Facebook's newest 'fact checkers' are Koch-funded climate deniers

Source: Think Progress

Facebook’s newest ‘fact checkers’ are Koch-funded climate deniers

The fatal flaw in Zuckerberg’s effort to deal with fake news.

JOE ROMM
APR 27, 2019, 12:01 PM

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg keeps dashing any hope that the world’s largest social media platform might be a positive force in the fight against catastrophic climate change.

In its latest disastrous move to fight the online epidemic of fake news, Facebook’s fact-checking effort announced last week that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com — an arm of the conservative, anti-science media site The Daily Caller.

The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation.

“It is appalling that Facebook has teamed up with a Koch-funded organization that promotes climate change denial,” leading climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress. Mann, whose own work has been misrepresented by The Daily Caller, added, “Facebook must disassociate itself from this organization.”

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Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/facebook-fact-checker-koch-climate-deniers-f5288be4c3f9/