The systemic redlining of Americans’ free speech rights continues apace. The CDC announced yesterday that vaccinated Americans no longer need masks in most situations, but we’ll bet it takes some time for Facebook to stop throttling or outright censoring posts even daring to ask questions about masks. You may not think for yourself, say the Silicon Valley Thought Police. The same is true about the place of origin for the coronavirus itself, which is almost certainly a bio lab in Wuhan, China. You may not say such things, say the Silicon Valley Thought Police.

If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious to note that in order to censor such stories, Facebook is using circular “fact-checks.” In this instance, because the “fact-checkers” said something in April 2020 — before more evidence was uncovered — they’re blocking anyone from acknowledging that growing body of evidence in May 2021. And they’re justifying the censorship with the catch-all label of “missing context.”

As our Douglas Andrews noted earlier this week, there’s plenty of evidence for COVID’s lab origin, more of which was provided by Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for the New York Times. Wade goes into great detail to explain the evidence, and it should be persuasive to anyone still in doubt of what we suspected very early last year.

In other words, Wade is providing context for his argument by systematically presenting the evidence. To the “fact-checkers,” however, that is somehow proof of “missing context.” And the fact that they got it wrong last year is all the substantiation they need for censoring contrary evidence this year. The only explanation Facebook gives is to point to its own COVID policies, which prohibit content claiming that the coronavirus was manufactured or bioengineered.

Can you see why no one should trust the “fact-checkers”? It’s why we put the term itself in scare quotes.

So what, you might say. Well, it’s this kind of redlining that is causing conservative news sources all over the Internet to lose their voices and reach on social media. We here in our humble shop have documented a dramatic drop in our traffic and engagement over the last 12 months. In roughly a dozen “fact-checks” on our content (usually our memes), not one has actually proven an error. Each time, it has been a disagreement over opinion or an algorithmic error that lumps us in with someone else (here’s an example). Worst of all was our “hate speech” strike for a meme arguing that trying to change a kid’s gender is child abuse. All of it has added up to the systemic suppression of our speech.

Facebook acknowledges that it limits the reach of sources whose content is hit with “fact-checks,” though in Facebook’s typically opaque manner, it’s unclear how much or whether this includes posts labeled “missing context.” In any case, as the presidential campaign heated up last summer, we believe Facebook made a concerted and targeted effort to stifle conservative voices on its platform, and it’s primarily using bogus “fact-checks” to do it so there’s a veneer of objectivity and independence to this political suppression. COVID just happens to be one of the issues where The Narrative™ is even more stringently enforced, again often against conservatives daring to object to mandates and obfuscation.

Rather than counter speech with more speech and actually debate the issues and the evidence, leftists only want to silence conservatives and suppress the truth.