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

#231

Post by thaw24612107 » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:42 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…

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

#232

Post by AlotOfReading » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #221

AlotOfReading wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 har…

My answer is don't. If something is subjective, then why bother? "Words are violence" is such a bullshit.

Okay, but you're saying this on a platform where the moderator (dang) follows intentionally vague and subjective guidelines, presumably because you like the environment more here than some unmoderated howling void elsewhere on the Internet.

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

#233

Post by autoexec » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #209

philipwhiuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduce operating expenses If you assume they are immune to politics (not true but let's go with it), this is the most obvious reason. They've seen X hasn't taken that much heat for Community Notes and they're like "wow we can cut a line item". The real problem is, Facebook is not X. 90% of the content on Facebook is not public. You can't Fact Check or Community Note the private groups sharing blatantly false conten…

Good. Private communication is private, even if it's a group. The nice thing about the crazy is that they're incapable of keeping quiet: they will inevitably out themselves. In the meantime, maybe now I can discuss private matters of my diagnosis without catching random warnings, bans, or worse.

What kind of diagnosis spawns so many fact checks that it's a problem? I'd think any discussion about medical issues would benefit greatly from the calling out of misinformation.

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

#234

Post by tptacek » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #228

tptacek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

As a product decision taken independently, maybe. Running one of those things at scale with all kinds of people trying to subvert it for various reasons, including some downright evil ones, is not an easy task. Announced together with everything else and given the timing, I just can't help but think there's a political component to all of it.

I don't at all doubt that they're going to do whatever they can to cast this presumably longstanding product plan in the light most favorable to the governing majority! I just want to get the causality right.

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

#235

Post by dlivingston » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #91

silverquiet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get, the more I realize that people just live in different realities and so many contradictory facts can be true. Obviously this is a source of conflict.

I don't think facts ever contradict each other, it's the stories people create to explain the facts that are at odds. These stories lead people to extrapolate other beliefs which they present as "facts", and it's an organic process of discussion and exposure that changes peoples minds over time. I personally think aggressive fact checking authorities impedes this process, because people don't change their minds when…

Right. Imagine facts as data points on some Cartesian plane, and the narrative surrounding the facts as the curve fit to those points. The data points might all be sound, but by selectively omitting some, or by weighting their "uncertainty" higher or lower, you can fit just about any damn curve you want to them.

One such instantiation of this: https://chomsky.info/consent01/

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

#236

Post by qingcharles » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

extraduder_ire wrote: post #201

qingcharles wrote: post #179

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.

I agree, you should be able to see pending notes even if you're not a CN moderator.

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

#237

Post by qingcharles » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #219

extraduder_ire wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This. You're getting downvoted as bad as me LOL

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

#238

Post by jl6 » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

dmazin wrote: post #38

As a leftist, while this is concerning, it's also important to remember that Meta censors left content as much as it does right content. So, while this announcement certainly seems to be in bad faith (what could Mark mean by "gender" other than transphobic discussion?), this should be a boon both for far-right and left discussion. Does that mean increased polarization and political violence? Surely, surely.

He explained it in the next sentence. If people are free to say it in Congress they should be free to say it on Meta platforms too, and that includes a range of non-binary opinions that aren’t intrinsically istphobic.

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

#239

Post by ElectRabbit » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #218

circlingthesun wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Even worse: they cannot get open mental healthcare for this without loosing their license.

Loose-loose-situation.

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

#240

Post by coffeemug » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #166

I'm sure it's a win for Meta (less responsibility, less expense, potentially less criticism, potentially more ad dollars), but certainly a loss for users. More glad than ever that I deleted my FB account 10 years ago, and Twitter once it went X.

My twitter account wasn't big, but it was non-trivial (~30K followers). A post could usually get me to experts on most topics, find people to hang out with in most countries, etc. There were many benefits, so deleting was very hard.

But it was eating my brain. I found myself mostly having tweet-shaped thoughts, there was an irresistible compulsion to check mentions 100 times a day, I somehow felt excluded from all the "cool" parts which was making me miserable. But most importantly, I was completely audience captured. To continue growing the account I had to post more and more ridiculous things. Saying reasonable things doesn't get you anywhere on Twitter, so my brain was slowly trained to have, honestly, dumb thoughts to please the algorithm. It also did something to attention. Reading a book cover to cover became impossible.

There came a point when I decided I just don't want this anymore, but signing out didn't work-- it would always pull me back in. So I deleted my account. I can read books again and think again; it's plainly obvious to me now that I was very, very addicted.

Multiply this by millions of people, and it feels like a catastrophe. I think this stuff is probably very bad for the world, and it's almost certainly very bad for _you_. For anyone thinking about deleting social media accounts, I very strongly encourage you to do it. Have you been able to get consumed by a book in the past few years? And if not, is this _really_ the version of yourself you really want?