OPINION | This article contains the author's opinion.
Billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg might soon regret going on the Joe Rogan podcast which averages more viewers than all of the mainstream liberal media networks — combined.
As everyone has undoubtedly seen, Facebook allows so-called “independent” fact-checkers to run wild on their platform. They solely determine what the “truth” really is. Nothing is “independent” about the process as there are significant conflicts of interest between Facebook and the left-wing fact checkers.
Moreover, the myth of fact-checking is that fact-checkers themselves are often wrong. Fact-checkers are regularly guilty of publishing articles that include speech that is misleading, missing context, partially false or false — the same problem they accuse Americans of committing.
Their own articles are often redacted entirely, updated, or corrected. In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, fact-checkers censored information about Hunter Biden’s laptop in a massive, politically motivated cover-up scandal.
Now Zuckerberg is being confronted over their complicity in the scandal. And he’s blaming it all on the FBI. WATCH:
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1
— Minds💡 (@minds) August 25, 2022
Zuckerberg says that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation.
The New York Post had initially published the exposé on Hunter’s emails, but this was wrongfully censored by those operating behind closed doors at big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter.
Liberals were willing to do anything to help get Joe Biden elected and sway the outcome of the election — even if it meant pushing blatant lies on Americans under the guise of “truth” and “fact-checking.”
Fact-checkers wrongfully buried the story, labeling it “false.” You see, the speech included claims that were “unfounded” and “unauthenticated.”
Fact-checkers fail to understand this basic logical truth: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
In every other discipline, besides fact-checking, this is understood. In science, a hypothesis must be falsified even if an observation is not found empirically. In law, lack of evidence doesn’t guarantee the defendant isn’t guilty even if evidence cannot be found empirically. Instead, we simply presume innocence even if it’s unknown based on the idea that it’s worse to convict an innocent person than to let a guilty person go free.
The rules are completely different for fact-checkers. They presume speech is guilty of being false if it is unknown and cannot be authenticated with sufficient evidence in their opinion.
The power of fact-checking is left in the hands of an elite few. In the U.S., there are 10 verified fact-checkers who can decide at their sole discretion whether to censor information. There are no checks and balances on this process to prevent fact-checkers themselves from making mistakes. Even the fact-checkers themselves will disagree with each other.
On Facebook, the 10 fact-checkers in the U.S. have been accused of blatant bias. USA Today and PolitiFact, for example, are fact-checkers and independent research confirms the outlets lean in support of liberal Democrats. They were willing to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and published their own false information. “Check Your Fact,” on the other hand, is another verified fact-checker on Facebook, which is owned by the conservative news outlet The Daily Caller Inc. This fact-checker naturally refused to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. They were right.
As you can see, this is a complete mess as the fact-checkers themselves often disagree with each other on whether information should be censored.
This only scratches the surface on the vast number of problems with the process of fact-checking speech.
On Facebook, if speech is truthful, but doesn’t include additional information desired by all-powerful 10 fact-checkers, then the speech is “Missing Context” and thus censored. That’s not fact-checking, but Facebook allows it.
If the speech is expressing an opinion or asking a question, we have seen multiple examples of fact-checkers still being allowed by Facebook to label questions and opinions as “False.” This isn’t fact-checking.
What if fact-checkers can’t find evidence to support your speech? Then your speech includes “unfounded” claims and therefore is “False” and censored. This isn’t fact-checking.
Depending on the fact-checker’s subjective view or mood on any given day, they can censor speech if they feel it’s “Misleading” even though it’s not necessarily “False.” This isn’t fact-checking.
If God-forbid there’s anything false in your speech, then it’s “Partially False” and thus censored. This actually is fact-checking, but it’s a complete waste of time since everyone includes errors in their speech, including the fact-checkers.
This wide range of options available to fact-checkers allows them to censor anything they want. Every single person who publishes content online has written speech that deserves one of these fact-checking labels, including the fact-checkers themselves.
In response to the Hunter Biden story, fact-checkers concocted their own lie by claiming information about Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.” This deserved a “False” rating and censorship.
What was their proof? Fact-checkers claimed that 51 intel officers from the CIA and NSA were willing to sign a letter confirming the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Now that’s some real proof and authentication, right?
In the end, the 51 intel officers were wrong.
The fact-checkers were wrong.
The story was buried and Joe Biden went on to win the election.
Over a year later, the contents of Hunter’s computers and his emails were officially “authenticated” on March 17, 2022.
What can be done now? As publicly traded companies, Meta is worth $565 billion and Twitter caps out at $38 billion. With an army of lawyers protecting the companies, not much can be done by private citizens attempting to legitate the issue.
The same isn’t true for the federal government.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said: “I’m calling for a Congressional investigation into how Big Tech, mainstream media, and the Democrat industrial complex colluded to suppress the Hunter Biden scandals — and during the last days of the 2020 election.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, the House minority whip, said: “Trump was right. Republicans were right. The New York Post was right. Big Tech engaged in a cover-up to help Joe Biden win the election. They need to be held accountable.”
Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, added: “When will Meta and Twitter be held accountable for knowingly and intentionally lying to the American people to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story days before the election??? Big Tech interfered in our democracy and there must be consequences!”
The laptop not only contains disturbing images and videos of Hunter’s crack cocaine use and sex escapades, but it also implicates his father’s participation and abuse of power by being involved in Hunter’s corrupt overseas business dealings.
In the beginning, a man named John Paul Mac Isaac says Hunter Biden entered his computer repair shop on April 12, 2019. His store in Delaware was called “The Mac Shop.”
“I could definitely tell that he was inebriated,” Mac Isaac explained. “When I asked for his last name, there was a long pause. And he kind of sarcastically added Biden.” Mac Isaac says he called the FBI after he found an “astounding” and “disgusting” volume of homemade pornography. What began as a simple computer repair quickly turned into a troubling revelation.
Mac Isaac also found a PDF indicating that Hunter had made $1.2 million for Burisma, a private energy company in Ukraine. He researched Burisma and the contents of the laptop, which he found deeply troubling.
When he met with FBI agents, he said they were not in a rush to look into the laptop or take action. “I think that was my first indication that maybe the FBI was more interested in returning the laptop to the former owner and protecting the Bidens than they were protecting me or getting this to the proper channel,” he said.
Fortunately, a federal grand jury is considering possible criminal charges against Joe Biden’s son. The U.S. Department to Justice has been investigating Hunter for potential violations of tax, money laundering and foreign lobbying laws.
Hunter’s lavish lifestyle and foreign business dealings have raised major concerns. There were at least four large transactions that banks flagged as “potential criminal activity” while his father served as vice president under Barack Obama.
The dark secrets from the Bidens’ past are coming back to haunt them. In one instance, Hunter Biden’s company received a staggering $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the richest woman in Russia and the widow of Yury Luzhkov who was the former mayor of Moscow.
Why was this wire sent? Baturina disclosed that they have “a financial relationship,” but declined to delve deeper into why the wire transfer was made. The payment to Biden’s investment firm was made in early 2014. Fast-forwarding to 2022, there is widespread speculation that the Bidens have been doing favors for the Russians all along.
Another suspicious wire transaction was a $100,000 payment from a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy. At the time, this company was owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming. The payment went to Hunter’s law firm, Owasco, in 2017.
Joe Biden wasn’t sitting on the sidelines during these deals. There have been 8 corrupt business dealings discovered in Hunter’s emails and texts that involve his father.
In emails and text messages, Hunter repeatedly refers to his father as “the big guy.” In one alarming instances, Hunter and “the big guy” used Air Force Two to travel to China where Hunter Biden’s company Bohai Harvest Equity Investment Fund closed a corrupt deal a Chinese mining company. Two weeks later and the Bidens were profiting as the deal was formally signed.
Some of these claims are still labeled “False” by official Facebook fact-checkers, such as FactCheck.org, which writes, “We also found no evidence that Joe Biden used his position as vice president to enrich his son.” Again, if they cannot find evidence, presumably with a few phone calls, emails, and google searches, the speech is simply presumed false and censored. That’s not fact-checking.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the U.S. Treasury Department received these four warnings of potential criminal activity. In 2020, an investigation was launched into Hunter’s financial activity by the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Senate Finance Committee. To day, no members of the Biden family have been criminally charged.