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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

#311

Post by riversflow »

WalterBright wrote: post #265
techfeathers wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Harris supporter, I actually agree, I think it was way too heavy handed and hurt Harris more than helped. I’m not sure anymore what the goal of fact checking is (I’ve always felt it was somewhat dubious if not done extremely well).

Any fact checker is going to be inevitably biased. For a debate, there should be two fact checkers, each candidate gets to pick a fact checker. That could lead to a debate between the fact checkers, which would derail the debate. Better to not have fact checkers as part of the debate, and leave the fact checking to the post-debate analysis.

If you don’t have fact checkers, a debate loses all its value. Debates must be grounded in fact to have any value at all. Otherwise a “debate” is just a series of campaign stump speeches.

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

#312

Post by madeofpalk »

JohnMakin wrote: post #183

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 think you misunderstand what Meta is doing here. They’re not stopping moderation of posts.

Meta used to pay third party company fact checking companies to put disclaimers on “misinformation” posts on Facebook. They’re going to stop that now.

They’re still going to continue their other more traditional moderation where you’ll be banned for making an obvious tongue in cheek joke or whatever.

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

#313

Post by aimazon »

tptacek wrote: post #192

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…

Fact checkers are the technocratic solution, they're a panel of experts to Community Note's jury of our peers. Fact checkers are a much better product feature than community notes if we want a feature that best serves people who care about facts. That's not our world, though. People don't care about facts, we are humans, our lives are lived based on vibes. The average person would rather listen to their idiot friend's uneducated thoughts about transgender women in sport than listen to a lecture from an expert. Community notes is probably a better feature for the real world, but it's still junk, "effective" is not a label the feature deserves, because the majority of misinformation on X goes un-noted.

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

#314

Post by insane_dreamer »

circlingthesun wrote: post #210
JohnMakin wrote: post #183

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.

This is different than the fact-checking, and has to do with automated moderation algorithms (which generally suck), which are continuing (because advertisers want them).

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

#315

Post by AlchemistCamp »

davidw wrote: post #212
tptacek wrote: post #192

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…

> "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 FB office in Austin, Texas is a moderately left-leaning area. Their office in Silicon Valley is about the most extreme left-wing place in the country. At the very least, teams at their Texas offices will have more overlap with the median voter than the ones in California. If their Texas offices were in rural rancher country, then I'd agree with your concern that it would just be swapping one bias for another.

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

#316

Post by starik36 »

davidw wrote: post #212
tptacek wrote: post #192

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…

[dead]

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

#318

Post by morley »

dotancohen wrote: post #222
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…

> 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. To me it sounds better for large actors who pay shills to influence public opinion, like Qatar. I disagree that this is better for either Facebook users, or society as a whole. It does however certainly fit the Golden rule - he with the gold makes the rules.

I was under the impression that Community Notes were designed to be resistant to sybil attacks, but I could be wrong. Community Notes have been used at Twitter for a long time. Are there examples of state-influenced notes getting through the process?

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

#319

Post by crindy »

philjohn wrote: post #108
naasking wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is research that shows exposure to suicide and self injury content increases suicidal ideation. Yes. However, I find this obsession with harm-based value judgment to the exclusion of all other considerations ethically problematic, to put it mildly. Ethics does not reduce solely to considerations of harm.

Would you mind expanding on that please, what are the ethically problematic things you are trying to balance against this?

Freedom of expression comes to mind. If someone had a friend commit suicide, should they not be able to discuss their experience in public?

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

#320

Post by redserk »

EasyMark wrote: post #271
redserk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going back even further, one of the initial draws of Instagram pre-acquisition was that you could escape the toxicity of trolls and other socially unproductive behavior on Facebook. Meta has a big problem coming up. They'll get to the point where they won't be able to hide Facebook and Instagram's lackluster appeal. I suspect we'll start seeing advertisers peel away, followed by a few savvy investors first. Let's jus…

To me facebook seems a lot quieter but instagram is as busy with stuff as ever. We definitely have differences of opinion on that. Especially if TikTok is shut down (fingers crossed) most people will fall back on Instagram Reels.

It's a different type of activity though.

Facebook and Instagram's (pre-Reels) strength was that it was easy to have accounts of all sizes engage and be engaged with. Whether you have 10 or 100000 friends/followers/etc, the barrier of entry to have some engagement wasn't high and it encouraged people with all sizes of accounts to post, comment, and "like". Social networking felt much more intentional with these platforms.

Instagram Reels certainly has a lot of activity, but it's activity is driven by users passively consuming popular and trending media. This isn't a bad model, but it's a shift away from intentional social networking.

Ultimately, I think Reels is more evidence that Meta has had a user engagement problem for a while. Their current strategy for Instagram seens to be to hope passive consumption keeps everyone in the app and fall back on the "town square" model for comments as a means of engagement.

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