Tag: fact checkers

AP source who ‘fact checked’ Mass Formation Psychosis theory encouraged ‘behavioral nudging’ people into Covid compliance, quoted Goebbels

After podcaster Joe Rogan’s wildly popular interview with Dr. Robert Malone aired on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” fact checkers jumped into the fray to try to disprove assertions made by Malone.

One of those cited authoritative in the AP “fact check” tweeted in favor of cajoling the public into following COVID-19 restrictions, and now claims that the collective group think around COVID-19, termed by Malone as “mass formation psychosis,” isn’t real.

New York University assistant professor of psychology and neural science Jay Van Bavel, who “co-authored a book on group identities,” has made claims that the only way to fight COVID-19 is for everyone to change their behavior until such time as a vaccine came along. And how to get everyone to change? “We have to think through the lens of behavioral science,” Van Bavel wrote. “What can we do to nudge and encourage and cajole and motivate people to do the right thing?”

Van Bavel also used a quote from notorious Nazi general Joseph Goebbels to point out that propaganda is most insidious when the “manipulated” public believes they are “acting on their own free will.”

Van Bavel seems to believe that he is not guilty of either spreading or believing propaganda, manipulating people or being manipulated.

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PolitiFact Slams Liberal Justice Sotomayor For Claiming 100K Kids In ‘Serious Condition’ With COVID

PolitiFact slammed liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for claiming during oral arguments over the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on Friday that more than 100,000 children were in “serious condition” due to the coronavirus.

“We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators” due to coronavirus, Sotomayor said.

PolitiFact rated the statement as “False,” writing in-part:

While the number of coronavirus-positive pediatric hospitalizations has risen with the spread of the omicron variant, Sotomayor’s number was way off.

At the time she made this comment, federal data showed that fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-positive children were in the hospital. In fact, fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 — cumulatively — since August 2020.

There are over 100,000 cases among children, but scientists say that few of those are severe.

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Instagram and Facebook block quote from Thomas Paine for “false information”

What if social media existed in the Dark Ages? Users posting a quote by an Enlightenment era figure, and getting censored for it, might have just gotten some idea of what that would be like.

Facebook’s “dumb algorithms” are most likely (or at least, hopefully) behind the decision to “fact check” and censor none other than a quote by Thomas Paine, an 18th century Anglo-American figure whose work was instrumental in inspiring the declaration of independence of the United States.

Even in the current climate of out of control online censorship, it would be a bitter pill to swallow if it turned out there was a human behind this particular decision.

Whatever the case, multiple Facebook and Instagram users were saying on Twitter on Monday and Tuesday that their posts were either removed or that they had their accounts temporarily blocked for uploading a picture of Paine and his quote, reading, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

According to Facebook’s censorship machine, that is false information, worthy of bans and deletions.

The irony of yet another instance of suppression of speech is particularly painful here (no pun intended) given Paine’s own pro-freedom, individual liberty and human rights, as well as anti-slavery stances, that made him a prominent Enlightenment figure.

Well, those quoting him today on social media, like evolutionary biologist Colin Wright are discovering that they live in a different era – where Instagram informs them that their stories containing the image and the quote had been removed for “false information” that goes against the giant’s community guidelines.

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Facebook’s fake fact-checkers censor medical journal article on alleged safety issues with Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine study

This is a dangerous time, indeed, when self-proclaimed fact checkers and curators are permitted to control information in the name of what they claim is the public good.

This trend was relatively unheard of prior to 2016. Until that time, the shaping and censoring was largely done in an invisible way. Nobody admitted to it because the public wouldn’t have stood for it.

But a successful propaganda campaign I’ve described in my books The Smear and Slanted aimed to convince many in the public to accept third parties telling us what we can cannot know or see.

Obviously, corporate and political interests are behind the efforts, using them to keep the public from seeing or hearing information that is contrary to their paid interests.

This helps explain a lot about Facebook’s indefensible censorship of a factual investigation published in the prestigious British Medical Journal.

The article by Paul Thacker exposed alleged poor practices and quality control issues during Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine studies based on whistleblower documentation.

According to the article:

A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

Paul Thacker, British Medical Journal

Of course this bombshell information is not what vaccine industry interests and their supporters in government and media wanted to be seen. (Pfizer has always denied any wrongdoing. Pfizer, the FDA and CDC all say all vaccines in use in the U.S. are safe and effective.)

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British Medical Journal criticizes Facebook over “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible” “fact-check” used to censor

The editor of The British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the world’s oldest and most respected medical journals, has written a letter to Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bring to his attention an “incorrect” fact-check on one of its reports.

The report was titled: “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”

A former employee at Ventavia, a research company that helped with the trials of the Pfizer Covid vaccine, provided The BMJ with dozens of internal documents, photos, email, and recordings, that revealed “a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety,” according to the letter.

“We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites,” the letter, written by BMJ editor Fiona Godlee, further claims.

The BMJ hired an investigative reporter to write the story, which was published on November 2. The article had been peer reviewed, legally reviewed, and subjected to The BMJ’s high editorial standards.

However, starting November 10, Facebook users started reporting problems when trying to share the article. Some said they were unable to share, others said their posts were flagged with a warning saying, “Missing context… Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Others were warned about the consequences of repeatedly sharing “false information.”

The BMJ’s article was fact-checked by Lead Stories, a Facebook contractor. The BMJ described the fact-check performed by Lead Stories as “inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.”

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