Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

i.postimg.cc

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 654 posts

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#291

Post by [deleted] »

saurik wrote: post #26
pier25 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such. It's more nuanced than that because ATT doesn't repeat a phone call it has deemed interesting to millions of other people.

We need to differentiate the recommendation algorithm parts of these products from the communication parts. If Facebook is recommending something, that's on them, and if they want to not recommend my content to anyone, so be it; but I should be able to post something seen only by the people who opted in to following me without them getting in the way.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#292

Post by goatlover »

contravariant wrote: post #63
slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you fact check the flat Earth theories? Sometimes there is objective truth and sometimes there isn't.

If there's anything that flat Earth theories prove then it would be that there is no objective truth that can be universally agreed upon. So sure we can suppose that there is an objective truth (ironically this point is also debated), but who do you trust to be its arbiter?

No, that just means that some people ignore or discount objective facts for ideological reasons. The Earth is roughly a sphere, and that is empirically provable.

The arbiter should be well established science, history, math and logic. Of course there is still room for plenty of debate where the matter is not already settled by overwhelming evidence. That's where there shouldn't be an arbiter. But for factual matters like the Earth being (roughly) spherical, there's no actual debate. Just belief that goes contrary to the evidence.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#293

Post by RGamma »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #210

Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes that most people will actually believe whatever bits of misinformation are floating around out there. But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or do they just think that everyone else is so easily manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray? And at what point does…

In short: Epistemic security is dying. Eventually you won't even know what that means.

What cruel irony that the medium that would bring us knowledge might get us oblivion.

Welcome to the society in chains.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#294

Post by tshaddox »

13years wrote: post #272
tshaddox wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very well may be an explanation of the truth, and there's nothing wrong with that. If that's what you mean by "validation" then that's great! But if you mean that whether a claim is "valid" depends on any one person or source's position on the claim, then you're back to that bad epistemology I described.

> But if you mean that whether a claim is "valid" depends on any one person or source's position on the claim, then you're back to that bad epistemology I described. No, I'm not asserting that view. However, what you are stating I think is the viewpoint of most people. They will accept the claim as valid.

> However, what you are stating I think is the viewpoint of most people.

Do you think that most people think that whether a claim is true depends on Facebook's stance on that claim? That would be extremely shocking to me. My impressions is the opposite: that there is mainstream repulsion to Facebook (and Twitter, etc.) being so bold as to take any stance on factual issues.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#295

Post by slg »

13years wrote: post #256
slg wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but this is a question of implementation. Objective truth being hard to define doesn't mean there is no such thing as objective truth.

The view of "if we just implement it right" it will be fine is a fallacy. These organizations represent immense power through influence. By their very existence arises the conflict power and truth. If you can have influence over the fact checkers, then you have influence over truth. Who would you trust to form such an organization? Where is the oversight? Who monitors the monitors? We are seeing what "reasonable cens…

>The view of "if we just implement it right" it will be fine is a fallacy.

Good thing I didn't say that then. The original comment that I was challenging said there was no such thing as fact checking. "Fact checking is hard" is not an argument in support of the idea that fact checking doesn't exist as a concept.

>We are seeing what "reasonable censorship" actually looks like. It is an oxymoron.

What is your definition of censorship? Because there is plenty of speech that I think is reasonable to censor. Obviously there is the illegal speech. Should Facebook be forced to host threats, defamation, copyright infringement, child porn, etc? What about the speech that is not illegal but is objectionable in some way? Should Facebook be forced to include hardcore porn in people's feeds if someone posts it? Once we establish that not all speech is appropriate in all contexts, censorship sure starts to seem reasonable. We just don't call it censorship because of the negative connotation. We call "reasonable censorship" moderation.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#296

Post by goatlover »

contravariant wrote: post #271
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is objective truth. The earth is objectively not flat. There are people who don't agree with that (or at least who say they don't), but the earth is objectively not flat, whether or not some people don't agree. Not only that, it's provably not flat. So those who don't agree, well... they prove the contrariness of human nature, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For all intents and purposes there is always an objective truth, the hard question is when you consider it proven . Even for the flat Earth theory it's hard to dismiss it offhand. I mean sure there are plenty of experiments you can do to show that it is pretty close to a sphere. But who do you trust to do those experiments? Either the person fact-checking needs to do the experiments/research themselves (which doesn't…

> Even for the flat Earth theory it's hard to dismiss it offhand. > I mean sure there are plenty of experiments you can do to show that it is pretty close to a sphere. But who do you trust to do those experiments?

All the various people who have done them, some of which can be repeated by anyone motivated enough, and all the technology that relies on it being the case. This was known to the ancient Greeks. One even calculated the circumference within a reasonable accuracy.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#297

Post by dbtc »

The autocurated feeds are the main engine of the business, which is competing against the other apps for the User's attention (and perhaps also competing against all other aspects of the User's life)

These feeds are optimized for "engagement" first. That's business.

So, now, trying to fix the problem of false information, the arsonists have joined the fire brigade.

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#299

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

bitL wrote: post #241
gunapologist99 wrote: post #210

Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes that most people will actually believe whatever bits of misinformation are floating around out there. But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or do they just think that everyone else is so easily manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray? And at what point does…

The issue is an increasing infantilization world-wide where some group thinks it needs to "protect the others", assuming they are the single source of truth and that it's obvious they are. It's a well known bias which for some reason aligns with the current zeitgeist. As everything before, it shall too pass at some point.

Please tell us more about the increasing worldwide infantilization.

How do you measure and track it? What trends in the measurement have you noticed over time that makes you says it's increasing?

Also, can you say more about which groups think they are the single source of truth?

Re: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are “False Information”

#300

Post by munk-a »

13years wrote: post #215
munk-a wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world isn't a black and white place and there are a variety of more nuanced stances between those two extremes. Any amount of censorship doesn't necessarily and immediately devolve into 1984.

And yet you are witnessing exactly what I describe today in realtime. Censorship went from censoring crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in 2017, to affecting everyone in the public as well as heads of state. I said this was going to happen the very day he was deplatformed. With great power comes great temptation and abuse nearly a certainty to follow.

Free speech issues are never simple - but their solutions is never found in the extremes. We've already, as a society, compromised free speech to make exceptions for discriminatory speech and violent destabilizing speech - we're already compromising how available all information is and it's necessary to have a functioning society.

Right now the US, specifically you guys - most of the rest of the world is handling this better - has a huge issue with false information around vaccine efficacy and dangers. This issue must be resolved if you want to be included in an open world once again - some level of censorship is going to be required.

Post reply on HN