Some things are beyond parody. Even the comic geniuses at The Babylon Bee, America’s Newspaper of Record™, couldn’t invent this.

Facebook is busy working on debunking Seymore Hirsch’s claims about who exactly blew up the Nordstream pipeline–claims about which I am agnostic myself–for reasons I don’t fully understand. Nobody at Facebook has any clue about what happened simply because nobody has any clue but for the people who did it and the people they told.

Still, it is very important that the story be debunked. I guess because anything that might possibly help Russia in its propaganda war is a bad thing, even if it might be true.

Michael Shellenberger discovered something interesting that simply is insane. When he tried posting Hirsch’s article about the explosion’s origin Facebook labeled it false and directed users to an article that is in… Norwegian.

Norwegian.

There is a big debate over who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Instead of allowing the debate, Facebook has decided to take a side. It is censoring Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. And instead of explaining, Facebook sends readers to an article in Norwegian. Watch pic.twitter.com/nN18HovBPR

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 19, 2023

That takes a special kind of chutzpah. I mean, come on. Norwegian? You couldn’t find an English-speaking article to make the same claims?

Seymore Hirsch is indeed a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, but these days it’s hard to know what that means. The New York Times and The Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for printing total lies about the Steele Dossier, so that is hardly a solid endorsement of his reporting.

But at least it should provide a bit of credibility to his claims. I would label the claims unproven if I had to label them at all. I would prefer that both sides argue the point out and let people make a judgment. These days you should trust nobody.

But Norwegian? That is the equivalent of just saying “Trust us, we are smarter than you.”

Facebook, I trust you as much as I do The Star. Not at all. How much true information have you labeled false since COVID began? Remember the Hunter Biden laptop? I could go on, but why? It is obvious they are ideological hacks whose integrity is somewhere below con man status.

Maybe Hersh is wrong and maybe he's right. Whatever the case, it's not up to Facebook to decide.

"We don't think we can make ourselves the arbiter of the truth" said Facebook's @sherylsandberg

And yet that's what they're doing.https://t.co/glRej4TMwn

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 19, 2023

Facebook is a big part of the emerging censorship-industrial complex. They are an extension of the worst parts of our law enforcement and intelligence communities, and those folks have proven as trustworthy as any Putin mouthpiece. They have their own agenda, and if it overlaps with ours it is purely coincidental.

Do you work at Facebook? Please blow the whistle on the censorship occurring at your company. We will protect your anonymityhttps://t.co/TdRPWABuky

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) April 19, 2023

Ironically, even if you are aware that the censorship and spinning are out there, it still changes your perception of the world. When information is withheld, spun, stapled, and spindled your perception of the world gets very distorted. You overestimate some things, have no knowledge of others, and mistrust things that are true.

That’s how the narrative builders like it. Better you trust nobody and know nothing than have a grasp of the truth. Ideally, you just buy what they are selling, but ignorance and confusion work too. Everything just becomes an ideological battlefield and raw power allows them to do what they want in the absence of credible pushback.

Look at the Inflation Reduction Act. Most people have no idea what was in it, had no idea that it would increase inflation, and certainly had no idea that they just slapped a new and deceptive name on the Green New Deal. Because very few people who were in the know wanted to tell you that.

There is a vast, pervasive propaganda machine working on us. It wasn’t that long ago that most reporters were liberals but were also interested in breaking news–the latter impulse usually greater than the impact of the former on big stories. Think Clinton and Chinese donors. It was too big and juicy to ignore.

Today it would be ignored and Facebook would slap a “False information” warning on the story, or even ban the distribution of the information entirely as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop.

No matter how cynical you are, you are underestimating their willingness to lie and distort reality. Facebook has been hurt more by its misstep with virtual reality tech than anything they have done to actually harm democratic debate. This is exactly the opposite of how it should be, of course.

But there it is.