Meta Drops Bogus “Fact-Checking” Program After Years of Targeting, Blacklisting, Censoring, and Eliminating Top Conservative Pages from Facebook
On Tuesday, Meta, the company that owns both Facebook and Instagram, announced it is discontinuing its third-party fact-checking program after years of censoring conservative speech. In its place, Meta will adopt a user-generated “Community Notes” system, similar Elon Musk’s social media platform, X.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the change on Facebook. He says he wants to restore free expression. Hmm.
Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me
Can any of us assume Zuckerberg won’t return to his old tricks? pic.twitter.com/0lMg41WDrf
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) January 7, 2025
This shift will begin in the United States, where Meta will terminate its collaborations with so-called independent fact-checkers. The decision stems from the belief that these expert fact-checkers introduced their own biases into the process, leading to an excessive amount of content being fact-checked.
For years now, The Gateway Pundit has been speaking out on this unconstitutional assault on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.
After the 2016 election, Facebook began making algorithm changes to ensure conservative news was no longer an option for their users. Two studies released in March of 2018 confirm this. A study by The Outline Organization found conservative publishers were hit the hardest by Facebook algorithm changes — and that The Gateway Pundit was hit the hardest.
In February, Facebook launched another algorithm change to its platform. With the changes, our traffic dwindled even further.
We weren’t the only ones to be affected. The algorithmic change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.
A Western Journal study in March 2018 revealed the same startling statistics. Further, this study found that liberal publishers actually saw an increase in traffic.
A June 2018 Gateway Pundit study of top conservative news outlets found that Facebook had eliminated 93% of traffic to top conservative websites.
Facebook began eliminating conservative content after the 2016 election.
In September 2018, The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft testified in front to Congress on Facebook’s assault on free speech.
We are reposting that testimony here today.
Years later we discovered that the US government was behind much of the censorship of conservative websites.
In 2024, The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, several prominent doctors, and Jill Hines from Louisiana brought our case on government censorship to the US Supreme Court.
The case is still ongoing.
In August 2024, Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to Congress that the social media giant was subject to government censorship around stories related to COVID and the 2020 election and that he would, in the future, fight such efforts harder than he did previously.
That leads us to today, when Meta announced that they were scrapping their current censorship program that has destroyed all of the prominent conservative websites on the platform — except for a couple who were able to squeak by for some reason.
Today Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta was changing their censorship apparatus. This move does not restore the hundreds of conservative pages that were deleted, censored, and blacklisted over the years.
This story is far from over.
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