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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

#561

Post by smsm42 »

User23 wrote: post #382
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Well, they surely are. The stupid part it's that they are opinions of people that have no business having an opinion on such matters, them having no related qualifications, no education, no access to facts, not doing any research or having any idea how the research is done at all - and their opinion is taken as one trumping the opinion of the actual experts in the field. Out of all possible opinions Facebook chooses the worst to listen to.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#562

Post by mitigating »

bagacrap wrote: post #454
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made themselves the fact checkers. If they're going to take the mantle of "fact checker", it is their responsibility to do it well.

On the contrary, it's politicians and old media who came up with the "fake news" slogan and demanded FB and others start censoring opposing viewpoints. FB is all too happy to help spread falsehoods and inflammatory articles since they both drive engagement.

No, "Ninety-five percent of Americans identified misinformation as a problem when they’re trying to access important information."

"According to the poll, 79% of Republicans and 73% of Democrats said social media companies have a great deal or quite a bit of responsibility for misinformation."

(https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-b...)

Talk about "fact checking" you just make a statement about what people think and provided no evidence to back it up. That's the main problem here. Also "old media"?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#563

Post by kbelder »

robomartin wrote: post #99
endisneigh wrote: post #22

Is 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…

> Is fact checking that difficult? Yes, it is. Years ago I went through a period of personally fact-checking stories across the board as they were being discussed by my FB contacts. It is hard to quantify just how time consuming this was. Some stories were super easy to debunk. Others took days to weeks of research and sometimes mathematical modeling. Other stories took 10+ months to wait of legal evidence to surface…

Of course, none of the current fact-checkers on the major platforms are doing anything like that.

I might be wrong, but I imagine each has a binder with a bunch of bullet points under each topic, listing common claims determined to be false by management. Probably some post-it notes holding new claims that their manager saw the previous day and didn't like.

Maybe the 'lab-leak' claim is scratched out.. it's permitted to be spoken of, now.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#564

Post by shadowgovt »

NullPrefix wrote: post #552
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.

Yes they are. There are people who you cannot write personal messages to on facebook/messenger. They have to write you first, otherwise all your messages to them are marked as sent, not delivered and eventually seen, just sent. I assume that political idelogy of aforementioned persons is obvious. And these people are not some no-names.

If you're describing me, those people are free to reach me via an alternate method. Facebook is not obligated to facilitate it.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#565

Post by freebuju »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #527
philovivero wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note how your comment has been largely ignored by... the massive numbers of Facebook and Google employees reading this site. If there was an ounce of integrity in Tech these days, this would have been called out, front-and-centre, and remedies to it would have been enacted. Instead, here we are almost two years later, and we're pretending that never happened. In some cases it's even being memory-holed. I predict wi…

What did the CDC lie about? (Honest question)

Am sure you can find plenty when you go down this rabbit hole but you can start here: https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#566

Post by notsureaboutpg »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #527
philovivero wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note how your comment has been largely ignored by... the massive numbers of Facebook and Google employees reading this site. If there was an ounce of integrity in Tech these days, this would have been called out, front-and-centre, and remedies to it would have been enacted. Instead, here we are almost two years later, and we're pretending that never happened. In some cases it's even being memory-holed. I predict wi…

What did the CDC lie about? (Honest question)

During the early days of the pandemic the CDC discouraged mask wearing, saying that it increased the need to touch one's face and that would increase transmission of COVID.

This turned out not to be true, and they said they disseminated this information to avoid a run on masks and a shortage of PPE for medical settings / essential services.

This is how I remember it. May be wrong

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#567

Post by baskethead »

mitigating wrote: post #549
j_m_b wrote: post #23

> We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. It is not an acceptable tradeoff that some high quality information is censored in order that bad information is policed.

How would it be possible for a system like that to be accurate all the time?

Facebook is a trillion dollar company. Spend more money on content control and content verification. Use intelligent humans and more of them. It may not be profitable but it will increase trust in the platform immensely if the fact checkers are fair and consistent. Not nameless bots or people that don’t give a fuck.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#568

Post by satellite2 »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #527
philovivero wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I note how your comment has been largely ignored by... the massive numbers of Facebook and Google employees reading this site. If there was an ounce of integrity in Tech these days, this would have been called out, front-and-centre, and remedies to it would have been enacted. Instead, here we are almost two years later, and we're pretending that never happened. In some cases it's even being memory-holed. I predict wi…

What did the CDC lie about? (Honest question)

About the efficacy of masks. They said they were not efficace to avoid hoarding and to reserve the small existing stock for medical professionals.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#569

Post by hetspookjee »

Kiro wrote: post #477
yesco wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think them being the same people is exceptionally unlikely

Seems to me that everyone agreed that Facebook had to do something about misinformation and that everyone is now outraged that they did. Where are the people defending the fact-checking they helped make reality? No, I think everyone just loves to hate on Facebook.

I never agreed that Facebook took a seat in the chair of fact checking. I’d rather, along with others, would’ve seen that Facebook got hammered with fines into obsolence for fueling the world with controversy and doing everything in their power to keep revenue on top of fact checking. In regard if facebooks approach, it is laughable what Facebook is doing on their scale. It is barely enough with the amount of persons, and the way they enable people to share as much shit as possible.

So in short Facebook is doing way too little and doing it wrong too. But it does seem like the cheapest option for them to keep the lawmakers at bay.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#570

Post by pinneycolton »

hammock wrote: post #457
colinmhayes wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bad, the actual quote is "Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people" As far as whether Facebook should become "optics police" I think it's obviously a difficult decision, but with life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" I have to go with yes, facebook shouldn't let itself propagandize people who decide to read headlines instead of articles.

>life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" Is that not a misleading thing to say yourself? Plenty of vaccinated have died. And for those unjabbed but with permanent acquired immunity, the jab may be safe yet at the same time have no material effect to save their life.

As best we can tell, no one has "permanent acquired immunity". 36% of those infected never develop antibodies. Of the remaining 64% that do, most lose their antibodies in less than a year.
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