Facebook pushes back against the truth?

Noting CDC's misrepresentations could mislead people

Facebook says my recent column about face masks is "missing context" and "could mislead people," based on an assessment by "independent fact checkers." That judgment and the analysis underlying it show how reflexive deference to government agencies distorts supposedly "independent" summaries of scientific evidence on controversial issues, especially issues related to COVID-19 control measures. When one of those agencies gets something wrong, criticism of its position is apt to be labeled "misleading" on social media platforms that strive to police COVID-19 "misinformation" at the government's behest, regardless of what the evidence actually shows.

This has been the Motus Operandi of these general tech companies. When someone provides them the wrong information (but it's what they want to hear) then they let it slide. If someone gives them the correct information thy don't want to hear, then they demand that it is missing context or otherwise runs counter of some "fact checker" who is also ignoring the correct information and therefor is also wrong.

What specifically are they referring to now?

This is all in reaction to the cumulative study that I wrote about a while back that compared all of the major gold standard independent studies regarding mask wearing. The obvious overwhelming and consistent conclusion was that mask wearing did not help. The study itself provided all sorts of context, including acknowledgement of other "types" of non-statistical studies that suggested differently. But at the end of the day, the FACTS are that the slew of independent statistical large scale studies suggested that mask wearing (even the better grade ones) did not help stop the spread of Covid.

But apparently Facebook has determined that the statistical analysis is wrong, based on what some fact checker told them (or more likely what some Government employee told them). This reminds us of the back and forth with Congress and Twitter employees who were asked about their own medical expertise and why they felt qualified to determine which opinions were correct and which were not. I am quite certain that nobody at Facebook or any of the fact checkers are actually better statisticians than the person they are censoring as providing "disinformation".

So it sounds very much like Facebook is still censoring Covid information that they personally do not like. Why? Well there are several possible reasons. But one I believe is underemphasized in all of this. It is entirely possibly that sticking to their guns may be a legal ploy designed to avoid any lawsuits that might come from people who might sue them for biased health information that could have cause harm. After all, if they come out now and admit that they were wrong to censor all of these doctors and that said censoring had a negative affect on people's health, then is it possible that they might be legally held liable?

They are supposed to be protected by Section 230 from lawsuits. But those protections are about not being held liable for what people say on their platform. I am not 100% sure that they could not be held liable for their personal decisions to censor information, if censoring it caused harm. Section 230 does not give Facebook or any other public forum any allowance to censor on anything other than specific things. Medical studies would not fall under any of those categories and neither would statistical studies.

At the end of the day, we all need to remember that 99% of the factcheckers out there are never qualified to actually fact check anything medical, anything statistical, or anything scientific. They are simply biased people who make their own personal choices on which people to "fact check" positively and which people to "fact check" negatively.