It is right that you call out friends and family for those homophobic, gender insensitive remarks on Algerian boxer Imane Khelif when the issue on her gender and sex came out in the public during her Olympic match last week.
But let us also blame Facebook as well, which supposedly is active in taking down disinformation, but failed this time.
Let me ask you, where did you first read or got that story on Khelif? Is it a news page or a blog from an “influencer” or a new “information” page? I read about her match first on August 1 on a page called FrontPage. This is how they started their story:
“Italian female boxer falls to her knees and cries as she abandons fight against Olympic opponent deemed biologically male after just 46 SECONDS following two powerful punches to the face that dislodged her helmet.”
Those words, “biologically male,” triggers right away our question on why this match happened on the Olympic stage
The story focused more on the emotional side of the Italian boxer, but gave little information about Khelif’s condition (where she has excess XY chromosomes). It mentioned she was banned from an international competition last year, further reinforcing the bias against her.
Because of this algorithm thing in Facebook, this kind of disinformation gets amplified with other similar posts from other pages and accounts spreading the lie and fanning the biases against Khelif and gender differences.
Where was Facebook and its supposed fact checkers that has been actively flagging down posts left and right for what they deemed as false information, hate and discrimination posts?
These posts came out a day ahead of news stories featuring Khelif’s medical condition and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decisions and regulations regarding athletes that share her condition.
There is one thing we know about our Facebook and “marites” habit from experience, and it is this: Kung kinsay nauna mag-post, maoy tuohan (whoever posted first is what people will believe in).
We see this kind of online behavior and manipulation during the past administration, when politicians weaponized Facebook to spread hate, lies, ridicule on the opposition, critics and the like that divides us among family and peers. This is what happened last week.
Another disinformation on the Olympics targeted Turkey’s Yusuf Dikec, the now popular shooter who won the silver medal with his no-special gear in shooting. Some blogs weaved a false story that the 51-year-old retired police officer took up shooting after an argument with his ex-wife. That’s another false narrative that enforces machismo and violence
There’s still a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there on Facebook that needs to be checked. That FrontPage account by the way, runs more posts criticizing the government, so it seems to be baiting readers with more sensational stories.
There is no rest for the wicked. We need to check and knock out this disinformation, we can do that by checking our friends and family to be more critical and hold our emotions while we scroll through the things flooding our screens.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Tyrone A. Velez is a freelance journalist and writer.)