Temporarily Demoted

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's letter of August 26  to the House Judiciary Committee has gained a lot of attention and prompted much discussion about its contents, intent, and posturing, which you can read elsewhere.  Other than noting the letter is very carefully drafted, there are two less discussed aspects I want to discuss, both contained in the fourth paragraph.

"In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election.  That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply.  It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation and, in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story.  We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again - for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers."

The first point is that, unlike the prior paragraphs, which refer to efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to get Facebook to censor information, the information in this paragraph refers to events occurring during the Trump administration.  This paragraph refers to the Hunter Biden laptop story and, as we now know, both the laptop and its contents were really Hunter's.  And not just now - the FBI had the laptop for over a year and knew its provenance and contents; the 51 former members of the Intelligence Community who wrote the letter denouncing those promoting its legitimacy knew it was actually legitimate.  The media who reported it, the media who censored any mention of it (like NPR), and Twitter and Facebook which throttled the distribution of the story simply didn't care if it was true or false; their only concern was to ensure Trump's defeat and Biden's election.  You can read more about how it was accomplished in The Robust Alliance.

The second point is the reference to fact-checkers as though they provide an objective evaluation of information.  They don't.  The fact-checking industrial complex is simply another layer of progressive control over the media.  All of the leading fact-checking organizations enforce a progressive narrative, using a number of techniques developed over the past decade, including:

Fact check Right-coded statements, but ignore Left coded-statements

Subtly mischaracterize accurate Right-coded statements so they can be declared False, and inaccurate Left coded statements so they can be declared True.

If a Right-coded statement is literally true, but there is additional context casting doubt, reference the context and declare statement False.

If a Left-coded statement is literally true, but there is additional context casting doubt, do not reference the context and declare statement True.

If the Right-coded statement is accurate in all respects, cite to a Left-coded "expert" to declare it False.

Note: Giving credit when it is due, it took Snopes only seven years to declare the claims about Trump's "fine people on both sides" to be false. 

The fact-checker web is even more rigged.  For instance, if you Google something, usually the first reference is to Wikipedia, which is on the Left and is adept at changing its entries to meet progressive needs.  Both Google and Wikipedia use as trusted references, reliably Left publications like the New York Times.  The result is a virtuous circle in which the institutions of the Left continually reinforce the validity of their viewpoints.

This is just another example of the control of the institutions by progressives and another reason why, despite the hysteria and hyperventilating by Democrats over the supposed threat to democracy by anyone not following the party line, it is only the Democrats who pose a threat.  They have become what they denounce.  They are the only ones with the power to effectively end our democracy, and they've made no secret of their intent to crack down on dissent.

In November 2021, Margaret Hoover of PBS interviewed the Chinese dissident and exile Ai Weiwei.  Based on his past writings critical of President Trump, Hoover asked Ai if he saw Donald Trump as an authoritarian, clearly expecting an answer in the affirmative.  She was surprised at the response: (the relevant part starts at about 15:45):

 If you are authoritarian, you have to have a system supporting you.  You cannot just be an authoritarian by yourself.

Trump had, and has, no supporting institutional system.(1)  Ai went on to say that in today's conditions you could easily have an authoritarian regime and that, in many ways, the U.S. is already in that state, pointing to political correctness and its similarities to the Cultural Revolution of Mao.  Hoover quickly moved on to another topic.

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(1)  In contrast, Kamala Harris is not just supported by a system, she is a system.  Between Biden and Harris, what we've learned is it does not matter who the Democrats run as a candidate; the system will support whomever is that candidate, because the system is running things, not the candidate.