This is pretty nutty. I received this notification from the overlords at Facebook this morning:
This isn't the first time I've received one of these. It happened at least one other time that I can recall. It was after I shared a video by Dave Cullen on his (now banned) YouTube channel Computing Forever in which he interviewed COVID-heretic Professor Dolores Cahill.
It's incredibly creepy when you think about it. It's even creepier when you recognize that a lot of people won't think about. Either way, some Facebook nerd-minion has been tasked with creating an algorithm to scan everything we post to their platform for wrong think . When it is determined that a thought-crime has occurred, it generates this notification to instruct you how to properly evaluate your own post.
The message is crystal clear: You have relied on your own judgement to determine the relevance, interest or validity of the content you have chosen to share. This is a mistake. It will not be tolerated. You are not to judge for yourself what is true and what is false. That determination will be made for you. And these notifications are to make sure you understand that your personal judgement is subordinate to that of the tech oligarchs who control the means of disseminating information and shaping the perceptions of the public.
But it gets even more bonkers.
Obviously I was curious to know what it was that had drawn the ire (or is that A-ire?) of Facebook's automated Thought Police. I clicked on the notification and this page opened:
Don't be shy Facebook. Tell me what you really think.
The good people/robots at the "International Fact Checking Network" must have been up all night working on this. 'Baseless Conspiracy Theories Claim New Coronavirus Was Bioengineered'! 'Social Media Posts Spread Bogus Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory'! 'Coronavirus not man-made or engineered but its origin remains unclear'!
Maybe it's just me, but I get the distinct impression they really don't want anyone thinking the virus came from a lab or anything. I was a bit perplexed though. You see, I haven't posted anything recently that has anything to do with the virus being 'man-made or engineered'. So what gives?
I clicked on the highlighted link that said 'a notice to your post' so I could finally find out what it was that had justified proclaiming me a purveyor of 'baseless' COVID-19 'conspiracy theories'. And this is what came up:
And what exactly is this content to which Facebook has applied a semi-transparent veil of shame in order to protect Getugly followers from 'information about COVID-19 that independent fact-checkers say is false"? It's this:
It's a clip of a very famous scene from the very famous 1976 Hollywood movie Network in which the protagonist, an unhinged TV news anchorman played by the very famous actor Peter Finch, delivers a scathing rebuke of a society transfixed by television. In the scene, an exasperated Finch beseeches his audience to see the truth about his own industry, exclaiming: "We deal in illusions, man! None of it is real!"
So it appears that fact-checkers who are signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network and who, Facebook assures us, follow their own 'Code of Principles' for fact-checking, rigorously fact-checked this minute-long clip from a famous movie and concluded that it "repeats information about COVID-19" that these "independent fact-checkers say is false". And apparently we are to accept that the clip repeated this false information despite the movie predating COVID-19 by 44 years.
That's right folks. These are the people instructing you to defer to their judgement because you can't be trusted to determine what is true and what is false for yourself.
The irony in all of this is glaring. Obviously there is nothing in the clip or quote that is in any way directly related to anything about COVID-19. And yet it's as if the appointed defenders of the sanctioned orthodoxy reflexively felt that the sentiment "We deal in illusions, man! None of it is real!" had something to do with them. It's a little like the guilty conscience of a murder suspect forcing him to blurt out 'I didn't kill him!' before the cops even mention that his business partner was found dead. Of course, it goes without saying that masters of illusion are somewhat paranoid about anyone potentially exposing what they're up to. Pay no attention to that tech oligarch behind the curtain!
There is an even more famous line from the movie Network that springs to mind. I've included the clip of the scene below. Peter Finch delivers the line with the ferocity of a man whose ability to tolerate bullshit has been stretched to the breaking point. It's a sentiment that seems tailor-made for this particular moment in time. And I think the number of people who identify with it is growing with each passing day.
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