Scott Tibbs
Satire is not and will never be misinformation
By Scott Tibbs, October 21, 2022
In a parallel universe, newspapers began putting "fact checks" on political cartoons in 1975. A conversation or event that did not actually happen could confuse or mislead people who see it depicted on a drawing on the newspaper's editorial page. Most people laugh and roll their eyes at this policy, because they already know that political cartoons are satire.
Memes are the modern version of political cartoons. The mainstream media, which had a monopoly on this form of expression until the 1990's, is very unhappy about this. Any rube with a computer can make a modern political cartoon, and without any formal training in journalism! The media sees memes as a threat and seeks to discredit them as "misinformation," demanding that social media provide warnings about obviously satirical memes.
A perfect example if this is the meme placing a
"Build the Wall" sign in Martha's Vinyard. Facebook censored the meme and warned that "the same altered photo was checked in another post by independent fact-checkers." But the problem with censoring alleged "misinformation" is that the meme was never presented as real information. The fact that the "Build the Wall" sign included part of Joe Biden's campaign logo should have made that obvious.
Facebook's moderators need to develop a sense of humor and they need to stop being afraid of their own shadow. Ever since Democrats blamed Facebook for the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Facebook has been aggressively providing "fact checks" on content, both because of an internal bias against conservatives and because of threats of regulation by Democrats in Congress. (The latter is also known as blackmail.) The problem is that their algorithm is so aggressive that it discredits the fact checks and makes Facebook look clueless.
Are there fake photos that get passed around as real? Of course that happens, and it is wholly appropriate for social media to put fact checks on photos designed to mislead, especially if those photos defame someone's reputation. But satire is not and will never be misinformation. By labeling obvious satire as "misinformation," the only thing Facebook proves is that they lack a sense of proportion and that their "moderators" are completely humorless.
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