"Fact checking" is one of the best scams in the past couple of years. In this case I scare quote it because it really is that specific phrase that I am referrin

"Fact checking" is one of the best scams in the past couple of years. In this case I scare quote it because it really is that specific phrase that I am referring to, not the process or the people. Somehow, labeling something a "fact check" gave whatever was so labeled immense authority and gravitas, merely by virtue of being a "fact check". It also proved it was Platonically Non-Partisan, because Fact Checking is just intrinsically non-partisan, because it's a Fact Check. Do you not trust the Facts? It was a good gig, but political partisans can't help but spend all the gravitas and authority they can find as quickly as possible, and what you see here is the account drying up. It'll take a while longer to complete that process but I don't expect people to have any more trust in "fact checks" than anything else in 5 years. "Fact checks" are nothing special. Political partisans have been "fact checking" each other forever, complete with misrepresentation, failures to even read the thing they're fact checking, all the usual errors. They just didn't call it a "fact check". Merely labeling something a "fact check" changes nothing, and quite obviously did not impose any sort of higher standard on the so-called "checkers" either. Nor does Facebook have any authority or capability in any sense of the term to bless any particular "fact checker" with them being anything more that Facebook's official opinion. (In this, their argument in their lawsuit is completely correct.) Of course, that causes problems. If Facebook indeed somehow has direct access to the Fountain of Truth, they can perhaps be justified in decorating the speech of other people with the Truth from this fountain. If, on the other hand, they're just opinions, that raises a whole host of questions. Why do they feel like they can decorate other people's speech with their own opinions? On what basis do they declare these "facts"? How amazing it is that Facebook, a corporation whose purpose is to serve ads and incidentally provide a service to people to gather information for those ads, are also medical experts, political experts, and experts of all sorts of other things. What accountability will Facebook have when it turns out their opinions, which again I remind you include very strong medical opinions, are wrong? (Don't get too caught up on Coronavirus specifically; having started making medical decisions we can believe they will continue to do so. Even if you believe they have the perfectly correct balance of Truth today, there is no reason to believe that will continue indefinitely. And with their leverage, they have the capability to multiply the consequences of error hugely, perhaps more than anyone else.) If they are not lofty, impartial experts graciously spending their money to guide the masses to the Truth, then they almost immediately collapse into something more like arrogant jerks who bully their particular biases onto people with the threat of kicking them off the world's largest platform if they don't conform. One imagines that Facebook would not prefer to be seen that way. They've really bet rather a lot on the Fact Check mythos.