Facebook refuses to take down altered Pelosi video

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Friday May 24, 2019 · 2:43 PM PDT

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I lost a few Facebook “friends” in 2016 after challenging them on their false and misleading posts. I never unfriended anyone, mind you. They were simply allergic to facts and went into anaphylactic shock whenever evidence of the ocher hellbeast’s incompetence, venality, immorality, and fluorescent stupidity was brought to light.

Indeed, fake news disseminated on the social media platform had an oversized role in greasing the skids for the apocalypse Donald Trump’s victory.

So it’s especially disturbing to see Facebook hem and haw when it comes to a clearly altered video — which went viral yesterday — of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words.
HuffPo:

Facebook is refusing to take down a video altered to make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear to be drunk, highlighting a gaping hole in the social media giant’s plan to combat fake news.

The clip, first reported on by The Washington Post, depicts the California Democrat discussing President Donald Trump at a Center for American Progress event on Wednesday. An unidentified hoaxer lowered the speed of the video and raised the pitch to make her speech sound slurred but still normal ― thereby creating the false appearance that she was impaired in some way.

I don’t know if I can boycott Facebook at this point because I use it for work, it’s a useful tool for connecting with family, friends, and old classmates, and my Candy Crush level is so high, but if anything’s going to convince me to unplug from the somnifacient teat of social media, it’s more shit like this.

But a company spokesperson said Friday that blatantly fake news content, like the Pelosi video, doesn’t technically break any rules because there’s no policy against posting fake content on the platform. Facebook will allow the video to stay up.

That said, Facebook did “enqueue” the video for review by a third-party fact-checking company, which apparently deemed it misleading. So now, instead of being deleted outright, the fake version of Pelosi’s speech will be made harder to find on the platform, the spokesperson said.

I might suggest that, barring a more socially responsible effort from Facebook to get rid of these kinds of misleading videos, we should post videos of Donald Trump that make him look drunk. But that’s every video.

Another possibility is to actually get high before ever watching another Trump video, but I already pretty much do that.

Hell, it’s a three-day weekend. I was gonna critique Donald Trump’s moribund infrastructure plan, but then I got high.