11–20 of 259 posts
But we don't want to be the arbiters of truth! Has this company ever been honest about anything in its entire history? Do any of the execs have mirrors in their houses so they have to look at who they are every now and then?
I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth. And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated untrue for their arguments against warra…
This is a very different scenario than a single company owning every broadcast tower in a town, pre-internet.
The ability to access Facebook strongly implies general internet access, which is a compelling argument against Facebook exerting any sort of authority over general truth.
This is the kind of journalism that only serves to divide the people even further by empowering their tribalism instead of trying to discuss the matter at hand.
Thank you for protecting me Facebook gosh darnit!
Question: facebook as a platform is not liable for information it contains. However if Facebook would publish fact checking info, that is wrong or missleading, are they liable? Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me damage?
I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth. And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated untrue for their arguments against warra…
How is Facebook the arbiter of truth when many, many websites other than Facebook exist, and most human beings do not use Facebook? This is a very different scenario than a single company owning every broadcast tower in a town, pre-internet. The ability to access Facebook strongly implies general internet access , which is a compelling argument against Facebook exerting any sort of authority over general truth.
I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth. And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated untrue for their arguments against warra…
How is Facebook the arbiter of truth when many, many websites other than Facebook exist, and most human beings do not use Facebook? This is a very different scenario than a single company owning every broadcast tower in a town, pre-internet. The ability to access Facebook strongly implies general internet access , which is a compelling argument against Facebook exerting any sort of authority over general truth.
I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth. And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated untrue for their arguments against warra…
Facebook warned me yesterday when sharing a satire article that the article was over a year old and the facts may not longer be current. Thank you for protecting me Facebook gosh darnit!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Facebook the arbiter of truth when many, many websites other than Facebook exist, and most human beings do not use Facebook? This is a very different scenario than a single company owning every broadcast tower in a town, pre-internet. The ability to access Facebook strongly implies general internet access , which is a compelling argument against Facebook exerting any sort of authority over general truth.
Facebook is the 6th most popular website on the planet (behind Google, Youtube, and 3 Chinese sites). That puts them in a position of control over a great deal of the world's information diet. If they say something is false or true, many people will believe it. If they censor something, many people will never see it.
Their popularity does not give them any ability to censor information widely, unless perhaps they collude with search engines to blacklist certain terms across all popular sites.
The fact that many people use Facebook is an indicator that those same huge groups also have access to every other website, which reduces the persuasiveness of the argument that Facebook gets to be the arbiter of truth, so long as all of those Facebook users have internet access that can access sites that are not Facebook.
If anything, the real arbiters would be the ISPs, who get to decide which sites you can even access, in real-time.