Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg • Hacker News Board

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#501

Post by Eduard » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

spaniard89277 wrote: post #476

a9h74j wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be some snark in this comment, but against my own country and not you and yours. I invite a cross-cultural comment on competence. Are the partisan fact-checkers in Spain at least competent enough to write grammatical, parsable sentences and titles? From the BMJ OP: > It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID…

In Spain journalism is lazy, but instances of poor writing are much less common than in the anglosphere. They do clickbait, but maybe it's because the spanish language is more formal than english, you can't really bee too creative without writing something meaningless.

This comment needs several fact checks

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#502

Post by NoPie » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 1:56 AM UTC

srcreigh wrote: post #495

NoPie wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The first question in everybody's head when reading this article is, "Were the vaccine trials legitimate or not?" You are writing complete rubbish. BMJ does not question the legitimacy of the vaccine trials. With this sentence you are making very serious accusations to healthcare professionals. Most likely you don't even understand how clinical trials work or terminology used in the original article. If BMJ were n…

The title BMJ chose is "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"

And? It's very precise and describes exactly what happened.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#503

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#504

Post by Uhhrrr » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #488

Facebook can't moderate shit because they are afraid to become a publisher. "Fact checkers" are as horrible as it sounds, power hungry censors. Reddit's zero-paid moderators are worse. Twitter's employees are constantly high on their own drama flagging everything that doesnt suit their favourite flavor of wokism. How the hell did we end up with this situation? I want forums and blogs back.

IMAO, they shouldn't try. They should say, "Facebook connects you to your friends and family, and you should expect the degree of validity of information shared by your friends and family to be similar to that of the information they share with you in real life. If you want good information in your feed, hold your friends and family accountable for what they say."

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#505

Post by endisneigh » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #440

endisneigh wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your example makes no sense - flat earthers are a minority, the cited claims would ultimately receive more down than upvotes. also, the point of the votes is to help readers understand things themselves.

No that makes no sense. Other people just ignore the flat earth bullshit, they don't even vote. There's no point to what you're proposing.

OK, nice discussion.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#506

Post by rajacombinator » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

I suspect they would cheer for anti-vax censoring.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#507

Post by mmaunder » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

Fascinating that everyone is debating the efficacy of Meta’s fact checking and not even questioning that a single major corporation has supplanted the judiciary as arbiter of free speech and is being appealed to directly by the aggrieved. As RATM said: Wake Up.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#508

Post by labster » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

specialist wrote: post #458

postingawayonhn wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment Facebook stops trying to be the arbiter is the moment the government steps in and places heavy regulations on them.

Facebook's algorithmic outrage amplification is necessary to prevent an overbearing government from forcibly reverting parasocial norms to a simple chronologically sorted inbox?

A chronologically sorted inbox is the worst possible world for The Facebook. How can you boost user engagement with advertisers if you don’t use algorithms that repost years old stories of that time your dog died?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#509

Post by ErikVandeWater » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

adjkant wrote: post #312

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #259

Relevant: Stossel's lawsuit against Facebook for libelous statements against him contained in 3rd-party fact-checks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmht6Tbtzg 2 of the 3 reviewers had not even seen the video Facebook labeled as "misleading". The other refused a request for an interview.

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 mislead…

> In Stossel's case, one of his video's is being very closely taken to their implications

What?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#510

Post by quadrangle » Sat, Dec 18, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

NoPie wrote: post #502

srcreigh wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title BMJ chose is "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"

And? It's very precise and describes exactly what happened.

Wouldn't it be a lot clearer if it were something like "issues at three sites doing Pfizer vaccine trials" instead of "issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"?

The singular "trial" in the headline implies that the flaws are in the trial as a whole rather than in a particular distinct subset of the trials.