Now Facebook is "fact-checking" satire!
It now seems that Facebook is "fact checking" satire.
A few days ago I posted a picture of an electric car at the side of the road being charged by a portable petrol-driven generator. and Facebook put a warning notice on it saying that it lacked context and linked it to a fact-checking article full of ponderous restatements of the obvious. This kind of thing brings Facebook's "fact checking" into disrepute.
Lest I be accused of making statements without enough context, let me point out that Facebook did not "fact check" this article themselves, but linked to an "independent" fact checker called PolitiFact" which is connected to the Poynter Institute.
Now satirical items like this one, with a picture and a caption (commonly but erroneously called "memes") often appear on Facebook and similar web sites, and they fall into the same category as satirical cartoon drawings.
I'm not saying that such things can't be "fact checked", but in this case it looks as though Facebook's irony meter is broken.
A popular cartoonist often depicted former president Jacob Zuma with a shower head growing out of the back of his head -- an allusion to something he once said. People have often posted those cartoons on Facebook, and it is as if Facebook solemnly sent this to a fact checker, who after seriously researching the topic, pointed out that there was no evidence to show that Jacob Zuma actually had a shower head growing out of the top of his head, and that several eminent medical men whose opinion had been solicited had pointed out that such a thing was physically impossible, and that therefore the cartoon had failed the "fact" test.
There is, however, nothing inherently improbable about the scene depicted in this picture of a car at the side of the road, which the article, with a great deal of reluctance , actually acknowledges. Battery-driven electric vehicles do have a limited range and are more inconvenient to refuel that those with internal-combustion engines using liquid fuel, or those with hybrid battery and internal combustion engines.
Up to that point, Facebook's (and PolitiFact's) "fact-checking is just pompous, humourless and silly.
But it goes beyond that. There is a very nasty totalitarian political implication, when the article goes on to say:
The Biden administration has made support for electric vehicles one of the pillars of its plan to combat climate change. Skeptics of the vehicles point to their limited range, the inconvenience of recharging (it can take hours, and charging stations are not as common as gas stations) and the fact that the electricity they use may come from power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as coal, oil or natural gas.
The implication here is that you may not criticise government policy by pointing out or even hinting at possible disadvantages, even if the possible disadvantages, which the article reluctantly admits, are factual.
Now that kind of thing may be all right in a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchhy, but one of the advantages of democracy are that people are free to point out the possible disadvantages of a particular government policy, even by use of satire.
Now I am actually rather in favour of electric vehicles. But I still reserve the right to criticise government policy about them. For example, there was recently an article, to which I also posted a link on Facebook, South Africa to prioritise electric cars, says Ramaphosa.
There are very few battery-driven electric vehicles in South Africa, but there are a lot of electric trains, and most of the electric trains haven't run for the last two years, mainly because the infrastructure, like overhead wires, has all been stolen by cable thieves. So I believe the government should not prioritise electric cars, but should rather prioritise getting electric trains running again, for the people who can't afford electric cars, even if they were available. And yes, there is even a Facebook group for people who would like the government to get the electric trains running again -- Prasa Metrorail Gauteng Commuters.
I'll go further and say that the government should have used the army to protect the railways from sabotage by patrolling the railway lines and stations. That is what armies do in war time, and the campaign against Covid-19 epidemic was a war, and the army would have been better employed in doing that than harassing people for drinking beer at home during the lockdown.
To further demonstrate that I am not opposed to electric vehicles (lest Facebook or PolitiFact try to impugn it), I was in my youth a trolley bus driver, and was sad when all the South African municipalities decided to phase out electric trolley buses in favour of oil buses. I was even aware of regenerative braking (which the Politifact article irrelevantly mentions -- the cartoon it was complaining about said nothing whatsoever about regenerative braking). Many trolley buses used regenerative braking, which enabled a trolley buses going down a hill to provide power for a bus climbing the same hill on the other side of the road. Unfortunately the Johannesburg trolley buses I drove did not have regenerative braking, they had rheostatic braking, which consumed power rather than generating it. That too is an irelevant fact, but no more irrelevant than most of the facts given in the PolitiFacts article. But I mention it to show that I do know some facts about electric vehicles and I am not dedicated to promoting ignorance or misinformation about them, as Facebook so mischievously implies.
A few days ago I posted a picture of an electric car at the side of the road being charged by a portable petrol-driven generator. and Facebook put a warning notice on it saying that it lacked context and linked it to a fact-checking article full of ponderous restatements of the obvious. This kind of thing brings Facebook's "fact checking" into disrepute.
Lest I be accused of making statements without enough context, let me point out that Facebook did not "fact check" this article themselves, but linked to an "independent" fact checker called PolitiFact" which is connected to the Poynter Institute.
Now satirical items like this one, with a picture and a caption (commonly but erroneously called "memes") often appear on Facebook and similar web sites, and they fall into the same category as satirical cartoon drawings.
I'm not saying that such things can't be "fact checked", but in this case it looks as though Facebook's irony meter is broken.
A popular cartoonist often depicted former president Jacob Zuma with a shower head growing out of the back of his head -- an allusion to something he once said. People have often posted those cartoons on Facebook, and it is as if Facebook solemnly sent this to a fact checker, who after seriously researching the topic, pointed out that there was no evidence to show that Jacob Zuma actually had a shower head growing out of the top of his head, and that several eminent medical men whose opinion had been solicited had pointed out that such a thing was physically impossible, and that therefore the cartoon had failed the "fact" test.
There is, however, nothing inherently improbable about the scene depicted in this picture of a car at the side of the road, which the article, with a great deal of reluctance , actually acknowledges. Battery-driven electric vehicles do have a limited range and are more inconvenient to refuel that those with internal-combustion engines using liquid fuel, or those with hybrid battery and internal combustion engines.
Up to that point, Facebook's (and PolitiFact's) "fact-checking is just pompous, humourless and silly.
But it goes beyond that. There is a very nasty totalitarian political implication, when the article goes on to say:
The Biden administration has made support for electric vehicles one of the pillars of its plan to combat climate change. Skeptics of the vehicles point to their limited range, the inconvenience of recharging (it can take hours, and charging stations are not as common as gas stations) and the fact that the electricity they use may come from power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as coal, oil or natural gas.
The implication here is that you may not criticise government policy by pointing out or even hinting at possible disadvantages, even if the possible disadvantages, which the article reluctantly admits, are factual.
Now that kind of thing may be all right in a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchhy, but one of the advantages of democracy are that people are free to point out the possible disadvantages of a particular government policy, even by use of satire.
Now I am actually rather in favour of electric vehicles. But I still reserve the right to criticise government policy about them. For example, there was recently an article, to which I also posted a link on Facebook, South Africa to prioritise electric cars, says Ramaphosa.
There are very few battery-driven electric vehicles in South Africa, but there are a lot of electric trains, and most of the electric trains haven't run for the last two years, mainly because the infrastructure, like overhead wires, has all been stolen by cable thieves. So I believe the government should not prioritise electric cars, but should rather prioritise getting electric trains running again, for the people who can't afford electric cars, even if they were available. And yes, there is even a Facebook group for people who would like the government to get the electric trains running again -- Prasa Metrorail Gauteng Commuters.
I'll go further and say that the government should have used the army to protect the railways from sabotage by patrolling the railway lines and stations. That is what armies do in war time, and the campaign against Covid-19 epidemic was a war, and the army would have been better employed in doing that than harassing people for drinking beer at home during the lockdown.
To further demonstrate that I am not opposed to electric vehicles (lest Facebook or PolitiFact try to impugn it), I was in my youth a trolley bus driver, and was sad when all the South African municipalities decided to phase out electric trolley buses in favour of oil buses. I was even aware of regenerative braking (which the Politifact article irrelevantly mentions -- the cartoon it was complaining about said nothing whatsoever about regenerative braking). Many trolley buses used regenerative braking, which enabled a trolley buses going down a hill to provide power for a bus climbing the same hill on the other side of the road. Unfortunately the Johannesburg trolley buses I drove did not have regenerative braking, they had rheostatic braking, which consumed power rather than generating it. That too is an irelevant fact, but no more irrelevant than most of the facts given in the PolitiFacts article. But I mention it to show that I do know some facts about electric vehicles and I am not dedicated to promoting ignorance or misinformation about them, as Facebook so mischievously implies.