As we have previously reported on Climate Realism, journalist John Stossel is suing Facebook after Facebook’s ‘fact checkers’ labeled climate change information that Stossel posted as “false and misleading.”
Facebook uses staffers from the website “Climate FeedBack” to apply “fact-check” labels throughout its platform for postings that mention climate topics.
The Climate Feedback staff are supposedly fair and neutral climate scientists who, as part of their work, provide “fact checks” on articles, videos, news stories, and claims made about climate change on Facebook and other corporate and social media sites.
Unfortunately, Facebook itself just blew the validity of “fact-check” claims right out of the water in court.
In Facebook’s response to Stossel’s defamation claim on Page 2, Line 8 of its court filing the company asserts it cannot be sued for defamation (which is making a false and harmful assertion) because its ‘fact checks’ are mere statements of opinion rather than factual assertions.
Opinions are not subject to defamation claims, while false assertions of fact can be subject to defamation.
The quote in Facebook’s complaint is:
“The labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.”
So, in a court of law, in filed testimony, Facebook admits that its ‘fact checks’ are not really ‘fact’ checks at all, but merely ‘opinion assertions.’
In normal times this would be a public-relations disaster for Facebook, PolitiFact, and other leftist entities that engage in biased “fact-checking,” but in the age of climate alarm, this inconvenient admission will likely be ignored by the corporate media.
This and similar “fact checks” by other corporate media outlets and social media monopolists have now been shown to be simply an agenda-driven attempt to censor free speech and the open discussion of science by disguising overt liberal media activism as something noble, by supposedly preventing the spread of false ideas and claims.
These so-called “fact checks” are an attempt to undermine the pursuit of knowledge and an accurate understanding of the state of the climate, because, as articles on Climate Realism show daily, the state of the climate is not alarming in the least.
Here is the PDF of the court filing. Click to download it.
Facebook-admits-its-fact-check-is-opinion-page-2
Read more at Climate Realism
I believe that since they called their rebuttals as FACT checks and never noted them as being only their opinion to the readers of the posts they tried to discredit then the defamation suit should continue and be won by Stossel and his attorneys.
Now if they would only go and do this with all those Global Warming/Climate Change Advocates
ONLY after they have been
dragged into court and put
under oath
have they admitted their LIES
And what defense has
SUGAR MOUNTAIN
launched ?
Certainly not surprising at all. But FakeBook wants it both ways–stating that information they don’t like as false but when confronted by it as in this court case they claim that it’s just the opinion of these “fact checkers”.