Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

More context here, as I had to look it up and this one fits into the same pattern, but adds a layer of muddiness: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/john-stossel-sues-face...

In Stossel's case, one of his video's is being very closely taken to their implications, and being marked accordingly as "misleading" and "missing context". In the case of the BMJ, the factcheck title is fully inaccurate and itself is misleading. The Stossel case highlights this nuance, but in the end appears to be a partisan test of the legal waters. Facebook itself has spoken on that one and has defended it.

Of note though is this passage:

> In a previous response posted by Climate Feedback to Stossel’s charges about the fact-check rating on the “Government Fueled Fires” video, the organization wrote, “Stossel complains that we should not have rated his post using a claim review of a quote that does not appear in his video. This is a misunderstanding of how fact-checking partners operate on Facebook. Given that many pieces of content posted on Facebook can separately make the same claim, it is not necessary to create a separate claim review article for each post we rate. It is, of course, necessary that the claim we reviewed is representative of the claim in each post we rate, which is true in this case.”

It seems like in an effort for efficiency, articles are grouped together. I wonder if some article citing BMJ made the inaccuracies, and then the source got grouped into the same article group. It seems like that is a corner that cannot be cut here. To the surprise of no one, fact checking is hard and trying to group things together will cause problems. It seems to me that the critics are right to point out that fact checking will simply not scale while maintaining accuracy.

This seems like a statement of faith. Facebook, and the markets it operates in, have seen very little government oversight for most its lifetime. It's mostly market forces that got us here. I don't see any reason to think that market forces will improve the situation in the future.

Erm, no, it's not. "It" is about taking principled actions, regardless of the outcome. "Outcomes over principles" is one of the most destructive and evil ideologies known to man, and the source for all kinds of tyranny disguised under the banner of "We know what's best for you". Censorship, in the sense of suppressing one's opinions and freedom of expression, is morally wrong, full stop - and even if it weren't, it's not even effective in the case of Facebook, because censorship just feeds (crazy) conspiracy theories and breeds distrust.

The BMJ article is light on conclusions and is mostly just a report of facts. In the way of true conclusions I can find these:

> Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.

> for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety

Which of these conclusions do you think make zero sense? The entire rest of the article looks like a recitation of facts to me.

We landed on The Moon!!!