Twitter’s fact checking Trump’s tweets but who’s fact checking the Fact Checkers?
Bottom Line: Earlier this year, while guest hosting for Mark Levin, something odd happened. After five years of being verified on Twitter...I wasn’t. It was originally brought to my attention by listeners who were wondering if my account had been hacked and if @brianmuddradio was still me. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. I figured it was just a glitch or something. The next day I put in the first of numerous inquiries with Twitter about why I’d no longer been verified. The closest I’ve come to getting an actual answer was a canned response saying Twitter retains the right to remove verification of users at any time without notice. That may be the case but it still doesn’t explain why they decided to do it. I’ve been left with no explanation other than Tweeting while hosting the Mark Levin Show...though no Tweets of mine were flagged or removed by Twitter for inappropriate content. For those who aren’t familiar with Twitter, a blue verified check appears with Twitter handles of public figures who are verified to be the person they claim to be. This helps users find who they are looking for and aids in credibility on the platform. Verified users also have increased reach with their tweets. Once I lost the verification, I lost followers and heard from others who said they no longer were seeing my tweets in their feed. Fast forward to Twitter’s latest move to “Fact Check” President Trump by issuing warnings to his tweets with links to “fact checkers”.
It’s a topic I researched just over a year ago that’s highly relevant again today. Who’s fact checking the fact checkers and are they telling the truth? The answer at least at one of the most prolific and frequently cited organizations, the Washington Post, is yes- they tell the truth...73% of the time. A study conducted by CBS MarketWatch of the Washington Post’s fact checkers found that they were inaccurate when “fact checking” President Trump 27% of the time. Take a look at Twitter’s new fact check warnings on President Trump’s tweets and yep – you'll find the Washington Post right there. Think Twitter will warn users that the Washington Post fact-checkers lie about President Trump more than a quarter of the time?
But this is just the latest in a long line of line of actions taken by Twitter that are inherently dishonest. Project Veritas exposed Twitter in 2018. Their investigation included software engineers explaining how “shadow banning” of conservative opinions on the platform occurred (along with other actions aimed to curve the relevance of conservative thought on the platform). The biggest issue isn’t an inherent bias by Twitter. It’s a company. If they want to be a dishonest, leftist platform – that's their prerogative. What’s wrong is when they lie about who and what they are and then take punitive actions to attempt to undermine opinions and views they don’t like. Remember, all technology is only as analytical and apolitical as the programmers behind it. Speaking of which, take Twitter’s “Head of Site Security” Yoel Roth, a principal in making decisions about who should be banned, suspended or “fact checked”. As first reported by Fox News he has quite the history espousing bigotry against homosexuals but mostly Republicans and most specifically President Trump.
Here are specific Tweets of Roth’s:
I’ve never donated to a presidential campaign before, but I just gave $100 to Hillary for America. We can’t f*** around anymore.
I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.
Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
Twitter has stated they stand by Roth and it’s wrong to target him for criticism. Seriously? But that’s who these people are. In other news Google’s YouTube was just busted for censoring opinions critical of communism on the platform. When brought to light they called it an “error”. Very believable. Ordinarily these would be huge stories but with the most pervasive form of bias in news media being omission – their allies in news media ignore these stories and pretend the institutionalized political bias of major technology platforms doesn’t exist.
As for the fact checkers Twitter is using. They’re fake news. Literally.