Facebook changes stance on Hersh's report, downgrades warning on it to 'partly false'

Facebook has revised its stance on a report implicating the United States in the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, changing the label from "false information" to "partly false." The social media platform faced criticism for initially labelling the report as false. On Thursday, users attempting to share Seymour Hersh's account of the Nord Stream bombings on Facebook found that their posts were obscured by a semi-opaque black box with a message indicating that the article contained false information, as per a report from Russia Today. Facebook directed readers to a different article in Norwegian, supposedly compiled by trusted fact-checkers, through a link below the box.

Seymour Hersh, a prominent investigative journalist, has argued that US naval divers, along with their Norwegian counterparts, planted explosives on the gas lines connecting Russia and Germany in an operation allegedly organised by the CIA on behalf of the White House. Hersh's conclusion was reportedly based on information from a US source with "direct knowledge of the operational planning." Initially, Facebook had labeled Hersh's article as containing false information, but as of Friday, the black box warning has been removed. Instead, links to Hersh's article now receive a smaller tab below, indicating that the information may contain factual inaccuracies and is considered "partly false."

Facebook has been criticised for editorialising 

Readers who through to the "fact-check" article are directed to the same Norwegian publication that claimed Norwegian military vessels were not present near the blast site, contradicting Hersh's account of them ferrying the American demolition team to the target. The "fact-check" article was compiled by 'Faktisk', an outlet that receives funding from Facebook, the Norwegian government, and several Norwegian media organisations.

The reason behind Facebook's decision to change its initial label from "false information" to "partly false" remains unclear. Some speculate that the company may have been trying to avoid controversy, as the labeling was met with strong criticism from independent journalists and commentators. "Facebook has decided that a Norwegian journalist is right and Hersh is wrong," journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote on Thursday. "Maybe the Norwegian journalist is right. Whatever the case, it should not be up to Facebook to decide."

Facebook has refrained from applying similar labels to the reporting of reputable news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, which cited American intelligence sources claiming that the bombings were orchestrated by a "pro-Ukrainian group" aboard a rented yacht. However, subsequent reporting has raised questions about the validity of this theory, and Moscow has dismissed earlier allegations that it was responsible for the pipeline explosions as "stupid."