In a shocking turn of events, the CEO of Snopes (a fact-checking website) has dropped a bombshell on Americans. Chris Richmond reports that the massive push to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story did not stem from independent fact-checkers, but rather they acted in response to pressure directly from the federal government to do so.
Richmond appeared on MSNBC and revealed to host Ali Velshi, “Let’s look at the most famous example of Facebook censoring content: the Hunter Biden laptop story,” Richmond told Velshi. “We say it was the fact-checkers, right, who told Zuckerberg to limit the reach of that? No, it was the government.”
He continued, “Facebook complied with the government, and then the fact-checkers get the blame.”
FoxNews just wrote about what I said on MSNBC. A fair article minus referring to Snopes as “left-leaning”. But I understand given Snopes’ past under the old ownership/management. It will take more time to prove we are impartial which I believe we have been over the last year. https://t.co/f6ddRGpIjv
— Chris Richmond (@itcdr) January 12, 2025
This comes after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platform will phase out their “face-checkers” due to their political bias. He also pointed to being under pressure from government figures.
“These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg recounted. “Then, all these different agencies and branches of government basically started investigating and coming after our company.”
Zuckerberg is such a spineless jellyfish. Somebody from Biden’s team (unnamed) told his team to take stuff down so he rolled over. Trump gets elected and suddenly he’s a new man. 🤢 pic.twitter.com/ZOIKJkrLvs
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) January 10, 2025
Richmond gave his mind on Zuckerberg’s newly announced plans though, noting that the timing of this policy change still appears to be politically driven rather than a commitment to free speech.
“If Kamala Harris had won, would he be taking any of these same actions now? No,” the Snopes CEO asked. “He complied with what the government wanted then and is complying with what the new administration wants now.”
“The problem is that Facebook has this black box system where they can do what they want and just pass off the blame,” Richmond continued, arguing that transparency is crucial because removing the fact checks completely could post news issues.
“We should be pushing for community notes. But to say that you’re going to remove fact-checkers as part of the process, I think that’s where the issue is,” he stated.
“Ultimately, this is about trust,” Richmond added. “If social media platforms want to regain public confidence, they need to prioritize transparency and resist undue influence, whether from governments or other external forces.”