Political commentator Candace Owens is planning to sue the third-party fact-checkers for Facebook over censorship of her content.
“Guess what? I am OFFICIALLY suing the “Fact-Checkers” who are really just activists,” she captioned a video she uploaded on Twitter that explains how she’s going to go about it.
Facebook partnered with third-party fact-checkers in 2016 in response to a Trump presidency. The partners check content on both Facebook and Instagram for misinformation. They rate content content as “false,” “altered,” or “missing context,” and have many times been accused of getting it wrong.
Facebook then takes action by adding labels to the content, providing users with additional information about the topic from “trustworthy sources,” making it appear less frequently on users’ feeds, or blocking it with a prompt asking a user whether they want to see the content.
In the video, Owens says that “It is time to fact-check the fact-checkers.” She alleged that the fact-checkers have a relationship with Facebook, making them censor content according to Facebook’s viewpoint.
“Quite literally a doctor gave his opinion about COVID-19, which I shared, and Facebook issued a strike on my account because they said only information that they agree with about COVID-19 … was acceptable,” Owens said to suggest Facebook’s biased censorship.
Facebook has gone as far as to demonetize her page.
“The fact-checkers… they are activists for the left that shut down your speech if they don’t like it,” Owens said.
The defendants of the lawsuit include Lead Stories Fact Checkers and USA Today. Owen’s attorneys who will help her prepare the lawsuit, include Todd McMurtry, who was part of the team that defended Nick Sandmann, the former Covington Catholic High School student who was falsely accused of discrimination against a native American senior.
