Facebook fact checks Steve Deace post because he cited numbers from the CDC's VAERS database: BlazeTV host Steve Deace made a post on Facebook claiming that the CDC had recently "double[d] its estimates of deaths from Covid vaccines from 6k to 12,313." Facebook flagged the post as "missing context" but did not claim that Deace misreported the numbers, or that the update was false. Instead, Facebook fact checker Lead Stories called his post misleading because the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Events Report System (VAERS) is "Not Solid Proof of Vaccine Injuries Or Deaths." The fact checker pointed out that the VAERS does not verify case reports aggregated in its final numbers and warned users against making assumptions based on the numbers. Deace, however, used the numbers to ask an unanswered question about the data. Fact-checked posts lose exposure on Facebook feeds as they are negatively affected by the platform's algorithm. According to Facebook, users fail to click through a fact-check interstitial to see the post 95% of the time.
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Steve Deace
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