Hot on the heels of the bombshell admission last week by Facebook lawyers in legal filings that “fact checks” are nothing more than opinion, this open letter to Zuckerberg and Facebook/Meta from highly respected The British Medical Journal (BMJ) shows even more reason Facebook is simply engaged in wanton censorship. It is equivalent to a professional ‘bitchslap’ in my opinion.
It it worth repeating and sharing everywhere. It is time to pushback twice as hard. h/t to Willis Eschenbach.
Open letter from The BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
We are Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, editors of The BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and most influential general medical journals. We are writing to raise serious concerns about the “fact checking” being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta.
In September, a former employee of Ventavia, a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, began providing The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. These materials revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.
The BMJ commissioned an investigative reporter to write up the story for our journal. The article was published on 2 November, following legal review, external peer review and subject to The BMJ’s usual high level editorial oversight and review.[1]
But from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about “Missing context … Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share “false information” might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were “partly false.”
Readers were directed to a “fact check” performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.[2]
We find the “fact check” performed by Lead Stories to be inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.
— It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong
— It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”
— The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog”
— It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article
— It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert”
We have contacted Lead Stories, but they refuse to change anything about their article or actions that have led to Facebook flagging our article.
We have also contacted Facebook directly, requesting immediate removal of the “fact checking” label and any link to the Lead Stories article, thereby allowing our readers to freely share the article on your platform.
There is also a wider concern that we wish to raise. We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence.[3] Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ.
We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.
Best wishes,
Fiona Godlee, editor in chief
Kamran Abbasi, incoming editor in chief
The BMJ
Competing interests:
As current and incoming editors in chief, we are responsible for everything The BMJ contains.
References:
[1] Thacker PD. Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial. BMJ. 2021 Nov 2;375:n2635. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n2635. PMID: 34728500. https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
[2] Miller D. Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials. Nov 10, 2021. https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/11/fact-check-british-medical-jo…
[3] https://twitter.com/cochranecollab/status/1458439812357185536
When political agendas serve to hide the truth, people get harmed. This is especially evident when medical findings are censored by ignorant political hacks. Many (perhaps millions) died as a result of the censoring of information regarding effective treatments for Fauci Designer Flu, as well as hiding the dangers of “gene therapy”.
That’s more than irresponsible; it’s fatal in a big way.
Similarly, the censoring of information regarding the truth about global warming, how innocuous it is, and indeed beneficial, it’s true causes (or absence), in the face of a worldwide tsunami of alarmist political propaganda, has harmed billions of people who suffer skyrocketing energy costs and the consequential inflation of every other commodity. The theft, poverty, and hardships inflicted are unconscionable.
The “fact checkers” are propagandists pure and simple. Whatever their motives might be, their actions result in tragedy for (most of) humanity.
When I have an annual blood test, I am given a printed report with all the details. When I had two PCR tests and asked how the number of cycles I got no answer.
Why with all other treatments does my GP give me the details of diagnosis and medications but does not have the details for me to make an informed choice about vaccination? Why is information that would be helpful concealed or stuck away in some inaccessible place?
The above-quoted letter from the BMJ is a proper dress-down of Facebook/Meta, but I’m confident that Mark Zuckerberg’s response (never to be put into writing, of course) would be along the lines of: “What, you talkin’ to me?”
If Facebook, Twitter, Instagram were to simply dissolve into liquidation bankruptcy, and take all $938 billion in market cap down the drain, the world would be a better place immediately. Appropriately, it’s skilled work force of IT/sysops, programmers, and software engineers could then go find gainful employment working in the coal and oil-gas industries.
They are censoring the data, therefore they are publishers not platforms, therefore they should lose their special protections under the law currently protecting them from lawsuits.
Funny isn’t it, how in this time of Credentialism, there were no actual names provided of the “factcheckers”.
My guess: twenty-something uni grad (social studies, over $100K in student debt, no math credits, no real science understanding).
The Facebook Fact Checka is not interested in facts or truth. They are only interested in protecting and projecting the Party Line.
the self appointed fact checking, so-called, has been a political exercise on the part of those who control these media outlets as a way of promoting their political stance. For example, orange man bad.
Re Fauci, Pfizer et al concerning medical experimentation:
23 Nazi scientists, physicians, and senior officials of Nazi medical administration and army were put on stand at the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trial (Military Tribunal #1) was the trial in which the Nazi scientists and doctors were tried and sentenced their verdict. These trials of Military Tribunal #1 were also known as the Doctor’s Trial. These trials took place on December 9, 1946. The procedures of the trial lasted for 180 days. There were about 1,500 documents of proof and 85 witnesses.
Seven of these doctors were sentenced to death, nine were given long prison sentences, and seven were acquitted. The seven doctors who were sentenced to death were hung on June 2, 1948. The nine who were delivered prison sentences all went to prison for a minimum of fifteen years.
Facebook. Well, I posted there some links to scientific articles in Nature. They blocked the comments. I posted a link to GitHub where I corrected a climate computer model software bug (this was the only case where they unblocked it when I protested, which is quite amazing because any other protest went to their Artificial Extreme Stupidity). They erased a comment of mine against homeopathy telling that it’s ‘bullying’. I guess it’s illegal to bully pseudo sciences on fakebook, they deserve respect. I reported a highly illegal page that sells recipes for ‘curing’ cancer with dangerous substances that can result in the death of the ‘cured’, doing fiscal evasion on top of that. They did nothing, because they earn money from the scam advertisement.
On top of that, they pushed on me idiotic articles from all sorts of journals I did not ‘like’ or ‘follow’. A nano-technology group I followed ‘published’ an alarmist ‘study’ about climate. Probably nano-climate or something.
I had enough so I removed my account there.
Facebook operating without an obligation to the truth.
Fact checkers operating without facts or integrity. And with warnings. Hoodwinking.
The WHO and the CDC built their pandemic response model on what they learned from their failed attempt to foist a global H1N1 pandemic in 2009. This time they had friends in high places and the focus of their response was propaganda not a scientifically based response for. COVID -19. Coronaviruses are vastly different than a flu virus. They are air borne and not dependent on droplets, which makes them highly contagious. The are breathed in and breathed out. South Korean research that was censored demonstrated experimentally that cloth and surgical masks do not work for COVID 19. So why did we settled on them when N95 and KN 24 masks actually work? We are still wearing useless masks more as a political banner than a useful measure to fight the pandemic. Why did we end up with a COVID-19 test that is so extremely sensitive that it has a high false positive rate. It tests for spike proteins. We all could have spike proteins in our airway and not actually be exposed the COVID-19, nor be infected with the virus. Furthermore, there is very strong evidence that the virus was likely underway in the Fall of 2019— globally by the time the WHO rang pandemic alarm bell in March 2020. In late Summer and Fall of 2019, between Washington DC and Philly there was a big up tick of viral pneumonia and coronavirus admissions beginning in August through December 2019 with warnings going out in Sept 2019 that a bad flu season was expected. Remember, at the time we had a coronavirus test that was not specific of COVID 19 so COVID 19 would have been undetectable until March 2020.. By March 2020 COVID-19 was already well distributed through out the USA and unstoppable and still is. The non-scientific socio-political response is and will continue to be a man made catastrophe globally. The pandemic did unify the the world and the result has been an increase in globalism, central control, social repression and a giant step toward globalized socialism. We should wonder if this was an accidental outcome?. And who benefited financially the most? The research on SARS Coronaviruses began globally after the 2006 outbreak. The gain of function research accelerated as the Crispr-CAS-9 technology was underway by 2015. The purpose of this research was for developing vaccines. This is the reason the vaccines were able to hit the market in record time…a good thing right? . Given all the research on SARS coronaviruses since 2006, you would think that the WHO and the CDC would have been better prepared for a SARS Coronavirus pandemic. If this is true why did we get a Flu virus response protocol. It has not worked and is still not working. No the only solution they have for us is to do it harder, faster, more and more and longer. This is always the message of the self righteous and/or /marketers who stand aloft from the actual needs and realities of human community.
I’ve read extensively on the 1918 flu epidemic. Masking didn’t work in cities like San Francisco that mandated it
We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.
*fart vanishes into hurricane*
the Gramscian march never goes backward chum
Yeah, the hegemon has risen.
“Fact checking” has the veneer of cold ruthless objectivity, and when it can approach this ideal then it has considerable worth.
But cold ruthless objectivity is in short supply these days. Many people hardly recognize such a thing.
The source for a lot of the FB fact check is USA today. Here is one of the many articles FB uses:
https://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-false-claim-arctic-163838903.html
Sometimes, they get brave enough to identify their sources, like the end of this one:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/03/fact-check-laws-thermodynamics-support-climate-change-theory/8796217002/
The British Medical Journal… eh?
Medical fact checking? – look no further than the venerable Lancet which is getting a bit of clearly well deserved stick
google the Great Barrington Declaration and the top doctors that wrote it.
Now ask yourself why you have never heard of this.
The BMJ recently published a paper about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials. The person who raised many many issues was sacked. The very next day the FDA granted EUA to the Pfizer vaccine. Not a surprise really when one considers the FDA receives nearly 50% of its funding from big pharma.
Hot on the heels of the bombshell admission last week by Facebook lawyers in legal filings that “fact checks” are nothing more than opinion, this open letter to Zuckerberg and Facebook/Meta from highly respected The British Medical Journal (BMJ) shows even more reason Facebook is simply engaged in wanton censorship. It is equivalent to a professional ‘bitchslap’ in my opinion.
BMJ’s headline was stupid. Lead Stories’ response to the open letter is pretty reasonable. it seems to me it is by no means an open and shut case BMJ good, fact checker bad, as your article implies.
Game of Thrones | Sia – Alive – Music video——-
Jon Snow – Battle Scars (GoT)
cheers
The other night I posted video of a fire in our fireplace (live in NJ USA) with the comment “getting ready for a cool night” on my family FB pages. FB posted their COVID info alert on it. Their AI obviously thought “cool night”= party that’s ridiculous FB checking is
It seems to me that Facebook does not care about enabling all people to share information with others. It seems that their term “fact checking” means that they want to suppress facts they don’t like. Why would you patronize Facebook? They are a business. Don’t give them any business. Speak freely where you can and eschew the business of controlled information.
They are helping to prove that the trouble with ignorance is that it gains confidence over time.
There’s a reason FB and the other social media sites are free. They need you more than you need them. Unplug.
It would be nice if Zuckerberg were to receive a subpoena for Christmas for election meddling, bribery, and an assortment of other charges related to his/facebook actions. With a big bow of course. Maybe even a singing telegram!