Phuque Phacebook

In the annals of stupid sh%$ to come from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook using The Weekly Standard to fact check articles is right up there with home colonoscopy kits: (No, Zuckerberg has never to my knowledge invested in home colonoscopy kits)

When Facebook selected the right-wing, Iraq War-boosting magazine The Weekly Standard [DO NOT CLICK THRU ON THIS LINK] as an official fact-checking partner last year as part of its effort to combat "misinformation," progressives warned that the conservative publication would use its power to suppress accurate articles published by center-left and left-wing outlets.

That's precisely what happened.

After ThinkProgress published an article by Ian Millhiser last week arguing that Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh's comments during his Senate confirmation hearings combined with a speech he gave in 2017 eliminates "any doubt" that the judge opposes the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, the Weekly Standard deemed the article "false"—a designation that, given Facebook's rules and the platform's enormous power, cuts off 80 percent of the piece's future traffic and penalizes other pages that dare to post the article.

Expressing opposition to Facebook's decision to hand the factually-challenged Weekly Standard the power to decide what is and isn't fact-based news, The Intercept republished Millhiser's piece on Friday with a statement from The Intercept's editor-in-chief Betsy Reed, who condemned the social media giant's decision to tank "a fairly straightforward legal analysis" at the behest of a right-wing magazine.

By way of perspective, the Weekly Standard gave full throated support to segregation in the 1950s and 60s, and Facebook has made them arbiters of "Truth".

Way to go Mark.