The Manipulators

by Peter J. Hasson

  Despite all this, Google still uses the SPLC to help police hate speech on YouTube as part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flagger” program. The SPLC and other third-party groups work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on “extremist” content in two ways. First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to “mass flag” content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing the video platform. Google helps fund the SPLC as well, including $250,000 it gave the group in 2016 to promote “inclusion” and sponsor “a total redesign of the [SPLC’s] Teaching Tolerance website to ensure teachers can more easily access and integrate the content into their lessons.”19 Among other things, the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” program promotes left-wing domestic terrorist Bill Ayers (formerly of the Weather Underground) as “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education.”20

  Just as the SPLC has a special relationship with Google, so too does it have a special relationship with Amazon. Amazon grants the SPLC broad policing power over its Amazon Smile charitable program, which allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their Amazon purchases. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon. Only one organization both participates in the Amazon Smile program and gets to determine who else is allowed to join: the SPLC. “We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told me in May 2018.21 Amazon grants the SPLC that power “because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever,” she said, though she couldn’t comment on whether Amazon considers the SPLC to be fair and unbiased.

  Of course, the reality is that the SPLC is entirely partisan and unfair. For example, Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly antisemitic groups are included.22 In January 2019, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a non-partisan think tank supporting reduced immigration, sued the SPLC for labeling it a “hate group.”23 The lawsuit noted that the SPLC’s “hate group” designation barred CIS from participating in the Amazon Smile program, which might very well have been part of the point.

  Where Google and Amazon go, other Internet and social media sites follow. Even Spotify partnered with the SPLC to police “hate content.”24 And of course so does Facebook. The SPLC is on a list of “external experts and organizations” that Facebook works with “to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja told me in June 2018.25 Publicly, the SPLC has lashed Facebook for not doing enough to police “hate speech” on the platform. “Harmful and hateful rhetoric on Facebook is not without consequence,” a May 2018 SPLC report stated.26 The report did not disclose the SPLC’s working partnership with Facebook.

  Twitter listed the SPLC as a “safety partner” that works with the tech company to combat “hateful conduct and harassment.” The SPLC isn’t the only left-wing group that bullied its way into influencing Twitter’s speech policies, either. Twitter partners with dozens of other organizations as part of its “Trust and Safety” initiative. Almost all of them are left-wing. The Dangerous Speech Project, for example, is a member of Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council.” The group’s purpose, you’ll be shocked to learn, is combating “dangerous speech.” Feminist Frequency, a left-wing political group, is another one of Twitter’s “online safety partners.” Twitter’s “hateful conduct and harassment” partners—a separate council from the “Trust and Safety Council”—includes the Dangerous Speech Project (again) and Hollaback! (a feminist group that supports greater online censorship).

  To its credit, Twitter cut ties with the SPLC in March 2019, but Facebook, Amazon, and Google have not.

  The Factually Challenged Fact-Checker

  Snopes is a left-wing online publication with an awful track record on political fact-checking—which is exactly the opposite of what you want from a neutral political fact-checker. Snopes is okay at debunking tabloid stories about UFOs being spotted in Haiti27 or scientists creating half-human, half-animal hybrids in the Amazon jungle,28 but when it comes to serious news stories, Snopes struggles. Part of the problem is that Snopes hires from the fringes of the left-wing blogosphere, and its political fact-checks consistently resemble a defense of left-wing narratives.29 For example, Snopes defended Democrats after they were criticized for the lack of onstage American flags on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. Flags were on display for the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem, and then carried off-stage. On the convention’s second day, in response to the criticism, the Democrats filled the stage with American flags. Those are the facts. They are undisputable. But Snopes acted as Democratic spin doctor. It rated the claim that “No American flags were on display at the 2016 Democratic National Convention” as “false,” and as proof used an image from day two of the convention and attempted to pass it off as an image from day one.30 That’s not checking facts—it’s inventing them.

  Snopes performed a similar service for the Democrats in March 2017. During President Trump’s first address to Congress, he paid tribute to Carrie Owens, the widow of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens who had been killed in action days before the speech. Owens received two separate standing ovations during the president’s tribute to her husband’s courage and her family’s sacrifice. Two Democratic members of Congress, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, remained seated during the second standing ovation. Again, those are simply the facts. The video of the address is indisputable. But Snopes said claims that Ellison and Wasserman Schultz sat during the second standing ovation were “false” because they stood and clapped during the first standing ovation. After criticism, Snopes significantly revised its “fact-check,” but didn’t append an editor’s note acknowledging its previous error.31

  In February 2017, Snopes botched a fact-check of two former Planned Parenthood employees who stated—on the record—that Planned Parenthood offered bonuses to its employees if they hit certain abortion quotas. In an attempt to undermine one of the former employees’ claims, Snopes said that she had recently lost a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood alleging widespread Medicaid fraud. That was wrong: the lawsuit was ongoing.32

  Time and again, Snopes has demonstrated its untrustworthiness as a political fact-checker. But Snopes is still a fact-checker for Google, giving it priority placement in search results, and is an official fact-checking partner for Facebook. Google News includes Snopes in a special bar highlighting its approved fact-checking partners, and Facebook marks stories from Snopes with a “Fact-checker” badge.33 When I reached out to Facebook in December 2016, a company spokeswoman stressed that the Snopes partnership was a pilot project.34 More than two years later, Snopes is still an arbiter of truth for Facebook, even as Snopes’ errors continue to pile up.

  In March 2018, for example, Facebook threatened to suppress the Babylon Bee, a popular satirical website comparable to The Onion, after Snopes “fact-checked” one of its satirical articles titled “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication.” So eager was Snopes to protect CNN that it “fact-checked” this article and proclaimed it false, prompting Facebook to threaten Babylon Bee founder Adam Ford with demonetization and reduced viewership if the satirical website continued publishing “disputed info.” Facebook later retracted the threat and apologized, but it continues to rely on the unreliable Snopes.35

  In December 2018, a picture circulated on Twitter of Trump standing with members of his administration and congressional Republicans. Many of those pictured had a red X stamped over their faces, which Snopes stated meant they had lost their 2018 midterm reelection bids, because they had voted to repeal Obamacare. But not only had many of those marked with an X won reelection, some weren’t even members of Congress.36

  Snopes ludicrously claimed that its post was still “mostly tru
e” because the number of Xs was roughly equivalent to the number of defeated Republicans who had voted to repeal Obamacare. Politico reporter Jake Sherman noted that Snopes’ accuracy was “not really a question,” because it “was nearly 100 percent wrong.”37 Nevertheless, Facebook marked Snopes’ misleading article with the blue “fact-checker” badge and Google News highlighted it on its front page.

  A month later, Snopes did it again. Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist who demonstrably lied about being harassed by a group of high school kids from Covington Catholic School at the 2019 March for Life, was discovered to have lied about something else, too: his military record. In interviews, Phillips described himself as a “Vietnam-times veteran” and in a 2018 Facebook video explicitly claimed that he was a Vietnam veteran who served “in theater.” He told Vogue that “You know, I’m from Vietnam times. I’m what they call a recon ranger. That was my role.”38 Military records showed that Phillips never deployed to Vietnam, spent most of his military service as a refrigerator technician, and had gone absent without leave three times. He also had a criminal record that included assault.39

  Phillips’ lies were an embarrassment to the liberal media establishment that had fallen over itself praising him and condemning the Covington high school kids. But swooping in to the rescue was Snopes, which labeled the fact that Phillips had falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran as “unproven.” And once again, Facebook’s blue “Fact-Checker” badge accompanied Snopes’ inaccurate “fact-check.”

  The pattern repeated itself in October 2019, when Snopes butchered its fact check of a left-wing smear of Chick-fil-A.40 A left-wing Twitter user falsely blamed Chick-fil-A for proposed (and quickly scuttled) legislation in Uganda that would have provided the death penalty for homosexuality. “Today Uganda announced a bill to legalize murdering gay people. National Christian [Foundation] paid a preacher to go to Uganda and help their lawmakers with the bill. Chick-fil-a funds National Christian Org. If you eat at Chick-fil-a, this is what your money goes to,” the tweet stated. That was false, but the tweet quickly went viral in left-wing Twitter circles anyway, garnering more than 57,000 retweets.41 The NCF, for context, is one of the country’s largest Christian nonprofits and provides funding to thousands of Christian charities and churches, including some that operate in Uganda. There’s no evidence to support the claim that the NCF was orchestrating the proposed legislation, and was no evidence that Chick-fil-A was currently funding the NCF—but Snopes rated the false tweet a “mixture” of truth and fact in its “fact check.” Egregiously, the Snopes article butchered basic facts, claiming that the Winshape Foundation, a charity founded by the chicken restaurant’s owners, was funding the NCF. I checked the WinShape Foundation’s publicly available tax documents, and they showed that show that NCF donated to WinShape Foundation in 2017 (the most recent year available), not the other way around.42 Far from debunking misinformation, Snopes amplified it. Big Tech is doing nothing to advance media credibility—or its own credibility—by deputizing partisan “fact-checkers” like Snopes. It’s the journalistic equivalent of hiring a raging alcoholic to watch your six pack of beer.

  Media Matters

  Media Matters is a far-left activist group that aims to muzzle prominent conservatives. One of Media Matters’ specialties is whipping up advertiser boycotts against Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. It also led the successful effort to get conservative writer Kevin Williamson fired from The Atlantic just days after he was hired.43

  Like the SPLC, Media Matters is focused entirely on attacking people on the right. And like the SPLC, it is hypocritical. For instance, Media Matters’ president, Angelo Carusone, has his own trail of offensive online posts disparaging a number of minority groups.44 In one post, Carusone wrote that his boyfriend was attractive “despite his jewry.” In another, he ranted about an article on a “tranny” gang in Bangladesh:

  Uhhh. Did you notice the word attractive? What the fuck is that doing in there? Is the write[r] a tranny lover too? Or, perhaps he’s trying to justify how these trannies tricked this Bangladeshi in the first place? Look man, we don’t need to know whether or not they were attractive. The fucking guy was Bangladeshi. And while we’re out, what the hell was he doing with $7,300 worth of stuff. The guy’s Banladeshi! [sic]45

  Do I think those blog posts should disqualify Carusone from a media career? No, I don’t. The reality of human nature is that people are flawed and make mistakes. But by the Media Matters standard, Carusone should be permanently barred from public discussion for those posts. But he’s not. Instead, Carusone uses his position to urge boycotts of right-of-center voices, using a standard that he himself couldn’t pass.46

  Carusone’s organization targeted Fox News host Laura Ingraham for tweeting an article about David Hogg, the Parkland student-turned gun control activist, who had complained about not getting accepted into colleges like UCLA. Ingraham added “and whines about it,” and said the result was predictable considering UCLA’s acceptance rates. She later apologized to Hogg and invited him onto her show. (He rejected both the invitation and her apology.) Was her tweet insensitive? Sure. But if you were to make a list of offensive things cable news hosts have said over the years, Ingraham’s tweet wouldn’t crack the top 100. MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski later derided Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a dictator’s “buttboy” on national television, and nobody came for her advertisers. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers said Covington student Nick Sandmann deserved to be “punched in the face.”47 Sellers’ CNN colleague, Symone Sanders, mocked Sandmann for his performance in an interview.48 Neither Media Matters nor anybody else launched a boycott of CNN’s advertisers. Even so, Hogg and Media Matters demanded that companies boycott Ingraham’s show. Hogg’s participation was excusable, considering that he was a senior in high school, but there’s no excuse for the adults who pushed a teenager into doing their political dirty work for them.

  Media Matters is expanding its dishonest boycott campaign beyond cable news. In a January 2017 memo circulated to donors. Media Matters outlined a strategy to prevent President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2020 by enlisting Big Tech to help destroy conservative media. “Key right-wing targets will see their influence diminished as a result of our work,” the memo assured donors. According to leaked documents, Media Matters intends to pressure Google (including YouTube) and Facebook to work with them to stifle conservative media.49 In April 2018, Media Matters briefed left-wing donors and Democratic bigwigs on the changes it wants to enforce at Facebook, Google, and YouTube.50

  One of its successes was getting a pledge from Facebook, after months of haranguing, to downrank “provocative” Facebook groups and pages. By Media Matters’ standards, any conservative could be considered “provocative” if not “extremist.” Media Matters published a list of alleged “extremist figures” attending the Trump White House’s social media summit in July 2019. The list included the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank.51 To anybody familiar with Heritage, the “extremism” charge was laughable. Heritage is synonymous with the conservative establishment. In fact, Heritage is the conservative establishment. If they’re “extremists,” so is everybody to the right of Mitt Romney.

  The Alex Jones Moment

  And then there is Alex Jones. Jones, for those who don’t know him, is the founder of the conspiracy website Infowars, and an all-around terrible person. He spread lies about the families of the children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, accusing them of staging the whole thing. He knew full well that he was telling lies about suffering people, and he did it anyway. When Jones’s ex-wife brought up his off-the-rails behavior in a custody battle, his legal defense was that he doesn’t actually mean the crazy things he says, and that he adopts a public “persona,” like a professional wrestler52—which makes the lies he tells about people even worse. In short: Alex Jones is a deeply immoral person. But he didn’t burst onto the scene in 2016—he’s be
en around for a long time. People who had moral objections to what he was saying for decades didn’t try to silence him then. In the online free speech battle, Jones’s grotesque behavior became a tool for leftists seeking to change how social media companies operate.

  Within the span of a day in August 2018, YouTube, Facebook, and Apple all permanently banned Jones from their platforms. The first to move against Jones were YouTube and Facebook. Apple was the first major platform to ban him entirely, at which point most other tech companies followed suit.53 Twitter showed relatively more restraint than its fellow tech giants, in that the company waited a month before it permanently banned Jones from the platform.54

  I feel no sympathy for Alex Jones (other than for his soul) and he has no absolute right to use a company’s platform. But what is troubling about the multi-platform purge of Alex Jones is the way he was banned—by left-wing activists and the liberal establishment media demanding that Big Tech act as a censor. The best way to hold Alex Jones accountable for libel is to take him to court, as the Sandy Hook families have done in a lawsuit that is ongoing. If, however, you want to use Alex Jones to change how social media operates, you highlight his outrageousness and the size of his audience as proof that tech companies need to change the rules. “It won’t stop at Alex Jones,” one Facebook insider told me. “It’s unprincipled and not deriving from anywhere, so it’s just subject to different concrete examples, where it’s ‘oh look this happened and oh this group is upset about this and they have a petition,’ and eventually it leads to a place where you aren’t allowed to say anything ‘offensive’ to anyone on the platform.” And who determines what’s offensive? Left-wing outrage mobs.