This is a big get from @alexeheath. More than 110,000 government government officials and candidates were on a Facebook whitelist that prevented them from being factchecked — and subsequently have their reach reduced — for spreading misinformation. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facebook-researchers-found-companys-political-whitelist-influenced-misinformation-spread

This begs further questions: What happens when one of those political or candidate accounts violates another FB rule, like those regarding QAnon or covid misinformation? There's now a Q supporting politician in the House. Is she on the list?

This is a mess.

Facebook has said it's committed to transparency. For the sake of transparency, I've asked them to make that political official and candidate whitelist public. Will let you know what they say.

A Facebook spokesperson has declined to provide the whitelist.

That means there will continue to be 112,000+ *unknown* political official and candidate accounts that can spread misinformation with impunity.

Facebook's own rationale is that political speech should be "subject to public scrutiny."

If you truly believe that, why not disclose those political accounts that you've whitelisted to spread misinformation so that the public and press can scrutinize them?