As a conservative on Facebook, times are tough. Chances are you have fallen victim to one of those “fact-checkers”, which you suspect is nothing more than a product of the social media monopoly. Just like a heat-seeking missile, these leftists hide behind their computer screens and pose as “fact-checkers” to do everything in their power to discredit conservative viewpoints and prevent the MAGA movement from spreading. Naturally, the fake fact-checking business is inherently despised, but one of the worst of the lot would be the arrogant Alan Duke. This fake arbiter of truth got a bit brazen in the last couple of weeks, and he appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room, getting completely eviscerated in the process.
The first thing that War Room host Natalie Winters did was ask Duke why his most recent hire, Marlow Lee, used to intern at the DNC. The best Duke could do was merely stutter that she was a “diversity hire” because she is black. “So, she’s one of those,” WInters fired back.
Next, the topic of conversation was in regards to Duke working as a consultant for Byte Dance, a firm that allegedly has ties to Communist China. Bannon asked Duke that if they could prove Byte Dance has ties to Communist China would he promise that he would stop doing business with them. Duke said no.
The best part of this program came at the end when journalist Jack Probosiec played a clip from one of the Biden-Trump debates where the now-46th President claimed his son had not made money from the Chinese government. Posobiec asked Duke why the Lead Stories firm “fact-checked” this and accused him of fabricating the quote. Pobosiec proceeded to ask if Duke’s team was going to remove that false fact check violation, but all Duke said in response is that they could appeal the decision. Duke was the one who was caught with his pants down, and the best he could say is to just have them appeal the decision?
Indeed, on November 26th, Alan Duke got crossways with the 100 Percent Fed Up Facebook page that presently has 1.7 million followers. He issued a “False Information” fact check on four of their conservative pages, and these are used to throttle traffic on the pages and discredit those who publish them.
This particular “fake news” violation was for an article that a staff writer at 100 Percent Fed Up wrote that was in regards to one Adam Rahuba,, a self-described leader in the dystopian ANTIFA movement. They banned Rahuba from Twitter after he threatened President Trump for refusing to concede. Rahuba said that he and his followers were armed and that they were going to “block roads” and do all that they could to “prevent vehicular manslaughter.”
Duke himself doesn’t have a background in fact-checking, but he does boast a 26-year stint as a crime and entertainment reporter.
The 100 Percent Fed Up team wrote to Mr. Duke on the day that they received his “fact-check” violation, and it addressed not only the violation but his snarky remark about misspelling Pittsburgh (it was merely a typo):
Alan,
I woke up this Thanksgiving morning to find yet another fact check violation from Lead Stories attached to an article I wrote. Here is a link to the article in question:
Pittsburgh Area Antifa Leader Tweets Warning To Trump: “We are armed…If you do not concede by Sunday at noon, we will begin to block roads in conservative areas”
Here is the link to your fact check article.
The entire fact check violation is based on a SINGLE article by the Washington Post that calls Rahuba “a “Bernie Sanders supporter” who “has provoked the far right for years using online aliases, sometimes with dangerous results.”
First of all, I don’t read the Washington Post, as I don’t consider them a credible source for news, so their article obviously escaped me. Secondly, if Twitter took Rahuba’s tweet seriously enough to delete his account, then I’m pretty sure he crossed the line of what the left considers “humor” by threatening the President of the United States and conservatives in the Pittsburgh area. I, along with millions of others don’t find any humor when real people on Twitter threaten “conservative areas” in America that armed Antifa members plan to block off streets and that they will not be able to go to the grocery stores to feed their families.
America is already on edge. There is nothing funny or clever about making public threats on social media against half of America or against the President of the United States. These are the kinds of threats our US Secret Service takes very seriously (as they should). The fact that you are flagging this post on our Facebook page is disturbing.
Our experience with Lead Stories has been that they fact check us far more than anyone else on FB. In fact, until this year, we could count on one hand how many fact check violations we received from all FB fact-checkers. For whatever reason, the number of pre and post-election fact checks against our page has been off the charts, leading us to believe it is your intent to keep our message from being seen on Facebook, as it is common knowledge that fact-checkers have the power with each fact check to diminish the reach to each of our pro-Trump pages and our pro-Trump followers.
You have always been quick to remove the fact checks when they’ve been appealed. This fact check, however, is different, as I have no appeal because it is disturbing on so many levels. The fact check against our page goes beyond fact-checking and crosses the line by mocking me (the author) for misspelling Pittsburgh (which I have corrected). This error was missed at the time of publication, but I am not sure why it was necessary to include it in your fact check? Is this something Facebook pays you to do (mock conservatives on their page for misspelling words?), because I can assure you, it happens every day in a variety of publications, including some of those with millions of readers.
From your article: The article misspells the name of Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh as Pittsburg. Don’t bother emailing Lead Stories about that, since we are fact checkers, not spell checkers.
I would appreciate you removing this fact check violation immediately. I don’t think threatening the President of the United States that if he doesn’t concede the election by a certain date, that armed Antifa members will take to the streets is remotely entertaining. You may consider him a “prankster,” as the anti-Trump Washington Post identifies him as such, but I can assure you that most Americans consider his remarks to be those made by a domestic terrorist. I shudder to think how this story would have been framed if such a threat was made by a conservative to Joe Biden or his supporters.
Please remove this flag on all four of our FB pages immediately.
Patty McMurray
Instead of admitting that he made a mistake and disavowing this indefensible tweet by Adam Rashuba, who had been removed from Twitter following this threatening Tweet, Alan Duke responded in the following manner:
Patty,
First of all, the article we flagged in our debunk read “Pittburg”, not Pittsburgh, so that is what we fact checked. We are not spell checkers, but we did note this in our article. YOU MISSPELLED IT, not us.
We archived your original.
You fixed YOUR spelling, but then pretended it was OUR mistake. I don’t appreciate your deception. We have always been fast and thorough in responding to your appeals. We expect the same professionalism in return.
Yes, the guy who’s trying to defend a vile threat against the President of the United States and his followers, made by someone who refers to himself as an Antifa leader, really said he didn’t appreciate my “deception.”
Here’s how an iron-fisted “fact-checker,” with WAY too much power responds to the owner of one of the top conservative Facebook pages:
Now, fix your storywith a PROPER correction, noting that you revised the article because LEAD STORIES fact checked it and found it was FALSE.
Let me know when this is done and I will review it to consider a rating revision.
Also, the Washington Post story is not the only thing our conclusion is based on. We know who Adam is. He is a hoaxster well known for such pranks. He is not antifa.
(For the record, Alan—“Antifa” is capitalized.)
Alan Duke
Lead Stories
Today, a Facebook user shared something that made the situation even worse, describing how she had received a Facebook warning when she tried to “like” the 100 Percent Fed Up Facebook page. “Before you like this page,” Facebook warns, “you should review the type of content that they normally share before it appears in their newsfeed.”
What ever happened to freedom of speech? If this warning is about fake “fact-check” warnings that’s all well and good, but is it just a way to hinder the freedom of speech of conservative users. I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might be the latter.
100 Percent Fed Up isn’t the only one that is pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of Facebook allowing someone like Alan Duke to desecrate the viewpoints of Facebook conservatives. Political activist Candace Owens has announced a lawsuit against Alan Duke for defamation. Owens wrote the following:
Our freedoms are being stripped away. Big Tech overlords have been given incredible power to determine what Americans can and cannot say, share, like, and post. Support our legal efforts today as we fight back against Facebook’s fact-checkers, confronting those who are suppressing free speech, thought, and expression across our great country.
We have begun pursuing two of Facebook’s fact-checkers, Lead Stories & USA Today, for wrongfully “fact-checking” posts that I put up earlier this year. Both USA Today & Lead Stories silenced me when I posted a different opinion on Covid – in their minds; there is only one opinion: theirs. Censorship of conservatives across the world of social media is rampant, and without challenging these alleged “fact-checkers,” we will all be silenced, disenfranchised, and marginalized.
As a result, we have filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Delaware against Lead Stories LLC, a Colorado company & Gannett Satellite Information Network LLC, d/b/a USA Today for malicious publication of false “fact check” articles, wrongfully leveraging their power as Facebook Third-Party Fact-Checking partners for the purpose of redirecting web traffic away from me, abusing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and interfering with the commercial enterprises of Candace Owens LLC. Access the lawsuit HERE.
We will be seeing them in Court in 2021.
Folks, this is censoring, pure and simple, but Facebook is proud to do it. One can only hope that the judges in the Superior Court of Delaware will see through all of this deception and allow conservatives to continue to have the same Freedom of Speech that liberals are so proud of.