The social media company’s lawyers appear to have admitted that Facebook’s “fact checks” are just “protected opinions.”
Stossel is suing Facebook, now Meta Platforms, Inc., and Climate Feedback, its associated “fact-checker”, over the censorship of Stossel’s videos. Stossel is suing Facebook over two of Stossel’s videos, “Are We Doomed?” and “Meta Platforms, Inc.” Climate Feedback advised that the Government Fueled Fires be censored.
Facebook’s lawyers argued that the label “fact check” used by the company is not fact, but opinion in a brief.
The brief states that Stossel’s claims are based on Climate Feedback fact-check articles, and not the labels attached through Facebook. They are not false or defamatory, but they do represent protected opinion.
Facebook’s lawyers claim that the “fact checks” of its client are not based on actual facts, but are instead opinions.
Facebook’s lawyers seem to be trying blur the lines between facts and opinions, since opinions aren’t subject to defamation but false claims of fact are. Facebook seems to be comfortable using “fact check” as a way to suggest that some stories are false, but then they want to conceal behind the caveat of their “fact checks” being their opinion.
The dictionary definition of “fact” is “a fact that is known or proven to be true.”
Anthony Watts, climate-reality website “Watts Up With That?” explains: “Such fact checks” are simply an agenda to suppress free speech and open discussion of science. Liberal media activism is disguised as something supposedly factual and scientific.
Watts is right. Facebook uses politically biased fact-checkers to suppress the types of thoughts they disagree with. Section 230 of Communications Decency Act protects Facebook only if it acts as a platform, not a publisher. Is it not an editorial (a publishing decision) if their “fact checks” only contain opinions?
Stossel’s videos do not deny the existence of climate change, nor does it deny that man is responsible for it. They just point out other facts that can be enjoyed alongside the doomsday predictions of climate change hysterics.
The suggestion that John Stossel’s videos were less factual than they actually were would be textbook defamation on Facebook and its politically-aligned “fact-checkers.”