Trump’s anti-truth campaign is not just an attack on facts, it is a deconstruction of the Enlightenment Polly Toynbee
FActions are becoming less sacred by the day in the United States under Donald Trump, with many of his supporters now denying the existence of the facts. For them, inadequate evidence is by definition “bias.” His followers and those who fear his grasp are lining up: the media, the universities, and that notorious legion of tech billionaires who stood right behind him on Inauguration Day. The day after Trump’s election victory was certified by a congressional tally of electoral votes, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, announced that starting in the US, the company would get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community feedback similar to X.
It had just been hit by a similar hammer blow The whole truththe exceptionally valuable British fact-checker whose word is the gold standard of honesty. Google has withdrawn its £1 million funding. Combined with the end of large donations from Meta, the charity tells me this equates to losing a third of its funding.
CEO Of Full Fact, Chris Morris says“We believe the decisions of Google, and other major US tech companies, are influenced by a perceived need to please the current US administration, fueling a harmful new rhetoric that attacks fact-checking and everything it stands for. Verifiable facts matter, and big internet companies have responsibilities when it comes to limiting the spread of harmful misinformation.” Morris pioneered reality checking on the BBCcalled now Verified by BBCcharts the BBC’s perilous path through the years of Brexit and the pandemic. As a member of the European Governing Body of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network, Full Fact has shared its AI lie-finding tool with fact-checkers in more than 40 countries.
The “community feedback” system that replaces fact checking in Google, Meta, and X abandons the idea of objective truth verified by science or evidence. Instead, it collects any comments on any piece of content, and the algorithm reaches a “consensus”: the Earth could be flat if most people said so.
Google newly Dropped ClaimReviewa labeling system that allows search engines, apps, and social media platforms to find and display fact checks with the original factual error: Google used to brag that it reached billions of users. When I asked why he had disappeared, a company spokesperson directed me to the company’s statement that “Simplify search resultsHe noted that he also continues to offer custom tools like the Fact Check Explorer, “for people who specifically want to explore reviewed claims.”
The counterfactual ideology was declared in J.D. Vance’s brazen attack on Europe in February in Munich, when he warned that European democracy was at risk from the enemy within. (Many may identify a different enemy.) He claimed that the Joe Biden administration “threatened and intimidated social media companies into censoring so-called misinformation.” He called “misinformation” an “ugly Soviet-era word” and noted that anyone using it didn’t like the idea that “someone with an alternative point of view might express a different opinion.”
Vance seems to think fact-checking is censorship. Full Fact responds that it “does not restrict debate: it strengthens it by grounding it in truth.” Auditors never request that content be removed or monitored from the Internet. In its now-defunct partnership with Meta, it would simply attach a rating to a post indicating that readers might want to see what Full Fact had to say about it before sharing it further. One of the things that full fact checks are harmful is Financial frauds,false and Misleading medical information Which harm people’s health, and online videos that encourage suicidal thoughts among teenagers.
The word “misinformation” is now banned almost anywhere in the United States that relies on government approval: the US National Science Foundation, for example, Expired grants Many millions worth of grants to researchers studying misinformation. But as The whole truth says“Discussing language risks missing the real issue: our online information environment is under greater threat than ever before.” This dispute is also at the heart of the debate over the UK’s online safety law, which aims to protect children and others from the worst harms. Nigel Farage pledged to cancel it during his visit to the US Congress last month, where He said about freedom of expression in the UK: “At what point did we become North Korea?”
A long list of distinguished institutional and philanthropic funders supports Full Fact. It’s free to use and, like The Guardian, relies on individual supporters, who, like me, enjoy a stream of daily checks. Here’s a sample: No, the UK has not pledged to do so £40 billion for Gaza reconstruction. No, James Cleverly said (absolutely) nothing about China Keir Starmer claimed he did In PMQs. No, police say There are no migrants who eat pelicans. no, Immigration did not increase fourfold Under Conservative rule, it doubled. There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that London is Under Sharia law. Picture of the beautiful Epping mothers protesting in pink against the Asylum Hotel It is fake artificial intelligence (But there were mothers there.) that it Rolling government tracker Convincing: 59 out of 86 pledges have been implemented or are in progress.
After promoting the newsletter
In her speech at the conference, Kimmy Badenoch quoted Margaret Thatcher Claim that “the facts are conservative,” which is a dangerous line of thought when J.D. Vance seems to think the facts belong to Trump. The critical value of independent auditors is to uphold the fact that facts are no one’s property. Here, this is one of the front lines of enlightenment against the gathering storms of irrationality.