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

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

#211
It's a welcome move as this "fact checkers" thing was doomed to fail, mostly because "who decides what the truth is, and who fact checks the fact checkers?".

Sad thing is, this move isn't motivated by Mark Zuckerberg having a eureka moment and now trying to seek out the truth to build a better product for human kind.

This move is motivated by Mark's realizing he is on the wrong side of American politics now, being left behind by the Trump/Musk duo.

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

#212

I'd like to hear an informed take from anybody who thinks that Facebook's fact-checkers were a better product feature than Community Notes. All of the articles I'm seeing about this online are ideological, but this feels like the kind of decision that should have been in the works for multiple quarters now, given how effective Notes have been, and how comically ineffective and off-putting fact-checkers have been. The…

The ideological bits are:

* Dana White added to the board.

* "Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content." - like people being in Texas makes them more objective?!

The actual mechanisms of running a social media network at scale are tricky and I think most of us would be fine with some experimentation. But it looks pretty political in the broader context, so maybe it's just a way of saying that certain kinds of 'content' like attacking trans people is going to be ok now.

I can't quite FB entirely, but Threads looks like a much less interesting option with Blue Sky being available and gaining in popularity.

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

#213

I know there has been a lot of ink spilled trying to persuade that Technology can't solve our deeper problems and Technologists are too optimistic about having real-world impact etc. etc. But I think community notes (the model, not necessarily the specific implementation of one company or another) is one of those algorithms that truly solve a messy messy sticky problem. Fact-checking and other "Big J Journalist" atte…

Agreed. I think people are looking at CN/Birdwatch being from Twitter and seeing red without looking at the details.

CN predates Musk burning Twitter to the ground, and CN is actually a decent product that can only get better as it is honed.

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

#214
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> That's where the censorship starts. It also starts when there is no third-party anymore. Where is the middle line?

I thought there would be community notes. And how would third-party work? The Stanford doctor was banned from X because he posted peer-reviewed papers that challenge the effectiveness of masks (or vaccines)? I certainly don't want to see that level of hysteria.

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

#215
The moderation tools were themselves offensive and abusive. I use FB to read what my friends and relatives have to say. I don't want FB to interfere with their posts under any normal circumstance, but somehow, they felt like they should do this.

But the real reason I can't use FB much any more is that the feed is stuffed full of crap I didn't ask for, like Far Side cartoons etc.

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

#216

I'm certain it will make parts of the user experience worse, but at least for the Threads app, this seems at least a little necessary - if you're aiming to be the "new" twitter or whatever social need twitter was fulfilling, you need to break free of the shackles of IG/Meta moderation, which is very unforgiving and brutal in very subtle ways that aren't always easy to figure out. But basically, I find a platform like…

I once posted a picture of an email stating my train was delayed in French. So the word 'retard' appeared in it. Instagram banned me from monetization or partnerships or something on my account, because the word for delay in French is offensive in English.

I wonder how many Spanish speakers got banned for discussing Vantablack at the time.

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

#217
post #212

I'd like to hear an informed take from anybody who thinks that Facebook's fact-checkers were a better product feature than Community Notes. All of the articles I'm seeing about this online are ideological, but this feels like the kind of decision that should have been in the works for multiple quarters now, given how effective Notes have been, and how comically ineffective and off-putting fact-checkers have been. The…

The ideological bits are: * Dana White added to the board. * "Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content." - like people being in Texas makes them more objective?! The actual mechanisms of running a social media network at scale are tricky and I think most of us would…

I get how the partisan story is easy to tell here, but I'm saying something pretty specific: I think it would have been product development malpractice for this decision not to have been in the works for many, many months, long before the GOP takeover of the federal government was a safe bet. Community Notes has been that successful, and Facebook's fact-checkers have been that much of a product disaster.

I've never seen a wrong Facebook fact-check; I am warmly supportive of intrusive moderation; that's not where I'm coming from.

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

#218

I'm certain it will make parts of the user experience worse, but at least for the Threads app, this seems at least a little necessary - if you're aiming to be the "new" twitter or whatever social need twitter was fulfilling, you need to break free of the shackles of IG/Meta moderation, which is very unforgiving and brutal in very subtle ways that aren't always easy to figure out. But basically, I find a platform like…

I once posted a picture of an email stating my train was delayed in French. So the word 'retard' appeared in it. Instagram banned me from monetization or partnerships or something on my account, because the word for delay in French is offensive in English.

Pilots flying an Airbus get called a “retard” every time they land!

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Community notes launched at the start of 2021. It predates the buyout by almost two years. If what they said about their design is to be believed, political downvoting shouldn't heavily impact them. I wish it was easier to see pending notes on a post though.

Right, I think that's the parent's point: CN is a great design, dragged down by the fact that Elon heavily puts his thumb on the scale to make sure posts he likes spread far and wide and posts he dislikes get buried, irrespective of their truth content.
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