The New York Times was skewered Tuesday for a headline about Meta fact-checkers fact-checking their own critics.
Meta announced that it would be ending its controversial fact-checking practices and lifting restrictions on speech to "restore free expression" across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have "gone too far."
But its former third-party fact-check partners objected to the allegations of bias and censorship in their work. PolitiFact's Aaron Sharockman blasted the decision in a social media post, saying, "If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror."
The New York Times published a piece about the backlash from such fact-checker organizations headlined, "Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False." The article said, "Fact-checking groups that worked with Meta said they had no role in deciding what the company did with the content that was fact-checked."
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But users across the X social media platform mocked the headline.
"This actually does an effective job revealing the problem with the fact-checking industry (perhaps by accident)," Reason senior editor Robby Soave observed.
"Fact-checkers fact-check claim that fact-checkers are the problem. Real headline from the NY Times," civil liberties attorney Laura Powell noted. "How can anyone produce satire when the legacy media has become so ridiculous?"
"This is amazing. Meta says fact-checkers were the problem Fact-checkers rule that false," Analytics Miami founder Ana Bozovic said in a post. "Rounding off the absurdity: this is the NYT reporting."
"They really wrote this and then published it," senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Chris Rufo marveled.
The Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Z. Hemingway wrote, "A beyond parody headline from propaganda outlet New York Times."
"I had to look it up myself because I could not believe it wasn't parody," political columnist Moshe Hill wrote in surprise, "It's real."
Meteorologist and data scientist John Basham joked that the headline "could have easily been" from political satire website, The Babylon Bee, adding, "Life Has Become Parody On The Left."
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