Taliban's New Arsenal meme

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Fact Check

Facebook fact-checks meme representing American military equipment left in Afghanistan: A widely circulating meme showed graphics of the range of American military equipment that was left in Afghanistan when troops withdrew, with a number next to each representing how many had been in the country. The meme was titled "Taliban's new arsenal." PolitiFact, one of Facebook's fact-checking partners, took exception to the meme, giving it a "Mostly False" rating, according to its fact-check article. According to the PolitiFact piece, Ben Shapiro shared it on his Facebook page. However, the video in which he discusses the meme, at the time of this entry, was showing a "Partly False Information" warning label, which does not match the "Mostly False" rating that PolitiFact gave the meme. PolitiFact also noted that the "official Twitter of House Republicans" had shared the image, where it is not labeled at all. According to an article at Reclaim The Net, North Carolina Representative Richard Hudson shared the image on both his Facebook and Instagram pages, which are under the same ownership. A screenshot in the article shows that his Instagram post had a "False Information" interstitial over it. This again does not match the "Mostly False" rating. However, according to the article, and Hudson's Facebook and Instagram pages, the fact-check label has been removed from the meme on his pages, while a slightly different, "Partly False" label remains on Ben Shapiro's. PolitiFact has had other issues with multiple different labels, and biased or flat-out wrong fact-checks, and the Media Research Center and Free Speech Alliance recently demanded that the International Fact-Checking Network remove PolitiFact for violating the organization's Code of Principles. According to Facebook, users fail to click through fact-check interstitials 95% of the time.

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