On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, the Daily Wire’s Ian Haworth, host of the “Ian Haworth Show” and a former Facebook software engineer, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his article “Facebook Releases ‘Content Distribution Guidelines,’ Will Target ‘Untrusted’ News” and his time on the fact-checking and misinformation teams at Facebook.
“The whole point of the fact-checking organization or arm of the company was to add a layer of truth to things. Whether or not you agree with fact-checking it at all, the goal was to push something forward as ‘is this true or not true?’ and give people more tools to handle information. But now if they’re demoting things via the fact-checking arm without actually fact-checking, then it’s really just an abuse of power in another way that’s going to impact conservatives even harder,” Haworth said.
Haworth said it’s right to be skeptical of Big Tech’s influence and inclination towards censorship but he is optimistic about change.
“I think there are a lot of people who just want their tools to be used for people for the good. And I think if we can create a culture that mirrors what we believe to be a bit more moderate than what we have right now, I think some elements of Big Tech will follow suit. I’d like to be slightly optimistic in that manner,” Haworth said.
