41–50 of 80 posts
I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision?
For everyone doing all the hand-wringing about Facebook, doesn't existing media (newspapers, TV, cable, etc) already NOT "fact check" ads run on their networks?
For everyone doing all the hand-wringing about Facebook, doesn't existing media (newspapers, TV, cable, etc) already NOT "fact check" ads run on their networks?
The ones in Australia and in the UK come to mind and have serious bite in confronting offenders.
Add to that that ads in newspapers are clearly identifiable as ads, while this is much more intermingled in social media.
I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision?
Could you please be specific about which part of the reasoning given in the article you think is not solid? The company insists that it does not want to be in the position of judging what is true and false, with its head of communications, Nick Clegg, saying that it was not an “appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public…
The reasoning does not stand up for ads, which are very obvious, proofable lies and which they still refuse to withdraw.
>>> The online newspaper Nu.nl had been Facebook’s only factchecking partner in the Netherlands since Leiden University dropped out of the programme last year. The website had sole responsibility for marking Facebook and Instagram news content for Dutch users as being false or misleading, in order to help power the social network’s tools that suppress distribution of misinformation. Imagine the years of training and…
Before you voice an opinion it helps if you have the facts. What they did was write background stories on facebook news items to see if they could find corroborating news articles. Basically what every sane human should do when reading anything online. As for the statement that we are blessed: thanks.
Factchecking is a gatekeeper method. The adversarial method for challenging incorrect facts is far better than the gatekeeper method, unless you have gatekeepers of the very highest quality. And Facebook has no mechanism for getting gatekeepers for more than middling quality. The abuses in their factchecking mechanism in the English media have been notorious.
For everyone doing all the hand-wringing about Facebook, doesn't existing media (newspapers, TV, cable, etc) already NOT "fact check" ads run on their networks?
I think (suspect) the trick FB is using is not unlike Uber / Airbnb where they fall just outside regulation. Meaning that sponsored content on FB is just "self-regulated"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please be specific about which part of the reasoning given in the article you think is not solid? The company insists that it does not want to be in the position of judging what is true and false, with its head of communications, Nick Clegg, saying that it was not an “appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public…
This is, in my opinion, no solid reasoning. It's more like the weazeling out, which is so very typical for Facebook. The reasoning does not stand up for ads, which are very obvious, proofable lies and which they still refuse to withdraw.
I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision?
Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the most non-controversial standards which we use to build laws from, and you will find many of those 'facts' are actual opinions and have edge cases that people aren't aware of.
Try this one: Lowering the drinking age is harmful to minors.
Is it? We know alcohol in general is harmful to the one consuming it. But would a lower drinking age result in less binge drinking and thus be more healthy on average? We see this a lot with prohibition, where if we ban something harmful but the ban itself causes more harm. How can you say, as a fact, that the ban will or won't make things better or worse?
So while we can easily scoff at the idea that "Hillary is controlled by aliens." banning falsehoods is far more troublesome than just wiping out the obvious falsehoods. And in some cases, even the obvious falsehoods aren't false.
For everyone doing all the hand-wringing about Facebook, doesn't existing media (newspapers, TV, cable, etc) already NOT "fact check" ads run on their networks?
False advertising is normally a crime ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising ) I think (suspect) the trick FB is using is not unlike Uber / Airbnb where they fall just outside regulation. Meaning that sponsored content on FB is just "self-regulated"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well why fact check anything then ? If you're going to do it as a company, I don't know why you have two standards..
That's a good point. I think Facebook made a mistake by doing this. They should only vet ads for legality in the target jurisdiction (to some extent, false advertising is a crime, so they might need some minimum fact checking there). Generally I think those companies are making a huge mistake if they slightly deviate from absolute neutrality in the area of politics/geopolitics. Any deviation is seen as taking sides b…
It is not neutral to let foreign powers interfere with elections (in any country, whether it be the US in a Russian one or Russia in a US one).