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Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

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Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#381

Post by shadowgovt »

throw10920 wrote: post #326
shadowgovt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is also not preventing anyone from speaking to me; they are refraining from giving some sources a megaphone. If I want to know what the BMJ is writing, https://bmj.com is right there. Facebook is under no obligation to center it on my wall.

"A government that censors the press is also not preventing anyone from speaking to me; they are refraining from giving some sources a megaphone." "refraining from giving some sources a megaphone" is exactly equivalent to "censorship". There's no difference. Your argument confuses the prescriptive and the descriptive. Descriptively, yes, Facebook is under no legal obligation to treat speech on its platform equally. P…

There's a significant difference between the behavior of a private institution and the behavior of government. Indeed, a government that censors the press is the exact opposite of a private medium exercising their editorial discretion. One is violation of freedom of the press, the other is freedom of the press. Facebook is under no more obligation to uncritically pass through bmj.com stories to their customers than my local newspaper is to run a classified ad saying the paper's owner belongs in jail, no matter how much I try to pay them to run it.

Under the political theory underpinning the origins of the US, private institutions have different moral obligations from governments because governments have the monopoly on violence, not simply because governments are big and have lots of "users." Facebook can't force anyone to use Facebook, and their competition is always one click away.

Facebook isn't a "public square" because it has no local geographic monopoly on space; it's the Internet, we have our choice of internet fora. This differs from the physical world, where one can't easily just go to the next public square over if the use of the nearby one is curtailed (hence the need for legal theory enacting the concept of "de-facto public square"). There's a problem if Facebook is the only online forum. But the solution to that is anti-trust law, not the government dictating what Facebook may not refrain from rebroadcasting via its network. Trying to solve the legitimate concerns of discourse manipulation via modification to First Amendment protections opens a Pandora's Box that is almost certainly best left closed (for starters: given the customer behavior we currently see, one could infer that people use Facebook because they like the signal-tuning. Stepping on the neck of Facebook's ability to signal-tune in a heavy-handed way risks driving users to alternative services that don't operate out of the US and therefore aren't beholden to any concept of First Amendment protections, for good or ill).

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#382

Post by User23 »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #155
rightisleft wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just reinvented the news journalist...

Well, with the decline of newspapers there should be plenty of unemployed journalists who'll be happy to spread some knowledge around FB for a moderate fee? Or - this thought scares me the most - FB actually doesn't care about facts?

Facebook "fact checks" are, according to Facebook's attorneys, just opinions[1].

[1] https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/13/facebook-quietly-admits...

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#383

Post by valvar »

linuxhansl wrote: post #322

Let's please not throw out the baby with the bathwater and dismiss all fact checking as political, biases, or agenda-driven. Not agreeing on basic facts in the prime problem in our current political discourse. Disagreement is usually a good problem to have and leads to testing the complete problem space. What we are seeing now, though, is the absence of the problem space exploration. Instead any discussion is just di…

There is no such thing as fact-checking without an agenda. What would the incentives be? No agenda, no demand, no-one pays for it.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#384

Post by theduder99 »

cloverich wrote: post #341
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is that I don't think that is the endgame. I think the endgame is a world where Facebook still seems to have a variety of news information, but it's heavily censored under the hood, and your parents/grandparents think you're talking nonsense if you bring up one of the topics Facebook fact checks don't allow.

My relatives today think I am a misguided, manipulated communist because I believe in climate change and universal healthcare. Such is the experience of many of my friends so while I also find your end game concerning, that's how the internet as our parents (etc) experience it already works.

if the shoe fits..

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#385

Post by jsdevtom »

dekhn wrote: post #3

Both Facebook (now Meta) and Youtube bungled their fact checking by disabling posts and videos that were counter to some narrative, but not factually incorrect. That places them in a bad position, and they need to be called out publicly, as no other mechanism so far has pushed them towards more accurate fact checking.

While I agree with you for the most part, their responsibility should not be fact checking. That should be left to the individual.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#386

Post by valvar »

themitigating wrote: post #339
HideousKojima wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion? The issue is I don't agree with all that. Who cares if crazies share flat earth theories on Facebook? You either trust your fellow humans to be able to think critically, or you don't. And if you don't, then why do you trus…

Because other lies are dangerous and I don't trust people to think critically. We also don't have a direct democracy and maybe that's what saves us most of the time.

Yes, just look at the terrible state of Switzerland.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#387

Post by najqh »

paganel wrote: post #295
spaniard89277 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know in your country, but in Spain most fact-checkers have very evident ties with two political parties, and they handle info in an agenda-setting style. They even have very personal links to politicians. Of course they really polish their communication and websites, and they know how to sound scientific-y throwing in some graphs and stuff. The problem is not only that, but that the same people who works in t…

> but in Spain most fact-checkers have very evident ties with two political parties, and they handle info in an agenda-setting style. It's the same thing in Romania, they strongly monitor and criticise those politicians and public figures who are not europhiles while pretty much ignoring those politicians who are for stronger EU integration and for more power for international institutions and their viewpoints inside…

It's called globalism.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#388

Post by shadowgovt »

throw10920 wrote: post #316
shadowgovt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's the tricky part. It's not about what you or I would do, it's about what the median user does when the topic is public health and safety. And half of everyone is below average.

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…

> censorship just feeds (crazy) conspiracy theories and breeds distrust.

I think we saw enough of crazy conspiracy theories occurring before the latest trend of service info-shaping to conclude that it's an independent variable.

Silicon Valley companies held the line on being agnostic media for decades. The result was a world that appears to have necessitated another approach, because bad actors figured out how to exploit the laissez-faire approach of the digital media to signal-boost crazy conspiracy theories, misinformation, and propaganda. It was the laissez-faire Facebook of the mid-2010s that allowed foreign companies to signal-shape a US election via paid-for advertising and micro-targeting [https://www.vox.com/2018/5/10/17339864/congress-russia-adver...].

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#389

Post by NoPie »

tlogan wrote: post #301

I wonder what is BMJ’s agenda? Why do they want that their articles explaining how one contractor botched trial shared on Facebook? Are they saying that it is not true that their article “could mislead people”? And article is like Fox News: “ 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 ove…

BMJ correspondents understand the industry and see some failures in one of the most important clinical trials for this pandemic. They consider this unacceptable and seeing that regulators haven't really done their job at overseeing this properly, have done some investigation and want to make other healthcare professional aware of this issue so that ultimately it can be properly resolved.

The title is very precise and corresponds with the contents very closely. You could say it is a little bit alarmistic though.

If it reads like Fox News to you, then you probably don't understand this industry. That's fine but don't call it wrong.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#390

Post by nradov »

endisneigh wrote: post #52
nradov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a silly proposal. You can find plenty of web pages with specific text that supports obvious falsehoods like flat earth theory.

Not really. The whole point of down and upvoting the sources is because the sources themselves might be erroneous. Without an infinite cascade of the process I described, relying on down and upvoting of specific claims is more tractable. In other words, you might have a claim that's supported by an otherwise bad website, but the bad website actually has a morsel of legitimately factual evidence there. It would be up…

No that would never work. The flat earthers will all upvote each other's bullshit.

And you are missing a fundamental concept in that for most fields of science there are very few objective facts or proven truths. If I write a post on Newtonian physics should I be "fact checked" for misinformation if I fail to state that it's only an approximation and doesn't always give correct answers?

It used to be an accepted "fact" in medicine that peptic ulcers were caused by stress and spicy food. Except that fact turned out to be wrong. How would Drs. Warren and Marshall have rated under your scheme?

https://www.news-medical.net/health/Peptic-Ulcer-History.asp...

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