Does blocking pages called “fact check” prevent posts being flagged? Fact Check

A post claims that Facebook is operating fact checking “bots” and that going into your Blocking settings and typing “fact check” and blocking the subsequent results will prevent your posts from being reported and flagged.

NOTE: A similar hoax from 2021 claims you can block fact checkers by typing in “fact checker” into you settings. To see our article on that, click here.

FALSE

Examples of the post at it appeared in 2020 are below.

Go to your FB settings, then to Blocking, then type in “fact check” or “fact checker”, then block them all! (Hundreds of them)
These are Zuckerburg’s “bots” that stalk your page and report your posts and flag your groups & business posts, especially any that are natural minded, CBD, etc. ”

Go to your FB settings and click on blocking. Type in fact check and block everyone that comes up. They are Zuckerberg bots that report you. Then erase fact check and type in fact checker. Block those people too. I found at least 20 on my list.

The posts are simply untrue and make several illogical and false claims.

Firstly, the fundamental claim that Facebook operates “bots” with the words (or variations of the words) “fact check” is baseless, and doesn’t make sense. Searching for the term “fact check” in your Blocking settings reveals a list of pages and profiles that – as you would expect – contain the words “fact check” in their title, vanity URL or description. There is simply nothing to back up the claim these are Facebook-operated bots.

Most of them are pages that – at some point – may have been intended for fact checking information on the Internet, but the majority that we looked at had been abandoned long ago and rarely updated (most Facebook pages that are live on the social networking platform are not updated regularly and many are abandoned at the point of inception.)

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

The term “bot” simply refers to an automated piece of software on the Internet. There is no reason why a bot would be designed to appear like a Facebook page or profile. Additionally, if Facebook wanted to create automated software to flag (fact check) Facebook posts and wanted to keep that software covert, it would not design them to appear as public pages, much less title them “fact checker”.

Fact checking organisations do, of course, work with Facebook. But they are not bots, and they do not flag posts for the sake of flagging posts. Many fact checking organisations partnered with Facebook do have the ability to rank certain articles as false (or a variety of other classifications) based on the content of those articles. However an article would have to be exactly that – false – to obtain that classification.

A secondary problem with the claim is that even if these “fact checker” pages were operated by Facebook, why would Facebook design them with the glaringly obvious shortcoming of being susceptible to being blocked by any Facebook user capable of searching for them? Additionally, even if you do block a Facebook page, you do not block the Facebook user that created that page. Meaning the Facebook user can still see content you post.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

Yet another problem with the message is that many fact checkers on Facebook – who, as we stated above, are not bots or owned or operated by Facebook – do not have the words “fact check” in their titles. Examples can include Hoax-Slayer, Snopes, Facecrooks, Politifact, FullFact, Hoax Leadstories. (And of course That’s Nonsense!) These are some of the leading fact check entities on Facebook, and many of the aforementioned are partnered with Facebook to help them determine misinformation on their platform. None of those pages appeared when we searched the terms “fact check”.

So even if you did inexplicably want to block fact checking pages from seeing your page (which can’t be done as we stated earlier) you still wouldn’t be blocking the biggest fact-checking organisations anyway.

To summarise, no, Facebook doesn’t own fact checking bots. As such, typing “fact check” in your Blocking settings doesn’t reveal a list of such bots. You can’t prevent third party fact checking organisations that are partnered with Facebook from seeing the content you post, regardless of what or who you block. And if you post false information on Facebook, there is always a significant chance it will be flagged as false by one of those organisations. Following the instructions on this message will do nothing whatsoever to change that.

The post is very similar to an earlier hoax from 2017 that claimed typing “facebook security” into your Blocking section revealed a list of “paid stalkers”.