• 2 days ago
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/09/meta-facebook-fact-checking/

In this episode, I dissect the implications of censorship following Meta's decision to halt its fact-checking initiatives. I contend that censorship manipulates our mental landscape and undermines personal autonomy, revealing significant failures in our educational system. Exploring the power dynamics involved, I question the responsible use of censorship by advocates and highlight how political biases shape information moderation. I argue for a shift towards empowering individuals to navigate information independently, underscoring the vital role of free speech in preserving personal liberty and fostering societal growth.

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Transcript
00:00All right, hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. I hope you are doing well.
00:06Megan McArdle, she wrote, this is two days ago, there's a big article.
00:13Here's the truth, better ending fact-checking is a win against censorship.
00:20Now, I haven't read this article yet, but I'm pretty keen on riffing
00:25about censorship because, you know, it's a topic near and dear to my heart.
00:30So, it says, when fact-checkers turned into censors, a power shift had to happen.
00:36Fact-checkers. So,
00:41censorship fucks with your brain. Let's be real clear about that.
00:45Censorship is an attempt to get inside your head and rewire your brain.
00:53Censorship says, you can't say this, you can't be exposed to this, you can't know this.
00:58It is either preventing neurons from connecting or it is causing neurons to connect that you
01:05otherwise wouldn't choose. So, it is incredibly invasive. Like, you understand, my body,
01:14my choice, means my brain, not yours. Do not fuck with my neurons. My body, my choice,
01:25means fuck off with your censorship and let me choose and decide for myself. Let me own my own
01:31brain. Do not screw around with my neurons. Do not get inside my head and rewire it for your
01:40fucked up fun and profit. That's censorship. My body, my brain, my neurons, my fucking choice.
01:49When fact-checkers turn into censors. Foundational question, of course, why
01:57does a citizenry, that is, raised in government schools, need fact-checkers?
02:09Right? I mean, you're in school for twice as long as it takes for people to become doctors.
02:14Can you imagine? You go to medical school, you do your interning, you do your residency,
02:24you finally pass all of your exams, and then they say, well, you know, we've got to have a doctor,
02:30a competent doctor follow you around and tell you what's good and bad medical advice,
02:35how to treat things, what illness is, right? That makes no sense, right?
02:41Right? That makes no sense, right? The whole point of becoming a doctor is
02:47you shouldn't need a doctor to tell you what doctoring is.
02:52The governments have 12 years to teach you how to determine truth from falsehood.
03:02And the fact that they didn't, the fact that people need fact-checkers or think they need
03:06fact-checkers or think that, well, the general population educated by the government is helpless,
03:11completely helpless in the face of misinformation and disinformation and mal-information,
03:16they don't know. Why don't they know? Well, because the government can't teach you what's
03:20true and false and right and wrong for obvious, obvious reasons. So it's a massive condemnation
03:25of government schools. But of course, nobody wants to talk about that. You know, that kind
03:29of tired trope. Oh, people aren't ready for that conversation. Yeah, they're not even close to
03:33ready for that conversation. Why do you need fact-checkers when you have been educated for 12
03:38years? And if your education doesn't teach you how to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong,
03:48then your education is not education, it is propaganda.
03:54So censorship is propaganda and it is needed because government, quote, education is just
04:00propaganda. It can't teach you how to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong. It can't.
04:08Because if you have the independent means to determine truth from falsehood and right from
04:12wrong, then you can't be controlled, manipulated, bullied, and threatened in the same way.
04:18So, he says,
04:22if you want to know who wields power in a society, there's a simple and effective test,
04:26who supports censorship. Well, as we know from my presentations on free speech,
04:30white males are by far the greatest advocates for free speech absolutism.
04:38So, clearly, since white males don't support censorship, white males have no power in society.
04:44So, he says, if you see someone advocating for more suppression of dangerous speech, be it heresy,
04:48hate speech, or misinformation, you can be sure they expect their side to have exclusive use of
04:53the ban hammer. The natural corollary is that when censorship regimes collapse, you know a
04:57power shift happened. That's how you should understand the kerfuffle over changes in
05:01matters moderation policies. Yeah, of course, censorship is just a very corrupt and low IQ
05:07position. I'm not saying that everybody who advocates for censorship is low IQ, but you can't
05:11get censorship without the approval of the masses. And most people are not trained to think of the
05:19hidden costs rather than the immediate benefits, because that would be required. It would be
05:25required to teach them effectively about economics in that situation. And you can't teach citizens
05:31in a democracy or a republic about economics, because then you can't promise them free stuff,
05:37because they would know it's not free. So, the entire slate of hand of politicians
05:42is to pretend that they can give people free stuff, to basically wire into their neglected
05:48and abandoned childhoods, to pretend that government can be big daddy and big mommy and
05:53give them all the free stuff that their parents didn't give them, which should have been free
05:55when they were kids. So, it is all just exploiting bad childhoods with the illusion of free stuff.
06:02And if you teach the citizenry economics, then politicians can't promise them free stuff.
06:11And what's the point of wanting power if you can't bribe people with the money that their
06:17children will be enslaved to pay for? That's no fun. So, the reason why censorship is just so
06:26stupid is because, yeah, everyone thinks, oh, I'm going to be in control of the censorship, right?
06:31And this is the wild thing, right? This is why people, they don't think in principles at all,
06:36can't think in principles, because again, the government can't teach you to think in principles.
06:40So, if we say there's such a thing as speech that is dangerous, well, communism killed well
06:47over 100 million people in the 20th century alone, and the body count continues. Communism
06:52killed 100 million people. I mean, I remember when the New York Times put me on the cover,
07:00because one of my listeners had gotten out of a toxic relationship and got a job and a girlfriend.
07:09So, apparently that's just terrible and I need to be censored. But an ideology that has slaughtered
07:14100 million people is absolutely welcomed and promoted in mainstream, mainstream American
07:20academia. There are many departments where a significant number, and sometimes the majority
07:27of professors are outright Marxists. So, the idea that you should censor speech that could be
07:32dangerous is completely ridiculous, because there's almost no more dangerous speech than the
07:37advocacy of communism, which is widely accepted, promoted, funded, and secured.
07:45On Tuesday, the parent company, this is the article, of Facebook and Instagram released
07:48a video of CEO Mark Zuckerberg explaining that Meta's moderation policy had gone astray and
07:53would now be overhauled. Now, of course, we all know that Zuckerberg would in no way,
07:56shape, or form be doing this if Kamala Harris had won the election, so he's just an
08:00any-way-the-wind-blows kind of guy. He says the automatic moderation algorithms would be fine
08:05tuned to be significantly less sensitive, and the company would be terminating its relationship
08:11with third-party fact-checkers such as Reuters fact-check, Org, PolitiFact, and the Dispatch,
08:16whose verdicts could result in Meta, quote, adding warning labels, limiting the reach of some
08:20content, or even removing the posts, end quote. So, anybody who talked about the rape gangs
08:30in England, well, some people were often censored or suppressed, which meant that
08:37many British parents were not warned about this danger, which resulted in children
08:41being brutally raped. So, censorship, if you're not troubled by that, I don't even know what to
08:46say to you. So, Zuckerberg said experts like everyone else have their own biases and perspectives.
08:52This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact-check and how. Over time, we ended
08:57up with too much content being fact-checked that people would understand to be legitimate
09:01political speech in debate. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.
09:07And he said, you know, this came after Trump, because Trump's victory in 2016,
09:11nobody could imagine that Trump would win based upon facts, because they're in such a bubble that
09:16nobody I know but voted for Trump, therefore, right? So, yeah, it was just a political tool.
09:22She goes to say, among conservatives, this was long overdue. They see fact-checking
09:26as an exercise that enforces left-wing biases of the indigo blob, the elite institutionalists
09:32that dominate media, academia, and other centers of cultural and political influence.
09:36For the left, however, it was more evidence of big tech bending the knee to Trump.
09:42Oliver Darcy wrote, Zuck isn't just kissing the ring, he's slobbering all over it.
09:47Yeah, vivid analogies that are actually kind of gross, they're not an argument.
09:51All he bought. All right. Left-wing critics were not wrong that this represents a major shift in
09:57how some of our biggest media companies do business, mirroring changes that happened
10:01at X after Elon Musk acquired the company. They're also not wrong that these changes
10:05are more palatable to conservatives than to liberals, and they're right that Donald Trump
10:08has no interest in promoting free speech as a principle, he just wants different
10:12people deciding what gets throttled. Oh, that's a link here.
10:17Trump has vowed to save TikTok lawmakers are wondering how. I don't know, this is just a
10:20bunch of Trump stuff. So I don't quite understand that. Donald Trump has no interest in promoting
10:27free speech as a principle? Really? I don't know that that's true. All right. That said,
10:32Zuckerberg is correct to recognize that the fact-checking industry leans well to the left,
10:37though outlets like the Dispatch are an exception, and that political bias inevitably creeps into
10:42the decisions about what facts to check and about how those facts are contextualized,
10:49and the right can fairly complain that conservative ideas have been suppressed
10:52under the guise of ostensibly neutral information hygiene. So it leans well to the left.
10:58Biased and liars, right? Biased and liars. So this is the funny thing, right? So the amount
11:05of material that needs to be fact-checked, both in terms of automated and manual review,
11:10is so enormous that you can't pay people much to do it. Now just understand this, right? I don't
11:17know how many thousands or maybe tens of thousands of fact-checkers have attached themselves to
11:22social media over the years. Maybe more, maybe less, but it's a lot. So because there's so much
11:29manual review that is required for any amount of fact-checking, you can't pay people much.
11:34So, because you can't pay people much, you don't have skilled people doing this job.
11:38So let's say that you were an absolute expert at determining—this is just an IQ test, right?
11:46The censorship is just an IQ test. So let's say that you were an absolute expert
11:54at determining truth from falsehood. You just knew what was true, and you knew what was false
12:02and you knew what was true, and you knew what was false. Over the small amount of research,
12:04you could determine truth from falsehood because you'd have to, you know, how many,
12:07I don't know, dozens of claims to adjudicate every day. So you'd know what was true,
12:10and you'd know what was false. Amazing. Like what an incredible gift that is.
12:14It's divine, really. You would have to be pretty much omniscient. So you would have to have an
12:19amazing ability to determine what was true and what was false. Now, if you had
12:26an amazing ability to determine truth from falsehood, you would be a multi-zillionaire.
12:31Because companies are putting out statements about growth, and projections, and sales,
12:39and opportunities, and potential partnerships, and so on. And some of this is true,
12:45and some of this is fluff, and some of it is the opposite of true.
12:48So if you knew how to determine truth from falsehood, you would make such a killing,
12:54just in the stock market, you would make such a killing in the stock market that the idea
12:59that you would then end up grinding away in some Indonesian digital sweatshop adjudicating
13:05truth and falsehood in the vast landscape of human interaction is so laughable, it's ridiculous.
13:13I mean, please understand, if there are people who have an amazing ability
13:17to determine truth from falsehood, then they would take that amazing ability and use it
13:24to make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. Well, maybe not do a lot of good, but...
13:31Right? See, if you could determine truth from falsehood, then when central banks said they
13:40might be raising or lowering their rates, you'd know when they were telling the truth or lying,
13:44and you'd arbitrage that into massive amounts, like almost infinite amounts of wealth.
13:49But because that's an extraordinarily rare ability, if it even exists,
13:57you're not going to get it for 10 bucks an hour in some sweatshop of fact-checkers,
14:06or, you know, 20 bucks an hour or 40 bucks. Like, there's just no way. If you had the ability to
14:10determine truth from falsehood, you wouldn't be working for semi-slave wages for fact-checkers.
14:16So, by definition, you're asking for an incredibly powerful and rare ability
14:21and paying minimum wage for it. This is not going to happen. Again, it's just an IQ test, right?
14:26The article goes on, checking the veracity of information circulating online is a worthy
14:30project. Well, why don't you teach people, right? Why don't you teach people how to determine truth
14:39from falsehood? This is the great epistemological project started from the pre-Socratics, right?
14:49Epistemology is the study of the nature of human knowledge, which is foundational
14:53on accuracy versus inaccuracy, truth versus falsehood. So, why don't you just have a course
15:01where people say, here's how you can determine truth from falsehood. Teach people how to think
15:07rather than telling them what is true and false. Because if you can pay people 10 or 20 bucks an
15:13hour to determine what is true and false, then clearly you don't need high-skilled, because if
15:17they're high-skilled, they won't be working for 10 or 20 bucks an hour. So, if people can be paid
15:2410 or 20 bucks an hour, and what is the training in these fact-checkers, right? You've got thousands
15:29of fact-checkers grinding away. What's their training? Is it a couple of hours, a couple of
15:33days, whatever it is? Well, then make that course available to the general public so that the
15:36general public can pursue it, right? So, that's crazy. But when you use those checks to decide
15:46what other people are allowed to say, you turn fact-checkers into censors, the power that is
15:52inevitably open to abuse and error, which is why it's so revealing that a fairly minor change to
15:57moderation policies has felt so apocalyptic to progressive. Yeah, when you don't get to control
16:02what people see and hear, when you finally say to people, it's your brain and your choice.
16:06My body, my choice. It's not just about the uterus, not just about the womb, it's about the actual
16:11brain, your neurons. After all, Meta isn't announcing that henceforth it will let conservatives
16:16decide what information is allowed on its network, though that's what Trump might prefer. Users,
16:22progressive and conservative alike, will be given more freedom to speak their minds. Their audience,
16:26rather than algorithms or professional fact-checkers, will decide what to believe.
16:30Again, government's got your brain for 12 years straight. If you graduate without knowing what
16:36is true and what is false, what needs to be reformed is not algorithms or fact-checkers,
16:41but government education itself. But nobody wants to talk about that, of course, right?
16:47The fact that merely letting people talk to each other feels like a dangerous concession
16:50to the right tells you just how much power progressives have amassed.
16:54Ironically, it reminds me of a quote cited often when conservatives complained about
16:58progressives throttling their opinions, when you're accustomed to privilege,
17:00equality feels like oppression. The rejoinder from progressives is that
17:06the things conservatives want to say are awful intolerable and false.
17:10Having spent time during the pandemic debating vaccine sceptics, I won't argue that there's
17:14disinformation circulating on the right. But there are plenty of cases in which the indigo blob was
17:21badly wrong, about the virtues of masks, first understated then overstated, about the health
17:26benefits of protesting police brutality, about the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab
17:31rather than mutating at a ware market in Wuhan. Of course, the pandemic was an exceptional moment,
17:36charged with maximum anxiety and uncertainty. But consider other cases where the left spread
17:40misinformation, like the New York Post, a story about Hunter Biden's laptop which turned out to
17:45be true but was suppressed by the power of an indigo blob that wished it wasn't.
17:49Then there's President Joe Biden's precipitous cognitive decline, which was somehow missed,
17:53or at least absurdly underplayed, by media establishment that prides itself on speaking
17:57truth to power. Now consider that in the year when this happened, PolitiFact decided that the
18:04lie of the year was the claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating
18:07household pets. This was a scurrilous allegation without any evidence to support it amplified by
18:12Trump and J.D. Vance. But was it a more important lie than the partisan pretense that the President
18:18of the United States was in full possession of his wits? Obviously one of these lies,
18:22those lies, was much more consequential than the other. Fact-checkers amplified that lie, blah blah
18:28blah, boring boring boring. All right, is that about it? This, as much as the election result,
18:35is responsible for the power shift we are witnessing. Oh, the missing of the... okay.
18:40Which is a response not just to the right's ascended power but also the failures of the
18:44old regime. As always, the censors claimed that they needed sweeping powers to make the world
18:48better, safer, more truthful, and as censors always do, they proved themselves unworthy of
18:51those powers, which they deployed not just against ideas that were false but against
18:55politically inconvenient truths. In the process, they demonstrated why no one of any ideological
19:00stripes should be trusted with that kind of authority. Well, again, if you have the power
19:05to magically determine truth from falsehood, you can amass so much money that you could start the
19:09largest and best-funded network in the world, hire away all the best talent from everyone else, and
19:13end up with a massive monument to truth and reason and virtue and goodness. So, of course,
19:20if you try that, you'll probably just get censored. So, yeah, censorship is a violation
19:25of personal integrity. It is a violation of your body. It is an invasion and a manipulation
19:31of your neurons in your brain. By denying you information, by amplifying other information,
19:37they are playing around with the constellation of your brain. It is a massive invasion
19:42and an attempt to hijack the very essence of who you are, which is your neural connections.
19:47So, again, my body, my choice. Fuck off with the censorship.