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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

#71

Post by mattigames »

SkyBelow wrote: post #48
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?

Because truth and falsehood are not so clear cut. Many scientific studies are needed to even begin to understand an issue, and even if we can say things like 'climate change is happening' with the weight of massive studies backing up, saying things like 'policy X will fix climate change' will be lucky to have a single study backing it. Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the m…

Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a better alternative.

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

#72

Post by StacyRoberts »

paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #46
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?

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"

None of the three are "just outside regulation." They are so far outside it they invest millions lobbying to change the laws so their illegal activity is no longer considered such.

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

#73

Post by SkyBelow »

mattigames wrote: post #71
SkyBelow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because truth and falsehood are not so clear cut. Many scientific studies are needed to even begin to understand an issue, and even if we can say things like 'climate change is happening' with the weight of massive studies backing up, saying things like 'policy X will fix climate change' will be lucky to have a single study backing it. Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the m…

Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a be…

The core question, and one that has existed long before Facebook even did, was how do we protect a population against propaganda. As psychology and marketing improve their ability to manipulate the mind, we have to get answer this or else democracies will fall into the hands of those who have control over these tools.

This is a hard problem and I'm hesitant of any solution on the level of 'ban lies'.

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

#74

Post by mattigames »

SkyBelow wrote: post #73
mattigames wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a be…

The core question, and one that has existed long before Facebook even did, was how do we protect a population against propaganda. As psychology and marketing improve their ability to manipulate the mind, we have to get answer this or else democracies will fall into the hands of those who have control over these tools. This is a hard problem and I'm hesitant of any solution on the level of 'ban lies'.

With all its problems the solution of "ban lies" seems better than the current behavior: Meaning doing nothing at all.

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

#75

Post by nicoburns »

macspoofing wrote: post #64
nicoburns wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd argue that paid political ads probably ought to be banned entirely on social media platforms. It's an unfair advantage to those who can afford to pay.

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

#76

Post by paulus_magnus2 »

SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #49
paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Anecdotally, can you remember the last time a big (any?) company got nailed for false advertising? I remember reading marketing material my old company would send out and I knew the application didn't do $the_thing they said it did.

Actually yes [1], but penalties seam to only be imposed on foreign companies.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/03/hyundai-and...

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

#77

Post by thu2111 »

mattigames wrote: post #71
SkyBelow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because truth and falsehood are not so clear cut. Many scientific studies are needed to even begin to understand an issue, and even if we can say things like 'climate change is happening' with the weight of massive studies backing up, saying things like 'policy X will fix climate change' will be lucky to have a single study backing it. Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the m…

Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a be…

You're talking about a social network that's in decline. Most users are moving to Instagram and WhatsApp which don't have any equivalent of politics on the news feed. The idea that people are reprogrammed on a mass scale by Facebook is itself a falsehood: I don't believe this effect exists, nor do I believe social scientists have any credibility, for good reasons.

So can you convince me you didn't just spread a political falsehood? If I were the one making true/false decisions and you put something like what you just wrote in a political ad, I'd deem it misleading and punish you. See the problem now?

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

#78

Post by thu2111 »

delusional wrote: post #50
pnako wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Doing nothing is an action. Inaction is not what neutrality means. 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).

Doing nothing is an action.

No it's not. Doing nothing is the opposite of action. Please don't twist the language like this - if doing nothing is an action then everyone is engaged in action all the time and the entire concept loses all meaning.

Inaction is not what neutrality means

Not intervening in a situation is practically the definition of neutrality. That's why Switzerland is described as neutral during World War 2 - they had a policy of no action taken.

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

#79

Post by mattigames »

thu2111 wrote: post #77
mattigames wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a be…

You're talking about a social network that's in decline. Most users are moving to Instagram and WhatsApp which don't have any equivalent of politics on the news feed. The idea that people are reprogrammed on a mass scale by Facebook is itself a falsehood: I don't believe this effect exists, nor do I believe social scientists have any credibility, for good reasons. So can you convince me you didn't just spread a polit…

I can convince you in the same degree you are willing to understand any evidence I give, a similar challenge arises with anti-vaxxers, a group that few years ago was just a laughing stock but now thanks to the online fear propaganda through social media now has created some focus of kids without vaccines creating disease risks believed to be long gone, such risks of social network are measureable, but there are things that are practically harder to measure like if the "pedophile hillary pizza place" changed what people think about that political candidate; in general the way people are influenciated by propaganda is not immediate but take years to slowly aggregate with other falsehoods or uncorrelated facts in order to disrupt society.

Of course I see the problem of trying to separate truth/false stuff and you can get all philosophical about it but at the end of the day just trying to remove the blatant lies like "Hillary is an alien" and "Vaccines cause autism" would give a better outcome than doing nothing at all that is what Facebook does right now about it.

This guy can explain it better than I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM

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

#80

Post by thu2111 »

mattigames wrote: post #79
thu2111 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a social network that's in decline. Most users are moving to Instagram and WhatsApp which don't have any equivalent of politics on the news feed. The idea that people are reprogrammed on a mass scale by Facebook is itself a falsehood: I don't believe this effect exists, nor do I believe social scientists have any credibility, for good reasons. So can you convince me you didn't just spread a polit…

I can convince you in the same degree you are willing to understand any evidence I give, a similar challenge arises with anti-vaxxers, a group that few years ago was just a laughing stock but now thanks to the online fear propaganda through social media now has created some focus of kids without vaccines creating disease risks believed to be long gone, such risks of social network are measureable, but there are thing…

I think anti-vaxxers and people who reject modern medicine in general predate Facebook. You know, Steve Jobs managed to get himself killed by trying to cure his cancer using homeopathic/spirit medicine and I don't think he was brainwashed by random people on his Facebook news feed. His fatal attraction to 'alternative medicine' can be traced back to his hippie roots travelling through India:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8841347/Steve-J...

The MMR autism scare originates in the early 1990s so it predates widespread usage of the web, let alone social networks. Vaccines are an especially difficult case that are structurally guaranteed to produce something like the modern anti-vaxx movement, no help from Facebook needed. It's a classic tragedy of the commons. The logic goes like this:

1. Vaccines are complex and new, and involve injecting my kids with some kind of modified viruses. I heard from other parents that there might sometimes be side effects.

2. Medicines frequently have side effects so I can believe that. Even if it's very rare, side effects are bad. I don't want to take the risk of harming my kids. Keeping my kids safe is my number 1 priority as a parent.

3. But I could opt out. I'm allowed to, and I learned about herd immunity. If I quietly avoid vaccinating my kids I eliminate 100% of the risk because other parents are taking it for me.

4. Why would I not opt out? Even if I think the risk of taking a vaccine is only 0.1% that's still more than zero, and my child's welfare is the most important thing in my universe. If I gambled and lost I would never forgive myself. Opting out is the responsible thing to do.

In other words being anti-vaxx only looks stupid from a society-wide level. From the perspective of a parent who doesn't care about wider social trends but only their own kids, opting out appears to make sense for as long as they believe herd immunity exists, and it doesn't matter how often you tell people there's no real risks: nobody sane believes experts are always right and it's hard for someone to know what the risk "really" is, they can only go on what they themselves have heard from various sources of differing reliability.

The fix for tragic commons is usually a law and that'll be the fix here too. Facebook is really just irrelevant. Trying to suppress anti-vaxx speech will just make the problem worse because it looks like a coverup. Censorship is the last resort of people who lost an argument after all.

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