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Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

theguardian.com

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Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#61

Post by jerf »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #55
jerf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the realm of media, there's a lot of equivocation with the word "fact". I believe in the existence of objective facts in the general sense. But when we're using the term in the context of our current media environment, a lot of "facts" are actually conclusions that contain heaping helpings of opinion, if you really dig into them. There's a lot of telling you what to think and not a lot of bare facts, because who w…

>"Policy X will help group Y in manner Z." While true that conditional statements about the future ("X will help") is not falsifiable, it is still a well formed if-then statement. The statement must be either true or false even though we can't derive a proof one way or the other. I disagree that we have to just throw our hands up and accept belief in unfalsifiable "subjective facts". I can easily fix your statement.…

"I can easily fix your statement. Watch me:"

But that's missing the point. My point is entirely about what the media calls "facts" and what gets called "facts" in these sorts of discussions and by "fact checkers", not whether or not in some hypothetical universe the media could indeed deal in objective facts alone. The fact that it could be done correctly does not mean it is done correctly; or to go with a traditional philosophical formulation, ought does not lead to is. Correcting me doesn't help anything, you need to convince the media.

And you will not do that, because dealing in psuedo-facts suits them fine.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#62

Post by Fnoord »

chrisseaton wrote: post #25
HorkHunter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is not wet. It's that simple. if you disagree with me you're not a very good person(fact)

I don’t have a problem with you advertising that water is not wet on Facebook using your own money.

It is easily verified to be false. Vaccines causing autism, is more difficult, and requires expertise. That's the problem with fact checking; the material is vastly complex. One way to tackle it is to go after specific claims. Doing that sometimes means quotes are taken out of context.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#63

Post by lurker458 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #43
forgingahead wrote: post #27

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?

Usually you have organizations like advertising standard authorities, who will absolutely crack down on untruthful ads. 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.

the UK one has no teeth.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#64

Post by macspoofing »

nicoburns wrote: post #34
macspoofing wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. What do you mean by 'permitted'? Facts within the political sphere need to be interpreted with the lens of your political ideology because politics are not a rational game. Political beliefs are emotional even if the proponents claim otherwise. For example, take the statement "Homelessness in San Francisco is due to rising inequality, co…

Some things like "we've spent X over the last 5 years" are (sometimes) obviously false though.

So you want Facebook and other social media companies to pick and choose which facts to fact-check?

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#65

Post by lurker458 »

StreamBright wrote: post #41
bilekas wrote: post #12

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?

Where would you draw the line? Mostly true? Some true? Mostly false? 100% false? What if there are facts surface later and this changes the truthiness?

Yes, a grey zone exists. That's not a reason for inaction in other cases. Where to draw the line between murder, manslaughter and unfortunate accident ? Where to draw the line between fair use and piracy ? If anything, start with policing obvious falsehoods ("Obama and FEMA will take all your guns").

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#66

Post by jfengel »

chrisseaton wrote: post #25
HorkHunter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is not wet. It's that simple. if you disagree with me you're not a very good person(fact)

I don’t have a problem with you advertising that water is not wet on Facebook using your own money.

I'd have a problem with it if it was part of a campaign to replace all water with Gatorade. People spending their money to be publicly stupid is not a problem, but people spending their money to make other people be stupid in ways that impact my life is.

Our democratic policy is resilient against a certain level of deliberately-induced stupidity, since stupidity does tend to be self-defeating. But at sufficient levels, it can do a lot of damage to everybody else before it finally defeats itself.

I'm not saying that this can be fixed by the trivial addition of fact checkers. But I don't think that "it's your money" is sufficient reason not to try various solutions. Your right to swing your money around ends where my nose begins.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#67

Post by chrisseaton »

jfengel wrote: post #66
chrisseaton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a problem with you advertising that water is not wet on Facebook using your own money.

I'd have a problem with it if it was part of a campaign to replace all water with Gatorade. People spending their money to be publicly stupid is not a problem, but people spending their money to make other people be stupid in ways that impact my life is. Our democratic policy is resilient against a certain level of deliberately-induced stupidity, since stupidity does tend to be self-defeating. But at sufficient level…

Can you not just disagree with it?

Why do you need to ban it?

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#68

Post by jfengel »

chrisseaton wrote: post #67
jfengel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have a problem with it if it was part of a campaign to replace all water with Gatorade. People spending their money to be publicly stupid is not a problem, but people spending their money to make other people be stupid in ways that impact my life is. Our democratic policy is resilient against a certain level of deliberately-induced stupidity, since stupidity does tend to be self-defeating. But at sufficient level…

Can you not just disagree with it? Why do you need to ban it?

I didn't say "ban it". I said that a variety of options were on the table.

As for disagreeing with it... I can disagree with it until it takes on the force of law. Then I'm required to agree with it, or at least, to live with the consequences. Political speech takes on an aspect of force in a way that other speech doesn't.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#69

Post by mistermann »

mtberatwork wrote: post #60
mistermann wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's just a logical fallacy. Which is presented as a fact by the media.....which is consumed by readers and mentally filed under "fact", and subsequently used by subconscious heuristics in future evaluations of reality, producing more "facts" which are transmitted throughout their network of acquaintances, infecting more subconscious heuristics, and round and round we go. It's interesting that many here at HN exp…

> Which is presented as a fact by the media..... > The question on my mind lately is: how might this situation be improved, first here at HN I would first suggest not applying such a broad brush stroke to all players in "the media". It's a false-equivalence to say the least.

A fair angle of criticism, but while I'm no expert, I feel fairly confident asserting (with no proof of course) that "the media", with few exceptions, routinely reports on complex matters in a way that is extremely misleading.

Granted, this is not entirely their fault, not by a long shot. They are tasked with conveying extremely complex information to the masses, at a level that is understandable to some sort of lowest common denominator, using human created languages that optimize for pragmatism (and are therefore flawed in various ways: nuance, accuracy, bandwidth, etc), across various mediums that each have their own limitations, all in a limited time frame that must also make room for other pressing topics. It shouldn't be too surprising that the end result is less than perfect.

Re: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption

#70

Post by mistermann »

MereInterest wrote: post #56
pnako wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voters decide what is good or bad political speech (at least in democracies). It's already bad enough with concentrated corporate media and giant web corporations, we don't need to have another unelected group of "fact checkers" mess with this any further. Let anyone, politician or not, make any political speech and, again, voters will ultimately decide.

Voters decide what is effective and ineffective speech. This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false. It is easy to produce effective political ads that are entirely false, such as was done in the Brexit campaign.

> This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false.

Very good point. It should also be noted that some things are a matter of fact (1+1=2), and some things (like whether Brexit is worth doing) are a matter of opinion, based on a complex array of facts, factoids, memes, rule-of-thumbs, gut-feels, lived experience, etc.

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