Facebook Won’t Fact-Check Opinion After Spat With Elizabeth Warren on Climate
Right, so Facebook has decided that opinion pieces dont require fact-checking. This is going to go brilliantly, I’m sure. No possible way this policy could be exploited whatsoever.
The decision comes after a rather public spat with Senator Elizabeth Warren over climate change content. Warren had flagged posts containing what she characterised as climate misinformation, only to be told by Facebook that the content in question was “opinion” and therefore exempt from their third-party fact-checking programme.
The logic, if you can call it that, goes something like this: news articles and viral posts make factual claims that can be verified or debunked. Opinion pieces, on the other hand, express viewpoints. And Facebook doesn’t want to be in the business of policing viewpoints. Democratic values and all that.
The obvious problem? The line between fact and opinion is precisely where bad actors love to operate. “Climate change is a hoax” could be presented as opinion. “Vaccines cause autism” is technically someone’s opinion. This policy essentially creates a massive loophole for misinformation dressed up in the language of personal belief.
Facebooks fact-checking initiative was already controversial. Critics on the right claimed it censored conservative viewpoints. Critics on the left argued it didn’t go far enough. Now both sides can be annoyed for entirely new reasons.
Warren, for her part, has been a consistent critic of Facebooks power and influence. She wants to break up big tech. So theres history here, and one could argue Facebooks response is at least partially motivated by that adversarial relationship. But thats speculation. What isnt speculation is that this policy will be tested. Repeatedly. By people who understand exactly how to frame false claims as opinions. And when that happens, Facebooks position that theyre not responsible for the content on their platform will look increasingly untenable.
Were watching a trillion-dollar company try to avoid the responsibilities that come with being the worlds largest information distribution platform. Its not going well.
