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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

#691

Post by janeroe »

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…

> even a genius ... will forget to listen to the victims of the sacrifices he requires for the greater good, and that voice must be heard too

How do you know someone is a leftist? He will show you his fascist nature.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#692

Post by Imagein »

It is important to understand that our intelligence community folks are not only actively pushing their own disinformation, and stifling narratives and alternative channels that they don't want you to hear, but also sponsoring false-flag staged events as well. So "false news" doesn't simply just happen; sometimes it has a multi-million dollar budget behind it. See: Weapons of Mass Destruction; 2 planes bring down 3 buildings; Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative; moon of alabama bounty on US soldiers; etc. etc.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#693

Post by alexvoda »

smsm42 wrote: post #646
chimprich wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

Remember the lab leak conspiracy theory, that got people banned on the spot? Every fact checker would tell you there's no scientific basis for it, every scientist worth of their name is opposing to it and it's a complete fabrication spread around by conspiracy nuts. Except it turned out not only it is not so, but people who said it knew it wasn't so and were lying because of vested interests, which they failed to dis…

Remember that the ones spreading this theory before any evidence of any kind, were very much pushing a biowarfare angle. They still are but now they are more diluted ammong the larger group supporting a lab leak theory.

The conspiracy theories these people were pushing as a lab release had themes of gerontocide, eugenics, mind control by 5G, microchipping, general anti-vaxx beliefs most blaming Bill Gates as a sort of Bond villain.

All of these are still being pushed.

Do we have more plausible sources an accident happened? Yes. Was it reasonable to blame China for biowarfare against the whole world including itself, or to accuse Bill Gates for planning to exterminate half the population? No.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#694

Post by alexvoda »

smsm42 wrote: post #646
chimprich wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

Remember the lab leak conspiracy theory, that got people banned on the spot? Every fact checker would tell you there's no scientific basis for it, every scientist worth of their name is opposing to it and it's a complete fabrication spread around by conspiracy nuts. Except it turned out not only it is not so, but people who said it knew it wasn't so and were lying because of vested interests, which they failed to dis…

I read the entire link you posted. The conclusion presented lacks nuance. But other than that I see no issue with that debunking. Even drawing that conclusion is understandable at the time it was initially published. But I agree, the conclusion was too categoric for the nuance presented in the rest of the article. They even mention that a leak is a possibility being investigated. Now, since that possibility has more standing, they even retracted the article. They did not delete it, they uptated it with a notice at the very top and it is there for everyone to read.

You are misrepresenting that article.

Do you believe covid is a bioweapon?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#695

Post by alexvoda »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #619
chimprich wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 wan…

No post body was provided.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#696

Post by Imagein »

Closi wrote: post #603
dablweb wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They're not. Israel has the Hasbara team. KSA has the "lord of the flies" troll farm. Britain has the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, and the Integrity Initiative. But by far the best is Operation Mockingbird.

As just one example, take Hunter Biden's laptop before the election. This got memory-holed so fast, half of America doesn't know it exists, and 2/3rds of the rest believe the 50+ intelligence agents who immediately said, with no proof, it's Russian disinformation. This was epitomized by the reporter who said, -even if the laptop is true-, the press must treat it as disinformation.

One doesn't know what one doesn't know.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#697

Post by DarylZero »

OldManAndTheCpp wrote: post #41
DarylZero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You spelled Minix wrong and told the story wrong. Not the best way to make an argument against fact-checking.

> While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over. Microkernels have won. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.minix/c/wlhw16QWltI I will concede that I spelled 'minix' wrong.

> operating system researchers widely believe

Tanenbaum did SAY that, but that is different from it being true.

Fact-checking doesn't mean just accepting the declaration of the more credentialed party in a debate that their view is expert consensus.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#698

Post by soundnote »

dang wrote: post #291
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…

It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social pol…

Excellently put.

> It's extremely difficult because the human psyche seems incapable of distinguishing "fact" from "that which supports my view", at least when the emotions are activated, and the only topics where people seek "fact checking" in the first place are the ones where emotions are activated. There may be exceptions—i.e. people whose minds don't work this way—but if they exist, they're so rare as to be no basis for social policy. (And I doubt that there are really exceptions.)

I think there are at least people who do seek to fact check their own views or dissents from their own views with genuine curiosity. But that's still a matter of degree, and even the most platonically curious among us still use the same monkey brain blueprints that we all do. They may do their due diligence more often, but never, ever always.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#699

Post by soundnote »

yosito wrote: post #122
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…

First of all, even genuine, sincere upvotes and downvotes are not a reliable way to evaluate truth. Second, even if they were, such a system could easily be gamed by parties with political interests.

A local newspaper had instituted separate "I agree / disagree" and "Well / Badly argued" buttons to their comments section. This was, in principle, a good idea. It'd let people clap for things that made them feel nice but didn't exactly have much substance to them, and to recognize well-argued opposing points while registering their dissent. The system was, in theory, excellent.

Of course, nothing remotely close to the ideal use case happened, and banal nonsense was voted as being a good argument because the readers agreed with it, and good, carefully thought out comments got swamped in bad argument flags because they were disagreeable. People just rated on one feeling-valence and nothing else.

In the end, the paper canned most of the voting options, and the interface is left with "reply" and "well argued".

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#700

Post by soundnote »

deadalus wrote: post #152
barefeg wrote: post #71

Why should Facebook be the platform where people post facts? Facebook has no responsibility of implementing any constitutional rights if they don’t want to. If people don’t agree with Facebook’s terms of service then they should use a different platform. This is what ultimately create better platforms for other types of discussions

The problem is that BigTech funded 'news' organizations will bad-mouth and deplatform these new and different platforms as soon as they pose any threat. Their domains will be seized(Dreamhost removed Parler), infrastructure will be taken out(Cloudflare removed 8chan, Amazon banned Parler) or they will be removed from app stores(Gab was removed from both Playstore and Fdroid).

Not just that, some actual Mastodon clients have specific blocklists that prevent people from using eg. Gab or Spinster (a gendercrit Mastodon server, as far as I know).
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