Facebook does fact checking because people decided to blame them for misinformation rather than the people actually doing it. Their customers demanded that they take action, so whether or not the action is useful, they were required to do so.
Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
121–130 of 702 posts
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#122Is fact checking that difficult? Imagine a forum that works in the following way: 1. You post similar to here. 2. Any post that has a claim is flagged. The poster, or another commenter has 24 hours (or some time period) to link to both a page and specific text (similar to how Google highlights search text when visiting a link) that supports the claim. 3. Once a claim is attached, posters can vote and downvote how wel…
First of all, even genuine, sincere upvotes and downvotes are not a reliable way to evaluate truth. Second, even if they were, such a system could easily be gamed by parties with political interests.
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#123"Fact checking" serves only to ossify the current view on any emerging discussion. Vatican "fact checkers" kept Galileo under house arrest for spreading "fake news", in a sense. This is an unwinnable fight, the only reasonable response is to abandon the pretense that opinions are facts, and that most people can't distinguish truth from falsehood.
I don't think it's unwinnable; we don't want FB to arbitrate between competing scientific opinions, we just want them to blackhole Magic Healing Water and Covid Vaccine 5G Drone Tracker type bullshit. It may be true that it's hard to draw a clear line between bullshit and almost-bullshit, but it's hard to draw a clear line between porn and almost-porn and they somehow manage to do that okay. edit because apparently t…
That's a good analogy (bullshit -> porn), and we would expect a system that is working as intended to be having precisely the kind of animated discussion around what is bullshit and what isn't that this open letter from BMJ represents.
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#124They seem to have forgotten the Inquisition. Really, in their view they were just trying to help people not be infected by false claims.
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Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#125In 2018 Facebook "fact checked" a Babylon Bee article with this headline: “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication”. (Babylon Bee is a humor site and clearly labeled as such.) https://twitter.com/Adam4d/status/969405110324523008
I hate Facebook probably more than anyone in this thread, but to be fair didn't they change their policy for satire sites? I believe they started adding a "satire" label (distinct from fact checking) explicitly to posts from satire sources.
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#126I prefer to do my own fact checking.
Most people just believe what they read on Facebook without even clicking the link. Sucks, but we can't allow idiots to be propagandized by misleading titles. Unfortunately nuance is dead.
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#127In addition to the points raised by BMJ and in the comments below, there is a limit to what independent fact checking can accomplish. For example, are their fact checkers conducting their own scientific experiments validating claims and outcomes of a scientific paper? Are fact checkers reaching out to sources from a news article and verifying quoted information? When “breaking news” or “scoops” are reported presentin…
I wonder how much more expensive would it be to have "explainers" instead of "fact-checkers". We all have heard about "the same lies being repeat over and over". Well, if these lies are indeed all kinda the same, then it should be relatively easy to (1) gather a proper, extensive set of facts that disprove the lies and then (2) hire an army of war hamsters to introduce these facts into discussion - following the guid…
you just reinvented the news journalist...
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#128"Fact checking" serves only to ossify the current view on any emerging discussion. Vatican "fact checkers" kept Galileo under house arrest for spreading "fake news", in a sense. This is an unwinnable fight, the only reasonable response is to abandon the pretense that opinions are facts, and that most people can't distinguish truth from falsehood.
Still waiting for the apology from all the people who said that this was all very necessary to combat misinformation and save democracy, and that any suggestions that this could possibly have bad outcomes was relying on a slippery slope fallacy, and not to be regarded.
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#129To all on social media. Enjoy your filtered, prescriptive, fact checked approved me feed with just the right amount of anti establishment to keep you from getting up or of your seat.
Frankly why any platform can be allowed to decide the worthiness of an article themselves is beyond me.
If FB were citing some insane group who score publications/data publicly and openly based on their content is say they're guilty of nothing more than trusting a trusted information outlet. (I'll even accept that the JDL is probably more open than this and they get triggered by small green reptiles)
Now that Facebook is deciding what is worthy to be deemed "truth" it has entered firmly into the arena of editorialism. Of course FB want this, it is practically the last brick of the wall around the garden of it's user-base. But it should be something that is illegal as it's clearly broaching on anti-competition territory.
(This unfortunately exposes a problem in tech from the monopoly argument. There is always an alternative people can move to, that is not, and should never be, an excuse for crap behaviour by crap companies)
Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Repeat offenders will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertised removed." Is the problem, a satire post by a satirical publication has been notified their distribution and monetization could be penalized as a result of their satire, because a 'fact checker' decided to identify the content and treat it like a news piece.
Maybe they should mark the content more clearly as satire to avoid causing confusion?
Just to be clear what you're saying, you personally, or for the sake of others, need satire labels to identify that "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication" is satire? That is the statement you just made?