On Monday, I received a rather curious notification on Facebook. A friend alerted me that when she tried to share a recent article of mine, the social media site automatically blurred the accompanying image, replacing it with the ominous declaration that the link contained “false information checked by independent fact-checkers.”
The article in question was this one: “The Study That Convinced the CDC To Support Mask Mandates in Schools Is Junk Science.” As the Reason Roundupdaily newsletter (subscribe today!), it contained information on several other subjects as well, but Facebook made matters fairly clear that the fact-checkers were taking issue with the part about masks in schools. Attempting to share the article on Facebook prompted a warning message to appear: This message redirected to an article by Science Feedback, an official Facebook fact-checking organization, which asserted that “masking can help limit transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools” and it was false to say that “there’s no science behind masks on kids.”
Since I had never made this claim, it was odd to see it fact-checked. Indeed, the purveyor of false information here was Science Feedback, which had given people the erroneous impression that my article said something other than what I had actually written.