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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

#601

Post by chimprich »

smsm42 wrote: post #554
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…

In the US, there was a brief period when real fact-checking existed. Then the political activists saw that the regular press had lost all credibility, but the fact-checking brand still retained some, so they made a hard push to take them over. Which by the time of covid has been already mostly complete, and with the push to fight "medical misinformation" (which was quickly defined as any information that contradicts…

> "fact-checking" has been completely subverted to serve the preferred narrative and suppress any heretical thought

I don't think this is correct. In my experience, most online "fact checkers" seem to get it right the great majority of the time.

Can you point to some examples you are thinking of?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#602

Post by xondono »

CSSer wrote: post #530
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…

> most of them are journalists, AKA experts in nothing that pretend to become experts with a few calls and some google-fu. Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism is at the root of a lot of problems in modern media for both practicing journalists (which…

> Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing.

And yet I think it’s pretty obvious journalism is not about truth anymore. Gawker might be dead, but the Gawker style of “journalism” is well alive.

You don’t even need to dig that deep to see something is rotten, the two biggest news channels in the US spend the day saying the opposite of one another.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#603

Post by Closi »

dablweb wrote: post #576
stjohnswarts wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook can allow whatever they like on their website and it is perfectly legal. I would rather they filter out 98% of the tripe with a 2% fail rate (sorry BJM!)

You'd think so, but in doing so you've just imagined the world's most terrifying propaganda tool.

Exactly, let’s not forget that any story that refers to Taiwan being an independent country is marked as “fake news” in some parts of the world which has a chilling effect.

Why do we assume our own governments will also be immune from the same temptations?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#604

Post by sul_tasto »

hammock wrote: post #311
srcreigh wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.. the fact checker should also make sure true facts aren't being used out of context causing the reader come to incorrect conclusions. That's what is happening with the BMJ article. That's why the fact check report doesn't mention any specific factual inaccuracies. Context matters, missing context is a problem. EDIT: see here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597047

What incorrect conclusion and who came to it?

The BMJ article being discussed points out flaws in the medical validation of the covid vaccine. While true, this medical journal article is being used by the anti-vaccination advocates to make a more general claim that the vaccine is ineffective/dangerous/evil, etc.

Even though the medical journal article accurately shows problems with this specific aspect of the medical/clinical review of the vaccine, the vaccine is proving effective in combating the transmission and severity of the covid virus. Many of the people currently going to the hospital for covid are unvaccinated. This is placing a heavy burden on the hospitals and preventing other people from getting the care they need.

People are fighting over specific facts because they are trying to influence the broader narrative/discourse going on in society about covid, vaccinations, lockdowns, etc.

Comments in this thread are discussing facebook, journalists and fact-checkers, and their roles in influencing public opinion and social discourse.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#605

Post by xondono »

danbolt wrote: post #410
spaniard89277 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but two objections. - Nuanced opinions and good information is rarely free, be it in monetary terms, be it in the invested time, relationships, etc. Thus, if you're not planning to give up most of your time for any topic, you better find good proxies. And currently the press provides more noise than signal. This is problematic. - If you know anything about Spain is that it's basically Game of Throne…

> You can't take any editorial line for granted, because it's more tied to a group of people seeking power than any background ideology or anything similar. I don't mean to misrepresent the parent's argument, but I think they would demand the same solution of editorial transparency towards the groups of people seeking power you mention. That said, I might be coming from a place of ignorance here.

That would be a hard thing to achieve, given that we are talking about unnamed, unidentifiable groups.

What GP meant about Spain being similar to GoT, is that there’s a lot of shifting alliances and moving pieces in the background.

You might think channel A has ties to party B, and thus you can asume that they are softening the blow if they’re reporting bad news about B, but Spain has more than two parties (for now), and maybe channel A is actually exaggerating because it would put party C in a good position to sway votes from the opposition while not taking votes from yourself.

As an US equivalent if a third political party had a 10-15% of the votes, you’d see Fox reporting in a way that tried to sway democrats to the third party.

Since in Spain the way seats in congress are allocated benefits parties with bigger percentages, this strategy is possible.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#606

Post by 6510 »

chimprich wrote: post #601
smsm42 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there was a brief period when real fact-checking existed. Then the political activists saw that the regular press had lost all credibility, but the fact-checking brand still retained some, so they made a hard push to take them over. Which by the time of covid has been already mostly complete, and with the push to fight "medical misinformation" (which was quickly defined as any information that contradicts…

> "fact-checking" has been completely subverted to serve the preferred narrative and suppress any heretical thought I don't think this is correct. In my experience, most online "fact checkers" seem to get it right the great majority of the time. Can you point to some examples you are thinking of?

People rarely get anything right. We do the best we can based on the time- and information available while trying not to bite the hand that feeds us. Fact checkers are no different.

Zuck ofc really likes to feed on things. Getting rid of information is okay as long as it doesn't gets in the way of his feeding. FB fact checking is both expensive and crap but still light years ahead of amazon reviews.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#607

Post by jevoten »

rocqua wrote: post #585
smsm42 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, there was a brief period when real fact-checking existed. Then the political activists saw that the regular press had lost all credibility, but the fact-checking brand still retained some, so they made a hard push to take them over. Which by the time of covid has been already mostly complete, and with the push to fight "medical misinformation" (which was quickly defined as any information that contradicts…

Thing is, if the idea is to stop wrong conspiracy theories from veing talked about, it makes sense to ban legitimate science that points in the direction of the conspiracy. If you want to do propaganda, then misinformation is useful. But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder. Especially with covid it seems like social media has decided to counter pr…

> But even using only good-faith articles as sources, you can still make your propaganda, it will just be harder.

That's what, at their best, most of the media are doing. Presenting well-researched, balanced, truthful stories, carefully selected to promote their own ideology. Forget journalism - this even happens in peer-reviewed science:

Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research proposals hypothesizing either "reverse discrimination" (i.e., against White males) or conventional discrimination (i.e., against ethnic minorities) were submitted to 150 Internal Review Boards. Everything else about the proposals was held constant. The "reverse discrimination" proposals were approved less often than the conventional discrimination proposals. - https://jsis.washington.edu/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/...

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#608

Post by cycomanic »

deltree7 wrote: post #421
cycomanic wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that has been done again and again. Let's not talk about Covid, but climate change (which interestingly never attracted the Facebook et al fact checkers even though it is a much more existential crisis for humanity). There are many sites that debunk the arguments like "it was warmer in the middle ages", "warming can be attributed to sun activities", realclimate.org is a great resource for instance. Still the same…

'existential crisis' : citation needed backed by actual model of the universe and human behavior.

Thanks for proving my argument

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#609

Post by praash »

Kiro wrote: post #465

People forced this impossible task on Facebook and are now outraged about the results. Mark can't win.

Perfect success isn't realistic in this task, but FB's current attempt is very flawed. If their actions make matters worse than inaction, I'd call it total failure.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#610

Post by erklik »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #26
zanethomas wrote: post #8

I prefer to do my own fact checking.

If Facebook is demoting these stories you may never see them in the first place. Then you'll have nothing to fact check

and Facebook is under no obligation to show anyone any content that they do not desire to show them. There used to be a internet before Facebook. The content showed by Facebook was interesting, fun and something people wanted so people visited Facebook for that reason. If that has changed for you, simply stop visiting. The rest of the internet is still here and that content is still out there. It is not Facebook or anyone's responsibility to put your eyeballs on that content.
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