Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#21

Post by hetspookjee » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #14

dilippkumar wrote: post #10

This article misses a crucial point: I do not want fact checked information. I do not want a ministry of Truth telling me what’s an acceptable set of statements to trust. I do not want a third party providing unsolicited opinions on how much I conform with the acceptable statements a ministry of Truth has blessed for public use. I’ll provide three arguments. First, how will Facebook or any other entity that takes on…

...and you go to Facebook for your scientific and world news? Facebook is a toy. Relying on a platform with a built-in way to reply to posts with nothing more than a laugh-cry-smiley to deliver you accurate news in the first place is ridiculous. They could never be a Ministry of Truth or whatever you're implying, because it's a toy. If they want to fact-check posts on their site, it changes literally nothing of impor…

I'm afraid the reality is different with an enormous amount of people consuming their news through Facebook. I wish it wasn't so and people would think harder, but nevertheless here we are with enormous amounts of fake news spreading through these platforms. I do think that some form of fact checking would be better for some people their own protection.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#22

Post by ksk » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

That's the job of news organizations and journalists who have access to experts to verify the information. Also, it seems like Facebook is just a scapegoat here. IMHO, The real problem is that people on both sides of the political spectrum are re-sharing "news" that they have zero idea if its true or not.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#23

Post by protonfish » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #10

This article misses a crucial point: I do not want fact checked information. I do not want a ministry of Truth telling me what’s an acceptable set of statements to trust. I do not want a third party providing unsolicited opinions on how much I conform with the acceptable statements a ministry of Truth has blessed for public use. I’ll provide three arguments. First, how will Facebook or any other entity that takes on…

I agree that I don't trust anyone to tell me what is true, but there is a base level of fact-checking that is beneficial: Remove anything that is completely fabricated and makes claims without a single shred of evidence. There is absolutely no need for this type of "news." No organization can definitely curate the truth, but almost any can sweep out the garbage.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#24

Post by typenil » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

Ah yes. Let's have Facebook be the arbiter of truth; after all, their behavior so far is nothing short of the pinnacle of ethics, wisdom, and transparency.

Let's not worry about how that could backfire at all or the countless times that the "correct" opinion has turned out to be wrong. The truth is too flimsy to stand on its own. We must protect our inferiors from wrongthink.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#25

Post by Traster » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #20

dilippkumar wrote: post #10

This article misses a crucial point: I do not want fact checked information. I do not want a ministry of Truth telling me what’s an acceptable set of statements to trust. I do not want a third party providing unsolicited opinions on how much I conform with the acceptable statements a ministry of Truth has blessed for public use. I’ll provide three arguments. First, how will Facebook or any other entity that takes on…

So the enormously popular post telling parents to make their kids drink Lysol should not have even the slightest warning next to it because the poster could be like Galileo or Einstein?

On the internet it's your god given right to shout fire in a theatre.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#26

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

dilippkumar wrote: post #10

This article misses a crucial point: I do not want fact checked information. I do not want a ministry of Truth telling me what’s an acceptable set of statements to trust. I do not want a third party providing unsolicited opinions on how much I conform with the acceptable statements a ministry of Truth has blessed for public use. I’ll provide three arguments. First, how will Facebook or any other entity that takes on…

Not only do experts disagree, but the prevailing wind of expert advice can change dramatically. In less than a month we went from being told coronavirus wasn't spread from human contact and masks kill you, to now it's highly infectious, you should wear a mask everywhere and the ventilators we'd been putting you on might be killing you faster. If FB thinks they can figure out how to censor counterfactual posts in that kind of climate, they are fools.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#27

Post by dingaling » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

oarabbus_ wrote: post #19

kick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and you go to Facebook for your scientific and world news? Facebook is a toy. Relying on a platform with a built-in way to reply to posts with nothing more than a laugh-cry-smiley to deliver you accurate news in the first place is ridiculous. They could never be a Ministry of Truth or whatever you're implying, because it's a toy. If they want to fact-check posts on their site, it changes literally nothing of impor…

>Facebook is a toy. A toy, is that so? I know quite a number of people (engineers, marketers, companies) that exist solely due to Facebook advertising. You should let them know their livelihood rests on a toy. >...and you go to Facebook for your scientific and world news? Why do you frame it as some ludicrous idea? Is this more preposterous than getting your science and world news from an email chain, or from Fox/CNN…

> You should let them know their livelihood rests on a toy.

There is an entire global industry of physical toys. Many targeted at adults.

Facebook is only different in that it exists in the non-physical domain. It's still a pass-time toy.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#28

Post by malandrew » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

CyanLite2 wrote: post #17

Simple: "Ignorant" people make up a large percentage of their user base. They argue with "informed" people and it drives traffic and revenue. Meanwhile the social fabric of the United States is being torn apart by political polarization.

This polarization certainly predates facebook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEczkhfLwqM

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#29

Post by lucidone » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

Only allowing "true" information on any platform (or in any form of discourse, really) is effectively impossible given the subjective nature of truth. Philosophers have spent their lives arguing this topic, a tech giant isn't about to answer that question.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#30

Post by glitchc » Thu, May 14, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

okintheory wrote: post #15

It seems to me that there's an obvious alternative to checking facts, but it's one that scares FB much more than fact checking. Suppose they were transparent! Suppose it was easy to see unobfuscated statistics about who is paying for what on FB. Suppose journalists could easily look up how much white nationalists are spending on targeted advertising in each US state. Suppose we could see how much Exxon, Chevron, Koch…

Why just stop at Facebook? All businesses operate on the model where they take dirty money and try to do clean things with at least some of that money. Heck, most charities operate this way. Let's just make everyone transparent. We should know if the Red Cross is receiving money from Smith and Wesson. Bad individuals and corporations make donations to good causes all the time. You can think of it as moral outrage, but personally I think of it as reparations.

The consequences of that action will be as follows: Most of these businesses AND charities will drown in the moral outrage and close their doors. And that will have a detrimental impact on society, because the good that those businesses/charities did will go with the bad.

Facebook has one powerful good use case. It makes it trivially easy to connect with relatives and friends far away from us. There are other platforms out there, but until Facebook, there wasn't much, and even now, Facebook is the simplest and most convenient of them all. If Facebook dies, this good use case goes with it.