As Twitchy reported yesterday, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made some pretty big waves across both social and traditional media when he announced that his social media sites -- Facebook, Instagram, and Threads -- would no longer be employing 'fact-checkers' to play Ministry of Truth over content that gets posted to those platforms.
While most people (well, sane people, anyway) regarded this as a positive sign, it was also met with skepticism, particularly from those who were banned from Facebook for COVID 'misinformation,' or reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story, or even just those people who remember the overt election interference in the 2020 election through 'Zuckerbucks.'
Maybe the funniest reaction, however, came from the 'fact-checkers' themselves, who were not informed in advance of this decision and proceeded to throw a hissy fit about getting the boot from policing our freedom of speech. The executive director of PolitiFact, one of the biggest fake 'fact-checking operations running, was particularly amusing in his denials that PolitiFact had anything to do with censorship on Facebook.
Uh-huh. Sure, Jan.
The story truly took a hysterical turn for the surreal, however, when The New York Times got a hold of it last night. In what was perhaps one of the least self-aware and unintentionally hilarious headlines of all time, the Gray Lady performed an enormous face plant in front of the world.
Take a look:
They really wrote this and then published it. pic.twitter.com/vepEbYrQYX
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 7, 2025
In the words of legendary tennis player John McEnroe, 'You CANNOT be serious!'
Except they were serious. This was not a joke headline. It was a real article where the Times interviewed the man behind PolitiFact and an editor from FactCheck.org who claimed pure innocence -- and no bias whatsoever -- when it came to Facebook's censorship regime.
(While it's true that the 'fact-checkers' did not have the power to actually remove content, Meta did that, the 'fact-checkers' knew the policy, so they knew that anything they labeled 'harmful' or 'misinformation' would be censored.)
Kyle Mann of The Babylon Bee could not believe his eyes at the headline.
I'd like to offer whoever wrote this headline at the New York Times a job at @TheBabylonBee pic.twitter.com/krJYrownuk
— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) January 7, 2025
Does unintentional parody still count as parody?
But Mann had reason to be slack-jawed. The Babylon Bee -- a humorous satire site -- was one of the most censored accounts on Facebook. Take a look at this thread for proof of that:
In honor of Facebook ending its fact-checking partnerships, here are the funniest fact-checks of Babylon Bee jokes:
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 8, 2025
A running 🧵: pic.twitter.com/PkMd8hhssR
Yes, Facebook was fact-checking memes and jokes. Constantly.
Others were equally flabbergasted that such a headline could be approved for publication.
Nobody there, not one person, read this headline and said, “dude… just… no”? pic.twitter.com/ydXtUlyqhw
— Tandy (@dantypo) January 7, 2025
Of course, they didn't. They would have to have someone working for them who exists outside their bubble for that to happen. There are no such people in the Times' newsroom or editorial board.
A beyond parody headline from propaganda outlet New York Times pic.twitter.com/i8TIoLbpS8
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 7, 2025
If the legacy media ever wonders why they died, they need look no further than this headline.
Wow. And the NYT article quotes PolitFact as a reliable source... They really don't get the joke...
— Steve Gordon (@stevemgordon67) January 7, 2025
They don't get the joke because they ARE the joke. And it makes it even funnier that they don't realize it.
Peak gatekeeper "fact checkers": labeling an opinion as false https://t.co/HKodDL9cj2
— Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.today (@JordanSchachtel) January 7, 2025
Oh, they love to do that. Because they don't realize the Orwellian nature of fact-checking opinions.
One of the best headlines of 2025 so far. https://t.co/ID7iHP7cdU
— Steven Quinn (@SQuinn42) January 8, 2025
We're only eight days into the new year, but this headline is going to live forever as a meme. It likely will (and should) be stapled to every article the Times publishes on Twitter for the rest of the year.
We have investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing. https://t.co/wqbt3lMXE0
— Terrence Diamantis (@terrysalt) January 7, 2025
Huh. We thought only the FBI, intelligence agencies, and the Department of Defense could do that.
How is this real? https://t.co/VKWfBJmRT3
— Dr Manhattva (@Manhattva) January 7, 2025
The rest of us are doing our best to leave Clown World behind after the 2024 election, but the Times seems happy to keep living there for years to come.
It must’ve sounded good in their heads; like covering for Biden’s senility. https://t.co/6fslsF2p2D
— Brett From L.A. (@ItsBrettFromLA) January 7, 2025
It was the biggest lie of 2024 (and the four years preceding that). But don't tell that to PolitiFact. According to their esteemed 'fact-checkers,' the biggest lie of the year was Haitians eating pets in Ohio.
And they wonder why they are a laughingstock.
Fact checkers absolutely knew they were making the bullets for the censorship gun, and they were happy to do it because they approved of who Facebook was aiming at. https://t.co/9RMAdCvw2w
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) January 7, 2025
Of course, they did. Which makes their denials all the more hollow and ridiculous.
Last time I saw writing like this was the opening credits of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL https://t.co/RaisgikefV
— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) January 7, 2025
HA.
The only difference is that Monty Python was TRYING to be funny.
Fact checkers: https://t.co/m1NafnBI99 pic.twitter.com/SR9RykxMSF
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) January 7, 2025
LOL.
And now we are dead.
None of this lets Zuckerberg or Meta off the hook. They worked in conjunction with the 'fact-checkers' to censor Americans -- often for stories and news that turned out to be 100 percent true. (One might even say that they 'colluded,' and with the government too.)
Whether Zuckerberg will remain true to his new direction remains to be seen. What we know for sure is that no one believes 'fact-checkers' anymore.
And that The New York Times is accidentally giving The Babylon Bee a run for its money as America's leading parody publication.
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