Teachable Moments

Fact checking fraud: candy coated disinformation

Harri Son

Charging electric cars with a generator

A lot of people immediately assume that when social media censors a post or link that it is valid or appropriate.  The truth is, chances are, the content is being censored for nefarious reasons. Sites like Politifact and Snopes often publish false information, carefully written as if it was true.   Let’s see how we can recognize Snopes fraud in this Tweet we’ve all seen … the actual image Snopes makes false statements

For obvious reasons the Fact-Checkers for Facebook and Twitter all believe electric cars don’t need a generator.  Which we all know is false. Snopes writers have to deny the fact that electric cars must have a generator at some point, no matter where in the world they are. That way, Snopes could claim the post said it was in the U.S, which is not true — aside from being totally irrelevant.

Snopes spreading false information

Neither of the memes or posts we found even mentioned the U.S.  Snopes could not find anything wrong with the post or the image, so they had to invent a reason for the red icon — so they made up a lie.  It’s as simple as that. The entire Snopes “fact-check” is based on a lie. But most people didn’t know that, because they didn’t look.

Facebook, Twitter and all the other “big tech”  rely on you believing them at first glance!

Have you read their terms of service?  Right there, they tell you they can say and do anything they like without any input from you. They know only a fraction of the viewers will fact-check the fact-checkers. That’s how so much  content that is true gets labeled and discarded as false. After all, these are the people who told you there was Russian Collusion, and Ukrainian Interference. They told you Jeff Epstein committed suicide, that C0VID originated in a wet market, George Floyd wasn’t a criminal.  They told you  it’s good to burn the city down but bad to make self defense. They claimed AOC was almost murdered on January 6 and Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black people. All lies that the “fact-checkers” made you believe were true.  Once they’re confident you believe it’s true, they run a correction you never see.  They lie long enough to make you believe, then retract the lie to avoid getting caught lying.

Snopes and Politifact rely on the same rule … that very few people will actually read and discover the truth.  Viewers arrive at the Snopes site, instantly see the Stop Sign icon, and immediately believe the lie.  They never look to see they’re being defrauded.

Today’s teachable moment is :

Just because Facebook, Twitter, or other social media tell you it’s not true, doesn’t mean it’s not true. In fact, it probably is true after all.

Also see :  Facebook’s deceptive tools spread disinformation: Politifact and Snopes

 

How big tech uses fact-checkers to lie