Instagram’s meme fact checkers have themselves become a meme

It's probably the worst thing that can happen to a "fact-checker" or a system of "fact-checking" put in place by a major platform - to turn into a caricature of itself, and do it quickly.

It hasn't even been two weeks since Facebook's Instagram expanded its "fact-checking" policy by introducing a new tool of content moderation and censorship. But the tool is working so poorly, especially when trying to assess "factual truthfulness" of content like memes, which rely on comedy - that some of the 45 third-party "fact-checkers" hired by Instagram, like Africa Check, are already being memefied themselves.

Given the nature and purpose of memes, determining whether the imagery contained in them is "true" or "false" seemed sure to backfire and deliver absurd results, because what it essentially tries to do is "fact-check" jokes. One of the first to be hidden under the "false information" notice was the "car tire" meme, that shows what is patently obviously a valve stem about to be removed, along with text "instructing" users to "snip off this tube" to remove "an RFID chip" and "stop the government from tracking your car."

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