At a global industry event, “fact checkers” complain they are largely ignored

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The comments made by the “fact-checkers” community at the GlobalFact 9 conference in Oslo on June 24 were revealing. People there openly complained to YouTube that the fact-checkers published on the platform were not attracting viewers – and demanded that the portal censor its competitors more to change that.

The ever-worsening deletion, blocking, and censoring of posts with unwanted content on the major social networks are well known to all users. It’s not for nothing that alternatives to the well-known big tech platforms are increasingly gaining acceptance.

Read also: Check out our coverage on curated alternative narratives

Those who want to exchange ideas with rational and critical people use Gettr instead of Twitter, and those looking for uncensored information in video form find what they are looking for on Odysee or Rumble, not YouTube.

Those who are fed up with Facebook censorships switch to Gab Social or Truth Social, and those who don’t want to be spied on by WhatsApp have long since changed to Telegram.

But although information disagreeable to mainstream narratives is not only quickly deleted, its visibility is usually severely restricted. No one clicks on the content of so-called ‘fact-checkers’, which are often nothing more than professional propaganda agencies paid by interest groups.

This emerged from an indignant speech by Angie Drobnic Holan, editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, at the fact-checker conference in Oslo.

Holan attacked YouTube for not emphasizing “good,” “fact-checked” content enough: “YouTube doesn’t seem to emphasize accurate, credible information in its algorithms. We have a lot of experience with YouTube creating fact-checked content. It doesn’t seem to be doing well,” she noted.

Earlier, Will Moy, managing director of the English fact-checker “Full Fact,” had made similar comments.

YouTube representative Brandon Feldman then correctly noted that YouTube gives special prominence to what they call “authoritative” sources. Users will be able to confirm this.

Especially when using the search function, mainstream content is displayed preferentially. Nevertheless, according to Feldman, the company intends to intensify its efforts in this regard, which is a very high priority.

ALWAYS FACT-CHECK THE FACT-CHECKERS

Fact-checkers often claim to be independent. But in most cases, they are not. They are usually funded by billionaires like George Soros or Bill Gates and their foundations, as well as by wealthy interest groups, so they don’t have to worry about their existence even if no one reads them.

The fact that their content is not popular is not because YouTube and Co. do not censor enough competitors with less biased information – because, on the contrary, they have been doing that for a long time and with increasing intensity. People are fed up with it.

What is not deleted is massively restricted in its visibility, which is also a form of censorship. Users don’t think much of information control and the frantic inking of fixed narratives and propaganda and don’t click on the content in question.

Almost a hundred fact-checking organizations had complained collectively in an open letter to YouTube that “false information” was not being censored enough there.