This week I have it from PolitiFact Bias co-founder Jeff D. that Facebook accepted my protest of its move unpublishing the PolitiFact Bias page on Facebook.
Facebook unpublished our page back in April of 2021.
I appealed the decision near the time it was made. Our FB page always had a disclaimer in the description distinguishing us completely from PolitiFact and stating that we criticize PolitiFact. To no avail, and for two years the appeal had no noticeable effect on the status of our Facebook page. We are aware of no legitimate complaint that we transgressed Facebook standards.
I deleted my Facebook account this past summer, largely in protest of Facebook's biased decision to squelch the criticism of its corporate fact-checking partner.
Jeff tells me he only logged into his Facebook account to delete it. He says he got an undated pop-up window announcing that PolitiFact Bias was again made visible to readers after the success of our two-year-old appeal of the decision.
That's apparently after more than two years of silencing our speech based on our imaginary violation of Facebook's community standards. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a pop-up or email announcing the reversal if it had happened before I deleted my account.
We're not going back to Facebook.
Afters:
Readers may be interested in the work I have done at Zebra Fact Check showing that Facebook's fact-checking partners are not held to account for errors. Whether it's too much work to do that or else interferes with their efforts to control information I cannot say.
Perhaps both.
