Facebook Said My Article Was ‘False Information.’ Now the Fact-Checkers Admit They Were Wrong.

“This case presents a simple question: do Facebook and its vendors defame a user who posts factually accurate content, when they publicly announce that the content failed a ‘fact-check’ and is ‘partly false,’ and by attributing to the user a false claim that he never made?” wrote Stossel’s attorneys in the lawsuit. “The answer, of course, is yes.”

This is a complicated issue because social media companies and other websites are typically immune from defamation lawsuits aimed at the speech of other actors on the platforms under a federal statute known as Section 230. This statute does not treat all speech that occurs on Facebook as Facebook’s speech: One user can sue another user for libel, but they generally can’t sue Facebook. There is an exception, of course, for the company’s own speech it would be possible to sue Facebook over a press release, or online statement made by an employee. Facebook has claimed that its third-party fact-checkers are independent and distinct, though the company has acknowledged that it does pay them.

There are many Republicans and Democrats who want to scrap Section 230 entirely: President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley (R Mo.), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D Mass.) have all denounced the statute’s protections for Big Tech companies. Getting rid of Section 230 wouldn’t solve the problem of overly aggressive fact-checking and content moderation, though. On the contrary, it could very well exacerbate it. The more liability Facebook is subjected to, the less permissive it is likely to be.

But that doesn’t mean the status quo is particularly satisfying. It’s good that the fact-checker reversed course in my case, but needless to say, Facebook should revisit its formal, contractual relationship with an organization that routinely misquotes the people it scrutinizes.

via reason.com