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Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

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Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#71

Post by jumpman500 »

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?

You can't save people from their own stupidity. I'd rather have stupid thoughts said out loud so they can be analyzed and detected rather than repressed inside ones own mind. I think that the non-sense that a lot of people are preaching online shows how much our education system is failing us. If this was covered up I might be able to delude myself into thinking differently about that.

In modern times it's easy to only notice the loons and crazy people that use their freedom of speech to push bullshit. But a lot of cultural and scientific progress throughout history has been made by individuals that choose to go against the norms of their time. IMO you need allow the crazy to get the crazy genius.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#72

Post by neogodless »

ksk wrote: post #22

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.

This is essentially an "individual responsibility" argument.

Do I think people "should" be individually responsible? Yes. Do I believe that's going to happen? No.

Forty years ago we got our news from a handful of networks that stuck to "the middle". It was no doubt imperfect, but if they would post crazy conspiracy on the nightly news, they would quickly vanish as a network. On the other hand, convince a few million individuals to share a far left or far right story full of misinformation, and it works. The individuals are not "shamed" into avoiding that mistake again.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#74

Post by neogodless »

typenil wrote: post #24

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.

As long as Facebook is such a large part of how a large number of people interact with each other and share information, the power or risk of their power is great.

So perhaps the question is - where is the greater risk? That they merely facilitate the spread of misinformation as a neutral party, or that they take a opinionated stance to reduce the spread of misinformation, but hold the power to bias that filter?

I don't like either option, but I also don't see the multitudes of individuals choosing to largely choose an alternative for their interactions any time soon either. An ideal for me would be a much more decentralized internet, but there are lots of initiatives to make that happen that are arguably much less successful than Facebook's grasp on the power it holds.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#75

Post by neogodless »

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've made this point a bit in my other comments, but largely I would say this:

As much as possible, you and others should consider their options.

If Facebook is as it is now, where individuals are free to spread misinformation (that is clearly convincing enough that it is spread), do you want to use Facebook?

If Facebook fact checks your information, which you do not want, do you want to use Facebook?

I know that depending on your use case, it may be difficult to find an alternative to Facebook. (I use it out of boredom!) But I think the ideal is that you continue to seek out better tools for interacting with people you care about, with finding and sharing information, etc.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#76

Post by reaperducer »

Why is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

IMO, for two reasons. First, because some facts, especially in news stories, are easily back-and-white: The car crashed. The person died. Some facts are greyscale. The trouble you incur from fact-checking the greys isn't worth the time, money, or effort.

Which leads to reason number two: Facebook is less Algorithms Will Save The World™ than Google, but in spite of its mantra of "connecting people," it's not all that interested in interacting with actual people. Wetware is messy, time-consuming, and expensive. And while there are plenty of companies that find success working with people, that sort of work doesn't fit into its SV Bubble mindset, or lead to hockey stick-style revenue.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#77

Post by reaperducer »

aeturnum wrote: post #67
TomMckenny wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think you're begging the question and using reducto-ad-absurdum here. dilippkumar was highlighting that if people are prepared to believe extremely fringe ideas then simply telling them that a central authority thinks a fact is wrong will not effectively dissuade them. Your question elides that concern by simply re-pointing out that fake information is problematic. Fake information is problematic, but there is reas…

dilippkumar was highlighting that if people are prepared to believe extremely fringe ideas then simply telling them that a central authority thinks a fact is wrong will not effectively dissuade them.

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to dissuade them. It doesn't have to be a conversion process. Perhaps if wrong-thinkers (for lack of a better term) can be convinced to look at all of the evidence, rather than the evidence that reinforces their existing viewpoint, that's a worthy goal. You may eventually convert those who are open-minded.

There are always going to be people who can't be swayed by anything, so maybe don't try. Perfect vs. good, and all that.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#78

Post by choward »

As much as I dislike facebook, I think the root problem is the lack of critical thinking many people have. Our education system that's optimized for standardized tests don't really help with that.

For example when I state opinions I don't expect everyone to take them as fact without doing their own research. But that's pretty much what a lot of people do.

Doing your own research should be the norm (your already using the internet!) with any opinions you read like on Facebook. But there are sources you should be able to take seriously like the government. However, there is one government official that straight lies on Twitter all day and a good majority of the country believes him. When you believe that it's a lot easier to make the jump to believe everything you see on Facebook.

One thing Facebook should do is make the news feed fully configurable and deterministic so you only see things from people you know in a non biased way. That will never happen since that's a big part of their business model.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#79

Post by lucidone »

protonfish wrote: post #36
lucidone wrote: post #29

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.

Agreed there is no guaranteed way to only allow truth. However, there are many easy ways to remove utter nonsense. Maybe we should start with that and see how it goes.

I agree in principle (e.g., Pizzagate and similar conspiracy theories), but delegating the arbitration of facts to a private company seems dangerous territory to me. The inconvenient answer as it appears to me is that folks have to discern what is nonsense and what isn't, which leaves us exactly where we are.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#80

Post by reaperducer »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #58
TomMckenny wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the Lysol post was never made, do you think the parents who would have fallen for it will be safe for the rest of the duration of children's lives? Point here is that in your scenario the problem isn't the Lysol message, it's the low intelligence of the parents. If they fall for a post telling them to give their child Lysol, it's just a matter of time before they do something equally as dangerous and it should be…

it's the low intelligence of the parents

I'm no longer convinced that this is about intelligence.

It's easy to dismiss dissenting thinkers as "dumb hicks" or whatever epithet is trendy at the moment. But looking at a lot of the people who are promoting these theories on social media, few of them qualify as "low intelligence." In my observation, they tend to be celebrities, college-educated yoga moms, and even some high-profile tech types.

I work with low-education people. My department works with thousands of adults with an average fifth-grade education. In my experience, these people are more likely to follow the health advice of their local government authority than any crackpot conspiracy theory that floats through the internet.

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