Free Speech Armageddon: Facebook Partners with Nonprofit to Usher in More Censorship

July 28th, 2021 5:35 PM

Censorship incoming? Facebook makes a massive partnership with a leftist-supported organization to assist its so-called fact-checking about COVID-19 vaccines.

Get ready for a wave of fact-checking on a level likely never seen before. “Facebook is partnering with a global tech non-profit called Meedan to give its 80+ fact-checking partner organizations training  in how to handle health and vaccine misinformation,” a spokesperson reportedly explained to Axios. The outlet later reported that “Meedan will host a series of virtual training sessions between its team of doctors, scientists and other health experts and Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers on how to better spot and fact-check misinformation.”

Meedan, which is Arabic for “town square,”  describes the organization as a “global technology not-for-profit” with “a vision of a more equitable internet.” If equitable translates to liberal nonsense, the list of supporters most definitely follows suit. Among them were infamous liberal organizations such as Amnesty International, the leftist Omidyar Network, Soros-funded ProPublica, and al Jazeera’s AJ+. The Omidyar Network is named for liberal megadonor and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar who has put his money behind both The Intercept and anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark.

The purported account of Meedan CEO Ed Bice has “#blacklivesmatter” in the bio and tweeted liberal rhetoric such as as requesting meme creators to target Ted Cruz, condemning “human rights violating public figures” after then-President Donald Trump was deplatformed, and that the use of law enforcement to keep the peace amid riots somehow indicates “that justice is not being served #sayhername.”

AJ+, the digital branch of Qatari royal family owned Al Jazeera, made a documentary that
“claimed Holocaust ‘statistics were inflated by the Zionist movement to help them establish Israel’, according to Israeli media reports. It also stated Israel was the genocide’s ‘greatest beneficiary’,” according to The Independent. AJ+ reportedly had to pull the video down after public backlash. 

Facebook has also reportedly spent tens of millions supporting fact-checkers. Reclaim The Net explained: “So far, through the Facebook Journalism Project, the company has spent $84 million on fact-checking programs.”

Facebook has a history of relying on liberal fact-checkers. RedState Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar reported in a June 11 blog: “The man who worked on coronaviruses with Wuhan Institute of Virology’s ‘Bat Woman’ Dr. Shi Zhengli as long ago as 2013, whose company gave WIV $800,000 in funding to study bat coronaviruses from 2014-2019, and who served as a Facebook COVID fact-checker, is bitterly clinging to the narrative that the pandemic originated at the wet market in Wuhan.”

One of the Meedan board members is former CNN bureau chief Maria Ressa. Ressa is part of a group of leftwing activists who created a pretender Facebook Oversight Board urging far more stringent censorship for Facebook. The group scorched Facebook in The New Yorker, saying: “Facebook’s algorithms promote divisive, inflammatory, and extreme content; amplify disinformation and misinformation; and promote deceitful political advertising.” 

MRC Free Speech America gave Facebook a disgraceful grade of F on its newest Big Tech report card for the second quarter of the year. Facebook was forced to stop blocking content about the COVID-19 Wuhan lab leak theory this quarter, yet the platform refused to touch left-wing political influencers and organizations with real histories of promoting violence. 

Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook headquarters at 1-650-308-7300 and demand that Big Tech mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.