Facebook is taking heat for refusing to ban Pages for conspiracy theory websites.
"We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech," Facebook tweeted last night. "Instead, we demote individual posts etc. that are reported by FB users and rated as false by fact checkers. This means they lose around 80% of any future views. We also demote Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news."
The posts came after CNN's Oliver Darcy tweeted that Facebook had invited him to an event intended to "tout its commitment to fighting fake news and misinformation."
Darcy asked Facebook why it didn't ban InfoWars, which has said that the Sandy Hook shooting did not happen and that 9/11 was an inside job, among other repugnant assertions. "I didn't get a good answer," Darcy wrote.
Other reporters jumped into the Twitter feed. "This is Facebook equating having Infowars, which once accused a pizza shop of being part of a child sex ring and denied the Sandy Hook shooting was real, with 'pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news,'" tweeted NBC's Ben Collins.
Facebook's response? "Sorry you feel that way."
Facebook insisted that "we ban pages that repeatedly harass people per our standards," though some might disagree. Google, YouTube, and Facebook "are the ones who cause me all the stress when I try to take the ugliness down," the father of a young Sandy Hook victim told NYMag in late 2016.
Facebook name-checked its rivals during last night's Twitter discussion. "These guys are allowed YouTube and Twitter accounts too," Facebook said in reference to conspiracy theory sites, "we imagine for the same reason" that Facebook laid out.
YouTube came under fire earlier this year when, in the wake of the Parkland shooting, it prominently featured videos that accused teenage survivors of being "crisis actors." Twitter, meanwhile, has been criticized for not doing enough to rid the service of white nationalists, trolls, and other despicable groups.
Facebook is likely hesitant to go up against conservative media sites after it was accused in mid-2016 of keeping them off its now-defunct Trending Topics section. However, established conservative media outlets probably don't want to be associated with the likes of InfoWars.
And that controversy happened prior to revelations about just how much fake news proliferated during the 2016 election. Earlier this year, a study from three political scientists found that Facebook was the biggest gateway for fake news in the run-up to that election. Posts from Russian internet troll farms intended to sow discord in the US ahead of and after the election were also a big problem on Facebook.
InfoWars, meanwhile, has already responded to the controversy in a video posted to Facebook, in which the host says "journalists are a disgusting people in this day and age," and suggested that the House Un-American Activities Committee be revived to investigate journalists from CNN and other outlets. The screed ends with an ad for "male vitality" supplements, sales of which help to fund the site.