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Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) fell victim to Facebook’s notorious “fact-checkers” regarding a job offer from the IRS. Specifically, it involved a posting that required Criminal Investigation member agents, a willingness to “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
The said state agency removed the publication after it went viral on Twitter and re-uploaded it after editing some of the controversial sentences.
The republican and libertarian organization pointed this out and fell victim to Lead Stories, a Facebook fact checker. This platform was quick to label the information under the title “missing context”.
“The screenshot used in the Facebook post was from a previous version of the job description for an IRS Criminal Investigation unit special agent. The ‘Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary’ line of the job description appears to have been removed from the description sometime on August 11, 2022”, Lead Stories published on the matter.
The story focused on a post YAL made on its Facebook account, which reads “The IRS is hiring! The government wants its IRS agents armed and its citizens disarmed. We’ll let everyone just marinate on that for a second.”
Lead Stories made it appear that the organization grouped all IRS employees within its description, when the publication itself detailed that it was the division known as Criminal Investigation.
“Is the IRS trying to arm all its employees?”, the fact checker wondered. “No, that’s not true: A job posting from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, which carries firearms, does refer to carrying firearms”, added.
Regarding the IRS work notice, it also stated that “no matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation. Because of the expertise required to conduct these complex financial investigations, IRS Special Agents are considered the premier financial investigators for the Federal government”.
Joaquín Núñez es licenciado en comunicación periodística por la Universidad Católica Argentina. Se especializa en el escenario internacional y en la política nacional norteamericana. Confeso hincha de Racing Club de Avellaneda. Contacto: [email protected] // Joaquín Núñez has a degree in journalistic communication from the Universidad Católica Argentina. He specializes in the international scene and national American politics. Confessed fan of Racing Club of Avellaneda. Contact: [email protected]