NY Post: Fact Checking Is Now Censorship
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Motte and bailey argumentation at its finest.
If "fact checking" had just been a bunch of washed up journalists writing their own blogs about Trump, nobody would have cared. That's the free speech angle and it's also not what anyone means by "fact checking". The term refers to centralized censorship of social media and ad networks driven by unaccountable NGOs who have special backdoor access to them. Invariably, these NGOs are selected for being far left activists and aren't actually interested in facts.
Allowing one side of the political spectrum to arbitrarily take down posts, ads and even block private messages isn't a pro free speech position, it's a pro censorship position.
The author must think his readers are quite dim. Or maybe he just doesn't know anything about the topic, seeing as he rails against the NY Post for not providing an example of censorship when Mark Zuckerberg just went on Rogan and gave censorship of the NY Post's laptop story as a primary example of the problem he's trying to solve.
If Masnick really wants fact checking to mean free speech then he should be jumping for joy at the rapid standardization on Community Notes, because that's what combating speech with more speech looks like. But seeing as he rants about how only "MAGA" cared about this issue, it's fair to assume this is just an attempt to rewrite history to pretend censorship never happened at all. Probably in Masnick's world it never did because of course, the first thing censors block discussion of is their own activity.
Are you referring to PolitiFact, Snopes, Australian Associated Press, and FactCheck.org? They are not secret organizations with "back door" access any more so than Facebook's own customers are.
Centralized censorship? These are discrete organizations with diverse funding streams whose methodologies, funding sources, and affiliations are publicly available for scrutiny.
You are engaging in a deliberate strategy of obscurantism, weaponizing vague conspiratorial rhetoric to undermine institutional credibility. Your argument doesn't seek to illuminate, but to obfuscate - creating phantom threats of "unaccountable NGOs" while avoiding substantive evidence.
You're not analyzing fact-checking; you're performing reactionary theater, constructing a narrative of persecution that serves fascistic rhetorical goals. By casting yourself as a truth-teller battling imaginary censors, you're actually working to erode democratic discourse and sow mistrust in transparent, accountable information systems.
Your language reveals a classic fascist mobilizing technique: manufacturing a sense of crisis, positioning yourself as a heroic truth-teller against nebulous "elites", and systematically undermining shared epistemological frameworks. You're not critiquing - you're strategically destabilizing.
The function you serve is not intellectual engagement, but narrative warfare - spreading doubt, inflaming resentments, and creating fertile ground for authoritarian thinking by convincing people that no institution can be trusted except your preferred narrative.
Maybe in EU legislation where this privileged access is now mandated by law for every certified fact checker.
Although these aren't conventional fact checkers, they just "flag" content.
> Trusted flaggers are public and private actors with privileged access to internet platforms through which they can identify illegal and harmful content. Before DSA, trusted flaggers existed as a voluntary system.
https://www.techpolicy.press/building-trust-in-the-digital-s...
> diverse funding streams
They are not independent enough and would develop their own interests.
> narrative of persecution that serves fascistic rhetorical goals.
Yeah, fascists are known to flag content too. Otherwise this is complete conjecture.
> no institution can be trusted
No institution, which will always be dependent on government funding and special legislation, can be trusted to moderate internet content. That much is true.