Social media fact-checking organizations are not the independent public health watchdogs they're made out to be. Fact checkers for Facebook are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given more than $250 million in grants to steer media outlets
In what it describes as a commitment to "fighting the spread of misinformation,"[i] Facebook claims to work with "independent, third-party fact-checking organizations" to review content and take action against that deemed to be "viral misinformation" or fake news.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that when a post is identified as misinformation, meaning