Facebook claims UK introducing blue passports after Brexit vote is fake news

Interesting.

Recently I shared this info-graphic on Facebook:

I have received a message from Facebook that this has now been classed as fake news and shares of it across Facebook will be downgraded:

Looking at the fact-check (see here), it’s actually quite thorough.

But the info-graphic has been classed as fake news because the independent fact checker decided that the blue passports announced by the UK government have not yet been actually issued:

And it’s classed as fake news also because I pointed out that MPs have received two pay rises since the Brexit vote, when in fact it’s been three!

The rest it decided was accurate.

While slightly annoyed by the stupidity applied to my own anti-Brexit, lefty posts when it came to fact-checking, I wasn’t initially unhappy, because I was  looking forward to having fun reading the fact-checks on the Sun, Express and the Mail under the fact-checking organisation’s immigration section.

But I was amazed to see, according to the fact checker’s website, there haven’t been any fake news stories from the Sun, Mail or Express (see here).

We all know of course, that there have been plenty:

How the press lied about the little girl staying with Muslim foster parents.

Tory MP caught red-handed sharing pro-Brexit fake news on social media

See 20 years of FAKE NEWS about EU by UK press. Vote for your ‘favourite’ here:

More fake news from mainstream journalists trying to influence Brexit

Anger after The Sun photoshops out WW2 veteran from Remembrance Sunday service

So while I’m glad that social media companies such as Facebook are trying to clamp down on fake news, it’s disheartening to discover neither the independent fact-checker nor Facebook are applying such rigorous fact-checking to the Sun, the Express, the Daily Mail or other mainstream press – who continue to publish fake news on Facebook and other social media – especially on the subjects of immigration, Jeremy Corbyn and the EU – with impunity.

And remember. This is also after Facebook allowed the Leave campaign and Cambridge Analytica to flood it with fake news.

One rule for the establishment propaganda writers, another rule for the plebs it seems …