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How Partisan ‘Fact-Check’ Sites Used By Big Tech Are Sowing Distrust

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Madeline Osburn and Emily Jashinsky break down why ‘fact-checking’ sites employed by big tech giants are partisan institutions unworthy of Americans’ trust.

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On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Managing Editor Madeline Osburn joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to break down why the “fact-checking” sites employed by big tech giants are partisan institutions unworthy of Americans’ trust.

“Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all these places that employ these fact-checkers, they say, ‘we’re gonna throw these labels up, and these censors up on your social media posts, but it’s not us, it’s third-party fact-checkers, so if you have a problem with something that Facebook censors, take it up with Snopes, take it up with PolitiFact, take it up with the real fact-checkers because they are the arbiters of truth’,” Osburn said. “And so we see this time and again but when stuff like this happens with Snopes showing like okay so how really truthful are these arbiters of truth and it just continues to erode any trust anyone has in any big tech or institution left.”

In the case of Snopes, which Jashinsky said is “one of those so-called fact-checking organizations that so sanctimoniously decides what is fact and what is fiction,” their most recent plagiarism scandal invalidates past work and sows future distrust.

“They weaponize this false pretense of neutrality to silence viewpoints they disagree with and that they find dangerous and harmful. They say ‘Listen, we are neutral. We are the arbiters of fact and this is not a fact.’ And that’s weaponizing a false pretense so that’s what they do,” Jashinsky said. “And come to find out these people who are most sanctimonious about the fourth estate have serial plagiarism on their website from one of their co-founders. It calls into question a lot of their work, a lot of their additional work, it calls into question their credibility.”