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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

#611

Post by BrazzVuvuzela »

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…

There is a serious flaw in the way schools teach people about propaganda, that leaves people believing that propaganda is synonymous with lying, and if a claim is factual then it isn't propaganda. Propaganda is any communication that is calculated to further an agenda. Propaganda uses truth, lies, everything in-between, and everything else (claims that don't lay on the truth-lie continuum at all; e.g. subjective values.)

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#612

Post by bsansouci »

xwolfi wrote: post #211
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…

I'm French, live in China, so familiar from both countries with what you say. But I think I disagree a bit with your annoyance with agenda setting and journalist incestuous relationship with ideology or politics. Look I dont know how you're taught in Spain but in France we gave up neutral journalism centuries ago. Each newspaper is clearly categorized and we learn as children, around 7 IIRC all the links (le monde so…

I love what you wrote here, a well written and fascinating take!

One thing though, do french people actually read several different newspapers on different sides? My preconceived notion is that they still just pick one to get their main source of news, even though they might be aware of the others.

And a second thought. If we can agree that there is sometimes truth to be found in what happened, what convinces you that summing up falsehoods from the left and falsehoods from the right will equate to the truth? (I've heard from some people that they "read all sides" but I haven't noticed their perspective being better in any obvious ways)

For example: vaccines don't have side effects, don't worry about it, and we need to get everyone vaccinated so we should force them (left) VS vaccines are alright but seems like they're dangerous and fuck the government so they shouldn't force people to do that (right). The sum of the two doesn't really teach you the truth, but highlights the direct contradictions while giving you the impression that you have to pick one side of another (the US is super bipartisan, not like France which at least has several different parties with different opinions).

The truth here is: vaccines reduce likelihood of bad symptoms, gestation time and viral load, which in turn reduces chances of spreading and therefore chance of mutation which is a feared unknown (hello Omicron), some vaccines do seem to cause issues with younger folks (20-29 years old can get myocarditis) so we should be careful, but all in all, we don't have a better way to fix this situation than getting a lot of folks vaccinated.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#613

Post by ralusek »

mitigating wrote: post #562
bagacrap wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

Thinking "misinformation is a problem" is not the same as thinking "politically biased corporations should censor what they deem to be misinformation in accordance with their own biases."

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#614

Post by PoignardAzur »

a9h74j wrote: post #426
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…

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…

> With more thought, perhaps the inferrable punctuation intended 'Disqualifying-And-Ingored'

Yup, that's how I parsed it.

I had to re-read it to find why someone might think it was nonsensical.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#615

Post by BrazzVuvuzela »

a9h74j wrote: post #54

Appropriate indignation and demand on BMJ's part. Meanwhile, in the Stossel libel case, Facebook's lawyers allegedly 'claim that Facebook’s “fact-checks” are merely “opinion” and therefore immune from defamation.'

Fact checkers fear being fact checked, is anybody surprised?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#616

Post by andrepd »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #179
goopthink wrote: post #46

In addition to the points raised by BMJ and in the comments below, there is a limit to what independent fact checking can accomplish. For example, are their fact checkers conducting their own scientific experiments validating claims and outcomes of a scientific paper? Are fact checkers reaching out to sources from a news article and verifying quoted information? When “breaking news” or “scoops” are reported presentin…

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…

Not exactly doubting you, but is this really accurate? I hear a lot of "fact checkers are biased marxist commies" coming from people who just don't like it when "their side" is criticised.

Which is silly. At least I can talk about fact checkers in my country: they give you a write-up of all the sources and reasoning they pursued to ascertain the truth of some thing, then add their own evaluation in a scale of true, mostly true, false, pants on fire. How can people say they're biased when they give you a 100% transparent detail of how they came to their conclusion?

Also, it's funny when people say that multi-billion dollar media corporations are biased... towards the left x)

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#618

Post by hammock »

mitigating wrote: post #560
hammock wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

What's plenty? The number matters because it may be insignificant.

The CDC makes it hard to find the data but it's at least hundreds per day in the US.

For example in Texas, from Jan-Oct of this year 8 percent of covid deaths were fully vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/texas-unvac...

Most of that time period was before Delta or Omicron were dominant, not to mention the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes greatly over a ~6 month period, so the situation today is likely higher than 8 percent.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#619

Post by throwawayacc2 »

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?

In regards to medical “fact checking” at least ( though obviously extended to pretty much anything ) the same people who tell me men can get pregnant and women have penises are the same ones telling me the vaccine is good. The same people who “fact checked” covid passports as a conspiracy theory a year ago and the same ones “fact checking” it as effective and necessary now. The same people who call me selfish for wanting to live normal after so long and the same ones having galas and parties for themselves.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like being gas lighted.

I do not believe fact checks. They have zero credibility.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#620

Post by kerneloftruth »

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…

Yes, political censorship is often called "fact checking". Facebook invented nothing new, and the sin is them trying to convince us otherwise. The increased censorship has been demanded by the Democrats, and Facebook is obeying.
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