The Atlas Society
Case #
5998

Instagram slapped a fact check on an Atlas Society video meme about the porous border: Atlas Society, an organization that promotes the late author Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, posted a video meme with the words “The Biden Administration securing the Southern Border.” The video showed what appears to be a group of security people standing in a line on a sports field with their arms outstretched attempting to block people from walking onto the field while people, seemingly oblivious to the security line, walked right through it. Instagram placed an interstitial over the post and labeled it “False Information,” claiming that "The same false information was reviewed in another post by fact-checkers. ... Independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact." Instagram linked to a PolitiFact fact-check article headlined: "US southern border 'completely open'? That’s False.” Instagram noted that "There may be small differences" between the original context of the fact check and the post being fact-checked, however, the recycled fact check linked to a 2021 article which had rather significant differences. It specifically addressed claims that the U.S.-Mexico border was open during the 2021 Omicron variant outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, something completely irrelevant to the Atlas Society video. According to Facebook, Instagram's sister site, users fail to click through fact-check interstitials 95 percent of the time.

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