Corporate Medias Fake News War is Backfiring by Showing the World the Power of Alt MediaBy Claire Bernish Servile corporate media immediately parroted the wealth of benefits that Facebooks plan will ostensibly provide, from an alert and gateway system forced onto articles deemed disputed, to the organizations making the kiss of death judgment call: Snopes, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and ABC News. Anyone with passing knowledge of bias in media is probably spitting out their coffee all four organizations are notoriously left-leaning and liberal, and the list includes no outlets with any other of myriad ideological tilts. Indeed, right-leaning outlets from Breitbart to the Drudge Report, as well as the sizable alternative media community who, collectively, held themselves to higher journalistic standards throughout the election cycle than old media titans like the New York Times and Washington Post quickly condemned the unabashed bias imbued in Facebooks plan. Mark Zuckerberg, a large consensus concluded, just declared war on dissent if not information, itself. But in an article intended to criticize purveyors of fake news and applaud the social media platforms oh-so-noble efforts to strike such outlets from the American interwebs, The Atlantics Kaveh Waddell posited, Will Facebooks Fake News Warning Become a Badge of Honor? Waddell asks this question, the reader doesnt discover until more than halfway through the article, through a lens of myopic bias if not outright scorn against anyone who dare question the motives of Facebook or its choice of fact-checkers. Theres a danger that people who are disinclined to trust traditional sources of information will treat Facebooks warnings as a badge of honor, Waddell clarifies. If fact-checking organizations deem a story questionable, they might be more likely to read and share it, rather than less. Theres reason to believe this group might think of itself as a counterculture, and take the position that anything that the man rejects must have a grain of subversive truth to it. For a journalist in a nationally regarded publication to display such seething condescension toward a category of people perhaps most critical to preventing a narrowing of news media to a single viewpoint is criminally self-interested, indeed evincing the paranoia among old media to validate its reporting in the wake of horrendous election coverage. Regardless of his patronizing tone, Waddells question presents what might be the thinnest silver lining to having a Facebook-approved information gatekeeper news deemed disputed will be viewed by non-establishment thinkers as bearing the Scarlet Letter C censored for being problematic for the political elite. In other words, this soft censorship could facilely create a Streisand Effect whereby efforts to suppress content backfire and instead draw greater attention to something than it ever would have received otherwise. Waddell and the Atlantic, among others, like the Daily Beast known mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment scrambling to blame Hillary Clintons loss on everything but the kitchen sink of a horribly flawed campaign realize to some degree the threat posed by legitimate criticism of the accepted narrative. This battle has literally nil to do with fake news or even Russia and everything to do with the power of dissent. Of course, a brazen irony in Facebooks purge of random items is CEO Mark Zuckerbergs comments on the subject prior to mass Democratic and corporate media hysteria over iterations Donald Trump won because Russia: Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other. Zuckerbergs protestations and resistance to acknowledge fake news as influencing the outcome of the election quickly melted under pressure from the pro-Hillary camp and evaporated as Clintonites and a smattering of miffed Republicans switched gears and ratcheted up New Red Scare propagandizing. When utterly unfounded, un-researched, and unverified reporting by the Washington Post termed the collective body of independent, right-slanted, or pro-Jill Stein media organizations as either active agents of Russia or the Putins useful idiots, those outlets formed an implicit bond for having been scurrilously blacklisted. Once the Posts thinly-veneered paper tiger went down in flames for it being impossible to substantiate, the outlet threw journalistic integrity out the window and proffered another unprovable paragon of irresponsibility: Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House. This gem swears CIA officials have performed an extensive assessment of the election and can prove individuals with ties to the Russian government as responsible for submitting documents on the Democratic Party to WikiLeaks for publication an allegation Julian Assange emerged from the shadows to dispel in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday. WikiLeaks whose published documents have never been proven inauthentic found itself on the Posts Russian agent blacklist. In other words, by relying on user-reporting and biased outlets to flag articles means any disputed contents feasibly earned that label on a subjective not hard and fast basis. But should there be any labeling read: moderate censorship of articles and items by a social media behemoth who claims impartiality while rubbing elbows with Democratic heavy-hitters? All grumblings on Facebooks status as a private entity aside, when your platform acts as the primary news aggregator for millions, there is a staunch obligation to preserve the rights of everyone to speak their version of truth. To be honest, that includes outlets spewing horrendously false news items as the real thing. In this new age of information aptly deemed the post-truth era by the Oxford Dictionaries this year, the onus of consequence for sharing any erroneous or fabricated information falls squarely on the shoulders of the fecklessly lazy who dont bother checking sources and hyperlinks or, in most cases, read more than the title before disseminating information online. Because that basic duty was apparently too much for so many to bear, were now all faced with the Huxleyan prospect of being spoon fed vanilla government propaganda disguised as news while legitimate news earns the dystopic disputed label. Maybe, just maybe, Waddell and the others have it all wrong. Maybe the imminent Streisand Effect will thwart Facebook gatekeeping in its tracks. Maybe people have wearied of the perilous penchant for categorization. Maybe this Scarlet Lettering of dissenting viewpoints will disgust the wary and students of history. Maybe Facebook will see its fast-approaching, inevitable demise and decide the suppression of information does not a profitable business move make or maybe the disputed info plot represents the ultimate poison pill. Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. Image Credit: TheFreeThoughtProject.com Facebook will go the same way MySpace did. there are already alternative social media site coming into play with NO censorship. There should be a concerted effort by free-thinkers to flood facebook en-masse with complaints against the veracity of MSM reports. See what the algos make of that. Fear of the truth and verifiable facts wouldnt be an issue once we get used to them. Facebook should rename itself to FAKEbook. STOP WITH THE LEFT RIGHT PROPAGANDA! You cant read or watch anything without the permission of the party. Life is good in North Korea People are REALLY raeding on Facebook ????? Why should we do that ?! Did all books disappear in past years ? Anyone who allows Schmuckerberg to determine whats fake and whats not, and what he thinks we should be reading or not, needs to take a serious look in the mirror. Worse yet is the oxymoronic practice of alt media sites like this one using FB to drive readership while constantly pointing out FBs censorship and overall Fd up business practices, like selling members personal information to governments, businesses and acting as a collection agency for social experimentation with your brain. This double standard is getting seriously stupid. Great points! I was hoping at the very least there would be an alt exodus a few years ago when hysterical gun grabbers were going ape$hit crazy and FB closed the accounts of second amendment supporters posting Gandhi comments. Right out of the gate FB having all the earmarks of an Establishment Stasi operation, wide swaths of alt media latch on to it and are later surprised and dismayed when the scorpion uses its stinger (there it is again, the allegory! lol). This is setting a VERY dangerous precedent. Some information can appear to be dubious but is, in fact, the truth. Look at conspiracy theories that have been condemned as false, but in the end are proven right (Libor and metals manipulation). What of the media itself that blatantly promotes lies which, when repeated often enough, is taken as the truth. Who will control them? Or will they? Will they only allow the type of information THEY want you to see and hear even though it is a lie, thus pushing their own agenda? Already freedom of speech has been drastically curtailed and we are not allowed to express certain opinions for fear of imprisonment. We are steadily heading towards tyranny and communism in which our very thoughts are monitored and controlled. Journalists today are more or less desk jockies. 