It’s somewhat satisfying, at least, to know that it wasn’t your imagination after all. Big Tech really is censoring news of the Trump attempted assassination.
Facebook has finally admitted it censored former President Donald Trump’s defiant response to a would-be assassin’s bullet.
A post on the social media site of Trump raising his fist right after being shot was initially flagged as misinformation, according to multiple reports.
At least Facebook are owning up to it. Now for Google and other search engines to admit it, too. In the days and weeks after the attempted assassination, search engines attempted to “disappear” searches for the event.
Image searches also attempted to hide the iconic photo taken by Evan Vucci, of a bloodied Trump rising to his feet and shaking his fist in defiance. Even searching specifically for “trump assassination evan vucci fight fight photo” turned up nothing. The mainstream media were playing the same gambit: an editor for a “major news outlet” claimed that media should refrain from using the historic photo, as it would only help Trump’s campaign. Time, at the least, did exactly that, removing the image from its cover story and replacing it with a bland photo of the deserted rally grounds.
It was Time, you may remember, who bragged about a “shadow campaign” by media, Big Tech, and “a secret alliance of left-wing activists, union leaders and corporate CEOs” who colluded to “save” the 2020 election. The secret campaign went well beyond seeding misinformation and censoring opposition news, it included forcing unprecedented changes in election laws — which are run at a state, not federal, level — to encourage mass mail-in voting, with all its attendant potential for fraud.
So, what Facebook are admitting to is just the tip of the iceberg of censorship and news manipulation.
The error comes as Meta is coming under intense scrutiny for a pivot to artificial intelligence as it attempts to police what is shared online.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, writes in a blog post that his company is “taking the next steps towards open source AI becoming the industry standard.”
Here we get the frantic bait-and-switch. Having admitted that their “fact-checkers” were falsely removing accurate information, Big Tech pivots to pointing and screeching at obvious satire.
This hits as Elon Musk shared a video using an AI voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things not attributed to her, the Associated Press writes.
Next up, they’ll be fact-checking the Babylon Bee. Oh, wait…
It’s all a tangled web that shows social media is not the most reliable venue for legitimate news, said social media expert David Gerzof Richard, a professor at Emerson College and founder of Big Fish PR.
“It seems we haven’t learned our lesson,” he told the Herald Monday, referring to all the misinformation surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. “Fact checking is the first thing that goes out the window.”
Yes, he actually said that with a straight face.
He said news consumers make the mistake of believing Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, are legitimate news sources.
“Certain brands on those sites have established themselves as getting it right,” he added, and more importantly admitting when they are wrong.
Wait… they have proven that they have a record of getting the news right, and admitting when they’re wrong?
Best to stick with the mainstream media, then – they’ll never do either.
