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I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

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Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#11

Post by dredmorbius »

Brooke Binkowski, author of the submitted article, has been reprising a number of pieces on Facebook's largely ineffective and by many appearances broken-by-design fact-checking initiatives of the past few years.

Another particularly goood piece is this from The Guardian in 2018:

'They don't care': Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties

Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook’s hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics – fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk – should be a deal-breaker.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/13/they-dont...

More are appearing on her feed, see: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/brooklynmarie

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#12

Post by lmm »

smt88 wrote: post #5
colordrops wrote: post #4

The main problem with many of these "fact checking" organizations and processes is that they often overstep their bounds. They work fine when they can source exact data and facts, e.g. a date, a number, the conclusion of a scientific study, the name of a person, and exact phrase that was said. But more often than not, they delve into opinion or judgement of vague or complex situations. This intermingling is not much…

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#14

Post by adrianN »

lmm wrote: post #12
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

The problem fact checkers are trying to solve is that most people don't have the resources to do the fact checking themselves, so that malicious actors can sway public opinion with wrong or misleading information. That is extremely dangerous in democracies.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#15

Post by LMYahooTFY »

smt88 wrote: post #5
colordrops wrote: post #4

The main problem with many of these "fact checking" organizations and processes is that they often overstep their bounds. They work fine when they can source exact data and facts, e.g. a date, a number, the conclusion of a scientific study, the name of a person, and exact phrase that was said. But more often than not, they delve into opinion or judgement of vague or complex situations. This intermingling is not much…

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

> Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all.

This is what Facebook fact checkers are??

They have hearings that go on public record and can be appealed up to a federal level?

Judges interpret the law, not current events. This comparison seems pretty meaningless.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#16

Post by smt88 »

lmm wrote: post #12
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

> But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

First, fact-checkers don't just publish fact-checks. They also work behind the scenes at the "high end" newspapers that you mention.

Second, websites like Snopes originally appeared to fact-check things like chain emails, memes, and other rumors. Mainstream news sites now do this to some extent, but there's still not a 100% overlap.

Also, sometimes there just isn't a story to a fact-check. The reader just wants to see a check of all the facts in a political speech or a debate. A series of 100 bullet points is not a compelling article, but it might be a perfectly fine fact-check.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#17

Post by slg »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #8
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. That is because most of the time, fact-control becomes opinion-control and we see exactly this happening just before our eyes. Thus people on either side of the political spectrum will suppo…

>Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves.

This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of journalism. The primary job of journalists is to filter through the events and facts of the day and tell you what is important. Judgement of information is inherent to the job. The top story on the front page of the newspaper is chosen by editors not by random draw. They put it there because they think it is the most important bit of news in the entire paper. There is no way to make that kind of qualitative judgements on the relative importance of different pieces of news without inserting potential bias.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#18

Post by Hermitian909 »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #8
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. That is because most of the time, fact-control becomes opinion-control and we see exactly this happening just before our eyes. Thus people on either side of the political spectrum will suppo…

> Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves

People may say they want this, but manifestly do not. There is too much information.

To illustrate: many people I know cared a great deal about whether the country was lied to about WMDs when we went to Iraq. As far as I know, zero of them have read the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee[0] but all were very glad to have the report summarized for them by the news media.

That act of summarizing, of picking out which information is and is not important, is itself an act of journalism. It is the curation of the set of shared facts, shared reality, in the public discourse.

[0]https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publ...

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#19

Post by jdthedisciple »

drewcoo wrote: post #10
smt88 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you…

The whole point of judges is that they are humans who exercise their judgement. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's intended to counter a cold, dry, robotic application of the letter of the law.

Exactly. Add to that that in legal trials there is also a proper defense, which is crucial. You don't have that online most of the times.

(Social) media fact-checking also often becomes a form of silent censorship.

Re: I Was a Facebook Fact-Checker (2019)

#20

Post by daniel_iversen »

A few comments;

- firstly, just because you can’t eradicate all fake news and misinformation does not make the effort “doomed” - you can’t get rid of all crime in the world either, or all disease, but you can still try and reduce it and it’s a worthy effort.

- the writer conflates a bunch of things - they wants the algorithms to be open, transparent and opt-in. While that would be nice, I don’t think that’s required to eliminate misinformation (nor will it solve it)

- what makes the article less credible is the author ends it with complaining about revenue sharing and saying Facebook must pay writers and publications. While potentially that could be nice it does not seem to have anything to do with the issue at hand and makes it read just like any other “let’s crap on Facebook” article

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