Yesterday I compiled the New York Post’s coverage of the Zuckerberg letter. In my post I focused on Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
Speaking for myself, I quoted Zuckerberg’s statement that Facebook sent “the Post story to fact-checkers for review[.]” I commented that every element of the Post’s coverage was accurate and authenticated. I added that it would therefore be nice to see the timeline of Facebook’s work and the work product. They would tell a story all by themselves.
I linked to Matt Taibbi’s subscribers-only Racket News post on the letter. Today the Post publishes Taibbi’s post as a long column that the Post headlines “Mark Zuckerberg needs to spill all on how FBI censored Americans.” I don’t think that headline captures the gist of Taibbi’s post, but it is where Taibbi winds up at this destination: “Zuckerberg’s letter can only be good news. Our idiot ruling junta finally pushed too far, and a man moved to offer authorities a taste of embarrassment can surely be convinced to serve the whole meal. Mr. Zuckerberg, can we hear the rest?”
And speaking for itself, the Post homes in on the points I tried to make in an important editorial — “Zuck still has a LOT of questions to answer on suppression of The Post’s Hunter-laptop scoops.” The Post’s editors elaborate on the issues raised by the alleged third-party fact-checking to which Facebook subjected its coverage (emphasis in original):
Coming up on four years later, we still haven’t seen the results of that supposed “third-party fact-check,” though of course a vast pack of outfits from Politico to The New York Times eventually admitted that we were right on everything.
Was there ever actually a check for Facebook? Who was the third party? Does Meta have any data on how extensive the suppression was?
Actually, here’s a list of topics that outside investigators should resolve:
1) Share all the relevant communications up to and on the day of us publishing the laptop story. Not just the FBI warnings about Russian disinfo on Hunter, but all the “private sector” ones too.
We know now that many “private” outfits declaring themselves experts were funded by branches of the US government and the UK Labour party, plus plenty the politically partisan “dark money.”
2) How long did the demotion last and exactly how many voters would likely have seen it if it wasn’t suppressed?
This should include the numbers of people trying to share it.
3) When did it actually go to fact-checkers?
4) Who were the fact-checkers and what were their partisan affiliations?
5) Why did Facebook ignore our protestations, not just in those first days but in the long term, too?
6) While the story itself was suppressed, we also know that in doing so, all of our content and that of conservative outlets sharing it was also downgraded for a much longer period of time.
We want full details on those decisions, too — complete with insight into the communication behind them, and the scale and impact of the downgrades.
Finally, 7) Explain why no center-right leaning outfit has ever been approved as a Facebook fact-checker.
Read the whole thing here.
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