Facebook defends hoax stories and conspiracy theories, labelling them ‘free speech’ in InfoWars dispute

The InfoWars page on Facebook promotes conspiracy theories that include Nasa setting up a slave colony on Mars

On Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook would not ban Holocaust denialism on the site (AFP)

Facebook has suggested a controversial page that spreads radical conspiracy theories online represents valid "opinion and analysis."

The InfoWars media outlet, headed by right-wing provocateur Alex Jones, has previously reported that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 – in which 20 students and six staff members were massacred – was completely fake. The Trump-endorsed organisation has also accused Nasa of setting up a child slave colony on Mars.

Facebook took to Twitter to defend its policy of allowing the InfoWars page to remain on its platform, despite simultaneously claiming that it is fighting the spread of misinformation. The page has more than 900,000 followers.

"We just don't think banning pages for sharing conspiracy theories or false news is the right way to go... We believe banning these pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech," Facebook said on Twitter.

Instead of banning pages and posts for peddling misinformation and provably false conspiracy theories, Facebook said it is adopting a softer approach that will see such pages demoted so that fewer people will see them.

"We demote individual posts etc. that are reported by FB users and rated as false by fact checkers," Facebook said in one Twitter exchange. "This means they lose around 80% of any future views. We also demote Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news."

If Facebook were to ban InfoWars, the social network would not only lose out on significant advertising revenues, it would inevitably be accused of censorship.

Facebook has also been previously accused of left wing bias, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly quizzed about the perceived issue when he faced questions from US lawmakers earlier this year.

Senator Ted Cruz led the accusations of political bias, citing articles that claimed Facebook had routinely suppressed conservative stories from its platform.

"There are a great many Americans who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship," Senator Cruz said at the Congressional hearing. "There have been numerous instances with Facebook."

Mr Zuckerberg responded: "I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place... This is actually a concern that I have tried to root out of the company in making sure that we don't have any bias in the work that we do."