Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model • Hacker News Board

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#171

Post by ldoughty » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:11 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #164

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

> I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represented. Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of shouting back and forth that these social networks are already full of. That's why a third-party…

True, but that doesn't discount that it's a win for Meta

1) Shouting matches create more ad impressions, as people interact more with the platform. The shouting matches also get more attention from other viewers than any calm factual statement. 2) Less legal responsibility / costs / overhead 3) Less potential flak from being officially involved in fact-checking in a way that displeases the current political group in power

Users lose, but are people who still use FB today going to use FB less because the official fact checkers are gone? Almost certainly not in any significant numbers

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#172

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #164

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

> I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represented. Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of shouting back and forth that these social networks are already full of. That's why a third-party…

[deleted]

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#173

Post by theptip » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #148

BryantD wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly mirrors my thoughts, although I don't work in your field. One quote: "For example, in December 2024, we removed millions of pieces of content every day. While these actions account for less than 1% of content produced every day, we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes (i.e., the content may not have actually violated our policies)." That is first order data and it's in…

> we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes May have been a mistake? Reminds me of RTO and the subjective feeling of being more productive in the office. They have the feeling they may have made mistakes and base their new policy on that feeling.

I think what they are saying there is the press release interpretation of experiments showing a false positive rate of 10-20%, with error bars wide enough that stating a percentage gives too many significant figures. But the definition of FP is necessarily fuzzy; if you can perfectly identify them as FP at scale then you have built a better classifier and you no longer have the FP problem. So any statement about FP rates necessarily needs to be couched in uncertainty.

I don't think it's malicious wordsmithing where they are mis-representing the internal data, though I don't have the data to confirm.

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#174

Post by AlotOfReading » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #162

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

> content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive I think the fact-checking part is pretty straightforward. What's outrageous is that the content moderators judge content subjectively, labeling perfect discussions as misinformation, hate speech, and etc. That's where the censorship starts.

How do you avoid judging actual human discussions subjectively? I remember being a forum moderator and struggling with exactly the same issues. No matter what guidelines we'd set, there'd be essentially legitimate discussions that were way over the line superficially, and on the other you'd have neo-nazis acting in ways that weren't technically bad, but were clearly leading there.

Facebook moderators have an even harder job than that because the inherent scale of the platform prevents the kinds of personal insights and contextual understanding I had.

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#175

Post by lazyeye » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #164

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

> I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represented. Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of shouting back and forth that these social networks are already full of. That's why a third-party…

Its more naive to think a fact-checking unit susceptible to govt pressure is likely to be better. There will always be govt pressure in one form or another to censor content they doesnt like. And we've obviously seen how this works with the Dems for the last 4 years.

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#176

Post by theptip » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

BryantD wrote: post #57

philjohn wrote: post #22

They've also said there will be more harmful (but legal) content on there as they'll no longer automatically look for it, but require it to be reported before taking action. As someone who worked on harmful content, specifically suicide and self injury, this is just nuts - they were raked over the coals in both the UK by an inquest into the suicide of a teenage user who rabbit holed on this harmful content, and also…

This exactly mirrors my thoughts, although I don't work in your field. One quote: "For example, in December 2024, we removed millions of pieces of content every day. While these actions account for less than 1% of content produced every day, we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes (i.e., the content may not have actually violated our policies)." That is first order data and it's in…

> However, before making policy decisions, I would want the second order data:

I think this the wrong lens. The correct lens is: if they don't voluntarily make this change, will they be forced to?

The incoming administration seems committed to banning "censorship", so I believe making a cost/benefit analysis is something of a false choice.

E.g. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJfUXVOoFBo

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#177

Post by fzeroracer » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

kcplate wrote: post #53

hmmm-i-wonder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen a single discussion be worse off due to fact checking, but I've seen tons of discussions where having it would improve things. I have seen people get mad because they can't post BS without it being challenged. To claim internet discussion worked better without fact checking is something I haven't seen any actual evidence for, just opinions like yours. Community notes is just a watered down, more easily…

Exposure to many viewpoints, including wrong ones, provides a counterbalancing effect. When you actively try and suppress information you create a “forbidden knowledge” effect where people seek out silos where extreme and wrongheaded information gets passed without the “sunlight is the best disinfectant”—-it grows faster…becomes more wrong, more extreme, and more dangerous. Seems to me in my experience after decades…

> Seems to me in my experience after decades of watching and participating in online discussion extremism really only became more problematic when fact checking and active efforts to suppress took hold. Whatever the good intentions may have been, the results were worse.

This is just overtly and flatly wrong. I reject your experience fully because over the past few decades the internet has become more open, not less. We openly debated people that believed vaccines caused autism and gave them microphones. Every single loud asshole and dipshit was given maximum volume on whatever radio show or podcast or social media platform they could want.

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#178

Post by insane_dreamer » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

ldoughty wrote: post #171

insane_dreamer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represented. Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of shouting back and forth that these social networks are already full of. That's why a third-party…

True, but that doesn't discount that it's a win for Meta 1) Shouting matches create more ad impressions, as people interact more with the platform. The shouting matches also get more attention from other viewers than any calm factual statement. 2) Less legal responsibility / costs / overhead 3) Less potential flak from being officially involved in fact-checking in a way that displeases the current political group in…

Yeah, I agree it's a win for Meta from a $$ perspective, just not for the reason the OP expressed (which was what I was disagreeing with). \

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#179

Post by qingcharles » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

Community Notes is the best thing about Musk's Dumpster fire.

The problem with CN right now, though, is that Musk appears to block it on most of his posts, and/or right-wing moderators downvote the notes so they don't appear or disappear.

Re: Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

#180

Post by freedomben » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #164

saxonww wrote: post #4

What I think I just read is that content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represent…

> I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people who care about the content being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly represented. Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of shouting back and forth that these social networks are already full of. That's why a third-party…

You should look into the implementation, at least the one that X has published. It's not just users shouting back and forth at each other. It's actually a pretty impressive system