True lies

I was annoyed on Christmas Day when Facebook removed one of my posts.

It discussed how on one of my Drinks Digest articles about XXXX beer had been mistakenly clicked on by non-English speakers seeking porn.

This is what it said …

Seriously?

Of all the awful content lurking on social media, you decided my post was a problem?

I appealed the verdict but *crickets*.

Oh, and don’t get me started on all the deep fake AI rubbish that’s cramming social media platforms and tricking naive users.

So I found it ironic, cheering and chilling in equal measures when Meta announced it was stopping third-party fact checking on Facebook.

Obviously the fact checking system is a little broken if my factual story about how many clicks the article on my Drinks Digest website received (191, 351 and counting) was removed for containing misleading links or content.

As Meta itself noted last week: “For example, in December 2024, we removed millions of pieces of content every day. While these actions account for less than 1% of content produced every day, we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes (i.e., the content may not have actually violated our policies).”

But removing all checks and balances on posts is pretty scary.

The organisation reckons its new policies are designed to allow room for types of speech including people calling “for exclusion or [using] insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality”.

In other words hate speech.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said Donald Trump’s election win represents a “cultural tipping point” in favour of free speech.

It’s also been a tipping point for me to decide I will not be travelling to the US in the next four years. Good luck with growing the tourism sector, America, as I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

I wonder if Meta will remove this post too? Watch this space …

PS As soon as it heard me talk about not travelling to America it started serving up United Airlines ads in my newsfeed.

Song of the day: DEVO “Freedom of choice”