Facebook overrides fact-checks when climate science is “opinion”

Enlarge / Facebook's election "War Room" on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. (credit: David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Facebook has touted its fact-checking process as one of the ways it intends to fight rampant disinformation heading into the 2020 US presidential election. New reports about the way the site handles the fact-checking of climate science stories, though, make clear that fact-checking can only work as well as Facebook allows it to-and that the months from now to November are going to be a slog.

Facebook does not employ fact-checkers directly but rather works with a range of third-party organizations to rate how true or false content shared in categories is. The efforts are not universal, however. While Facebook has heavily invested in efforts to stem the overwhelming tide of false and misleading COVID-19 information, for example, it does not heavily fact-check information related to climate change.

The New York Times recently explained the platform's reasoning behind how it handles climate change. Facebook considers opinion content largely exempt from review-and climate change can, as far as Facebook's rules are concerned, be a matter of opinion.

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