facebook selected the right-wing, Iraq War-boosting magazine The Weekly Standard [DO NOT CLICK THRU &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,365,368,364,490],"class_list":["post-178691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-hack-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}