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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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https://abcnews.go.com/Business/worried-meta-decision-allowing-2020-election-denial-ads/story?id=104985165

So Meta the parent company of Facebook and instagram is now allowing users and advertisers to post claims about election fraud in the last election but not the soon to be held 2024 elections. I’ll lay my cards out here and say I’m personally a skeptic of the claims that the 2020 elections were stolen. I don’t see why that should prevent other people from making such arguments.

But my question for you guys is whether these claims are going to really erode trust in future elections. To me the issue that erodes that trust is that the official government structures never bothered to look into the claims that such fraud might have happened and instead opted for the COVID style full court press of “nobody should bother to take it seriously, and if you do it’s clear that you’re falling for misinformation.” To me nothing erodes trust faster than an official response of “nothing to see here.”

Why do you think they didn't look into it? My memory of the time was detailed debunkings of every individual claim being widespread all over the place.

Admittedly they may have been more widespread in my progish filter bubble, maybe the opposing side never saw them.

Also, your link only says that advertisers won't be able to say future elections are going to be rigged, afaict. Where are you getting that users won't be able to talk about it?

There were some debunkings; some of the debunkings (eg re Fulton county and the “water main” story) were “debunked” which means they weren’t at all.