Can you trust what you read on Facebook? No. And why not? Because Facebook has now explicitly said that it will obey an executive order from President Trump and will refuse to fact-check misinformation and disinformation as American heads into the 2020 election.
In April 2017, Facebook published a white paper that acknowledged the spread of “information operationsâ€� trying to divide and deceive Americans, in response to accusations that misinformation helped influence the 2016 U.S. elections. In September 2017, Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos acknowledged that some of the accounts and Pages disseminating that information came from within Russia. Common Cause, a watchdog group, filed suit. Then Facebook joined Twitter and Google, telling Congress that they would do better.Â