Dutch university stops cooperation with Facebook censorship

This Sky News video says about itself:

Facebook Vietnam War Photo Censorship

9 September 2016

The row began when the social media site deleted the iconic Vietnam War photo because it contained nudity. Many Norwegians re-posted the photo in protest. And when the [conservative] Prime Minister joined in, Facebook deleted that too within hours.

Translated from Leidsch Dagblad daily in the Netherlands today:

Leiden University suspends cooperation with Facebook on fake news

Facebook and Leiden University no longer cooperate in intercepting and correcting fake news.

Fake news, what is it? The United States Democratic party claims to know. Donald Trump claims to know. Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands claims to know. The European Union claims to know; to such an extent that even the right-wing Dutch government is disgusted by their censorship on behalf of extreme right-wingers in Ukraine. Facebook claims to know: they say corporate media news, eg by the Rupert Murdoch empire, is not fake news; news by small news sources, non-Big Business, non-Big Government supposedly is ‘fake news’.

The collaboration between the Newscheckers of the university branch of Journalism and New Media has stopped since February, the Leiden media researchers Peter Burger and Alexander Pleijter said.

In the Netherlands, now only the news site Nu.nl currently checks Facebook messages on truth.

Burger and Pleijter do not want or can not say anything about the reason for the break between the university and Facebook. …

Big corporations, armed forces, etc. are far too influential in universities all over the world. Sometimes, universities see the dangers of this and break those links. One should hope that this Leiden break is an example of that. But we don’t know, as Burger and Pleijter have censorship or self-censorship on this.

Nu.nl has one editor in charge, who factually checks one Facebook message a day.

According to Mossink [of Nu.nl], Nu.nl hardly ever uncovers fake news aimed at wrongfooting public opinion. ‘Most news is of the type: Pineapples help against snoring.’