We’ve all met them…
Tag: fact checkers
Google, YouTube spend MILLIONS to launch Global Fact Check Fund
On Tuesday, Google and YouTube announced that they will be providing a $13.2 million grant to the nonprofit Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network with the goal of launching a new “Global Fact Check Fund,” set to launch in early 2023.
The move, which marks the companies’ largest fact-checking grant to date, comes as they continue to ramp up their fight against “misinformation” online.
According to Google and YouTube, the grant will “support [the Poynter Institute’s] network of 135 fact-checking organizations from 65 countries covering over 80 languages.”
The companies justified their decision by noting that “helping people to identify misinformation is a global challenge.”
“The Global Fact Check Fund,” they explained, “will help fact-checkers to scale existing operations or launch new ones that elevate information, uplift credible sources and reduce the harm of mis- and disinformation around the globe.”
Massive ‘CitizenFreePress’ News Site Suspended from Musk’s Twitter for Sharing Video of Obama Admitting Election Machine Exploits.
The heavily-trafficked news aggregation site CitizenFreePress.com has been suspended from Twitter for sharing a clip of former President Barack Obama, campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2008, discussing potential problems with American voting machines and demanding paper trails for ballots.
CitizenFressPress.com (CFP) was not the only account to have shared the clip, though appears to be the only one that has received a suspension for doing so. Though the video can still be viewed on Elon Musk’s platform, it now carries a warning label which claims the video is “misleading,” as well as noting that the clip can no longer be replied to, shared, or liked.
The video is still shareable from other accounts, and still available on CSPAN. But someone at Twitter appears to be trying to nuke it, at least from CFP’s account.
Facebook launches new tools to “combat climate misinformation”
The world’s largest social network, Facebook, has announced plans to increase its elevation of “authoritative climate information” and expand its “fact checking” of content that it deems to be climate misinformation.
Facebook will expand its fact-checking tools by increasing the availability of its “Climate Science Center” (a page that contains “factual resources from the world’s leading climate organizations and actionable steps people can take in their everyday lives to combat climate change”) to 165 countries and expanding its “Climate Inform Labels” (labels that are added to Facebook posts and link to posts from the Climate Science Center).
The tech giant has also launched a “Climate Science Literacy Initiative” that will “pre-bunk climate misinformation” by running ads that “feature five of the most common techniques used to misrepresent climate change.”
Spotify buys company that detects “dangerous misinformation” and “harmful content”
Audio streaming service Spotify has acquired Kinzen – a company that detects and flags “dangerous misinformation and harmful content” within audio content by generating and analyzing audio transcriptions.
Spotify began partnering with Kinzen in 2020. In a blog post about the acquisiton, Spotify said Kinzen’s technology helps Spotify “analyze potential harmful content in multiple languages and countries.”
Kinzen has previously received funding from tech giant Meta and Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). IFCN partners with Meta to “fact-check” posts on its platforms.
Kinzen also works with “content moderation service providers engaged by large technology companies,” consults with “public policy makers seeking to better understand and respond to harmful content,” and has previously partnered with other fact-checkers to detect “climate misinformation in audio.”
Kinzen’s technology works by using machine learning models to detect and flag “harmful language, language, claims, narratives, and policy violations” within the audio transcriptions it has generated.
Danielle Anderson, ‘Expert’ Who Helped ‘Fact-Check’ Lab-Leak Theory, Was Secretly Part Of Dangerous Coronavirus Research
Danielle Anderson, a virologist often cited as a “biosafety expert” by journalists seeking to debunk the lab-leak theory, never disclosed she had worked on dangerous coronavirus research while fact-checking COVID-19 origin theories, resurfaced documents reveal.
Anderson played a key role in suppressing a New York Post story which posited that COVID-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, published in Feb. 2020, according to The Disinformation Chronicle. While she conducted that, and other, work, she failed to disclose she was involved in a grant for manipulating coronaviruses from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance.
A 2020 grant awarded to Daszak and EcoHealth, a group which funneled NIH money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to conduct gain-of-function (GOF) research, lists Anderson as a researcher. The Chinese Academy of Sciences is listed as another funding source for Anderson — an institution directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to The Disinformation Chronicle.
Anderson was also listed on a 2018 grant application by Daszak to DARPA, which proposed creating and studying genetically altered coronaviruses. DARPA denied the application, stating Daszak would need a GOF “risk-mitigation plan.”
Why has fact-checking disappeared under Biden?
Fact-checking under President Trump was a bustling business. Seemingly every day, and sometimes by the hour, the 45th president’s every word was scrutinized, which all comes with the job.
But under President Biden, fact checkers are enjoying what feels like extended vacations or have simply checked out in terms of scrutinizing the many ways that he is misleading the public.
Take CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale as a prime example of apathy around holding the current president accountable.
From June 2019 until November 2020, Dale appeared or was mentioned on CNN more than once per day, on average, according to Mediaite. Estimating conservatively,
that’s more than 500 appearances or mentions on a national network in the span of just 16 months.
But Dale has become the fact-checker version of Edward Snowden under Biden. He’s almost impossible to find these days. In fact, Dale has not conducted even one fact-check of the president since June.
Of course, Biden supporters will insist that Dale simply doesn’t have any material to work with. But that’s not true. In August, Biden declared that inflation in July was zero, despite the number being near a 40-year high at 8.3 percent.
Last week, Biden claimed the Inflation Reduction Act, which numerous studies have concluded will do almost nothing to reduce inflation, had already “helped reduce inflation at the kitchen table.” In a related story, food prices rose again in August, with the Consumer Price Index up 10.6 percent year-over-year.
There are many other examples from the summer, but you get the point: The most powerful man in the country needs to be held accountable for his words and actions, particularly in an election year, when each side is attempting to shape the narrative through the press. But fact-checkers at mainstream outlets refuse to do it.
Facebook Fact-Checkers Are Now Dropping by the Comments Sections of Your Posts to Re-Educate You
Facebook just keeps finding new ways to be awful. The latest stunt is to jump into the comments section of your posts to insert some approved agitprop that stays near the top of your feed.
This particular “fact” check concerns an estimate from a car dealership showing that a customer would be charged nearly $30,000 for an EV battery for his Chevy Volt. A Facebook page called Car Coach Reports, which focuses on auto news, posted a picture of the invoice on August 29. Two days later, PolitiFact waded into the comments section to add their take on the story—namely that the battery in question was for a 10-year-old vehicle with 70,000 miles that is no longer under warranty. PolitiFact wrote, “The battery had to be purchased from a third-party supplier because General Motors discontinued the Volt in 2018 and no longer makes the battery.” They quickly added that newer batteries “cost much less.”
On the “fact” checker’s website we learn that “The average cost of a replacement battery in an electric vehicle is about $6,300… though that price can be higher depending on the vehicle in question.” Prices can range anywhere from $6000 to $20,000.
Bizarre ‘Fact Check’ of World Climate Declaration Claims No Natural Climate Change For Almost 200 Years
Inevitable really, but the Daily Sceptic‘s recent article on the World Climate Declaration (WCD) has attracted a green-activist ‘fact check’, and on that flimsy basis has been labelled “false information” by Facebook. On August 18th we published an article reporting that scientists across the world had declared there was no climate emergency. We added that the assertions that humans cause most or all climate change and that the science behind this claim is ‘settled’ have been dealt a savage blow by the WCD. The lead signatory is the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever, and he is followed by over 1,100 scientists and professionals. No fewer than 235 professors have signed the Declaration. Our story on the WCD went viral on social media, and is one of the most widely read articles we have ever published. The article and the WCD have now been branded “incorrect” by the green activist blog Climate Feedback.
The blog’s author writes: “Natural (non-human) drivers of climate change have been mostly stable since the onset of modern warming and all the available scientific evidence implicates human greenhouse gas emissions as the primary culprit.”
To claim that the climate has not undergone any natural change for almost 200 years is nonsense. Not a scrap of evidence can be submitted to back up this proposition, and it flies in the face of all climate science. The climate has changed on Earth since gas first made an appearance in the atmosphere. Climate Feedback’s claim is in fact a denial of climate change.
Facebook to let “fact checkers” comment on posts that “may not be verifiably false”
Just in case anything slips through the existing “fact-checking,” narrative-enforcing cracks of Facebook’s censorship, a new “feature” is now being introduced as a pilot.
Through it, Facebook is letting a small group of US “fact-checkers” leave comments on public posts, which “may not be verifiably false, but that people may find misleading.”
This has been revealed in the tech and social media behemoth’s Community Standards Enforcement Report for the second quarter of this year. One of Facebook’s (Meta’s) activities covered in the report concerns its third-party fact-checker – aka, the “hired censorship guns” program.
At the very end of the report, Facebook briefly mentions the exceedingly interesting new pilot program. While critics will no doubt see it as yet another avenue for the giant to steer users in a particular direction, it is presented as quite the opposite: allegedly to “empower” users as they come across content and are deciding “what to read, share, and trust.”
Hellbound and Down 
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