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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

#491

Post by Seattle3503 »

> As a result, we’re going to start treating civic content from people and Pages you follow on Facebook more like any other content in your feed, and we will start ranking and showing you that content based on explicit signals (for example, liking a piece of content) and implicit signals (like viewing posts) that help us predict what’s meaningful to people. We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see.

IMO the concerning part is hidden at the bottom. They want to go back to shoveling politics in front of users. They say it is based on viewing habits, but just because I stop my car to watch a train wreck doesn't mean I want to see more train wrecks. I just can't look away. FB makes theirnacrions sound noble or correct, but this is self serving engagement optimization.

Social media sites should give users an explicit lever to see political content or not. Maybe I'll turn it on for election season and off the rest of the year. Some political junkies will always have it set to "maximum". IMO that is better FB always making that decision for me.

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

#492

Post by matrix87 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #303
matrix87 wrote: post #151

during the biden administration they were expected to shift their moderation policies to fit in with the political ideology currently in the white house now it's been normalized and the other party is doing it. but the news outlets have waited until now to start crying wolf?

>they were expected to shift their moderation policies to fit in with the political ideology currently in the white house They were expected to? Hmm, hot take.

I mean, they were, e.g. the Twitter files. Or all of the handwavey threats around section 230

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

#493

Post by greenchair »

linuxhansl wrote: post #338

Regardless of what you think about this step I find it disconcerting that we can now disagree on facts. For example: - whether crime is up or down - whether the earth is warming or not - how many people live in poverty - what the rate of inflation is - how much social security or healthcare costs - etc These are all verifiable, measurable facts, and yet, we somehow manage to disagree. We always used to disagree and t…

No we don't have verifieable measurable facts for those areas. Standards and definitions vary by location and change over time. Don't forget the corruption and manipulation of numbers to achieve desired outcomes.

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

#494

Post by encoderer »

aimazon wrote: post #401
mhh__ wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People don't care about facts" is such an asinine reactionary way of thinking about macro dynamics in the world. It has no predictive power at all.

We don’t. People are social. We care about what the people in our community think, whether it’s factually accurate or not is inconsequential. Those of us wasting our lives arguing on the internet in the pursuit of truth are a tiny minority of atypical people. People yearn for the warm embrace of affirmation, not the cold hard truth challenging them at every turn.

You have too many abstractions between you and understanding other people.

Most people in your country are actually not that different from you.

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

#495

Post by ball_of_lint »

chrisco255 wrote: post #404
linuxhansl wrote: post #338

Regardless of what you think about this step I find it disconcerting that we can now disagree on facts. For example: - whether crime is up or down - whether the earth is warming or not - how many people live in poverty - what the rate of inflation is - how much social security or healthcare costs - etc These are all verifiable, measurable facts, and yet, we somehow manage to disagree. We always used to disagree and t…

What you're talking about is statistics. Statistics are not irrefutable facts. They're data points from a report, and they are often incredibly easy to manipulate depending on how the macro is assessed. Usually it's impossible to gather stats over large, complex, chaotic populations. Instead samples are taken and applied to the whole and interpolated in-between. And in that interpolation an incredible amount of manip…

If, in an argument, you want to go back to the data and do different or better statistics on it then by all means. I would _love_ to have a disagreement with someone that went in that direction and we could discuss the intricacies of how to interpret the information that we have. I have my own gripes about the statistics done by various groups, with changing the inflation calculation being a recent example of the bad side of this: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/technology/inflation-meas...

However, I think the key point here still stands. Most disagreements (at least in my experience) are not reaching this level, and are instead diving towards anti-intellectualism and dismissing statistics and data interpretation wholesale.

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

#496

Post by caseyy »

linuxhansl wrote: post #338

Regardless of what you think about this step I find it disconcerting that we can now disagree on facts. For example: - whether crime is up or down - whether the earth is warming or not - how many people live in poverty - what the rate of inflation is - how much social security or healthcare costs - etc These are all verifiable, measurable facts, and yet, we somehow manage to disagree. We always used to disagree and t…

This is because we have started accepting kritik-style debates as serious in the last two decades. Kritik used to be considered a bad faith technique but nowadays it’s considered a smart “trick” to win arguments. It’s when a debate participant doesn’t engage in debating the subject on its own merits, but instead challenges the premise of the question or a premise of the opponent’s position.

Crude example:

- I believe climate change is exaggerated because the Summers haven’t gotten notably hotter.

- If you say that, then you are unaware and uninformed. You must be watching Fox News.

Another:

- I think we are in a cost of living crisis, because every year, more US men are in crippling debt.

- Wow, look at your use of ableist misogynist language! Way to pretend women don’t suffer with debt 13% more than men!

Another:

- As society, we should be respectful of others online, because internet is an important (and sometimes only) social network some people have.

- Social media is unnatural, harmful and should be banned.

These are three failed debates, in each there is no clash of opinions, and no side provided meaningfully stronger arguments to win the debate. In fact, the two debate opponents stated opinions on different subjects entirely. And yet nowadays, this is how most people debate, it is considered appropriate, even in academia. In politics, this technique is considered a total winner.

So it is a bit like refusing to engage with the basic axioms when arguing mathematical proofs and just saying “math is for nerds”. We have totally accepted that as normal, as a society.

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

#497

Post by someonehere »

In summary, FB was pressured in 2016 to act on “foreign influence” the press hysterically parroted by politicians and leaders. FB bowed to the pressure. Now that the press lost all validity along with the X purchase, the press can no longer persuade Meta to “fact check.” FB is in a better spot to follow the X model of moderation. People arguing this is a bad move are ignoring the fact that FB was a censorship hotbed for the last four years.

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

#498

Post by collinmcnulty »

tqwhite wrote: post #339

The discussion here is painful to read. The 'neutral' discussion of product features and how Austin, TX is more liberal than the rest of Texas are grotesque. Zuckerberg says Facebook is going to be more "like X" and "work with Trump". It has changed its content policy to allow discussions that should horrify anyone. "In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when…

The timing also pretty clearly signals that this should be interpreted by bigoted individuals as a green light for harassing speech.

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

#499

Post by davidw »

encoderer wrote: post #486
davidw wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about actual employees, it's about signalling "Texas - yay!" and "California - booooo!" in order to make good with the incoming administration.

Grew up in Ohio. Always wanted to live in Silicon Valley. Been here 14 years now. Not leaving. But this is happening because of how terrible the California brand has become. Pretending our prestige and brand is the same as it was 20 (or even 10) years ago is not the answer.

That's a complicated topic, but part of that is because California has become a target for a number of people with money, influence and media outlets.

Not to say it doesn't have problems - like housing - that are self-inflicted. Just that a big part of the 'brand' problem is people targeting the state.

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

#500

Post by jay-barronville »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #485
jay-barronville wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well the most mainstream "news" source Fox news had to pay out almost a billion dollars for dis-information, so the biggest mainstream 'news' (though they did claim in court no one could possibly think they are news so it's ok for them to lie) institution kind of had to apologize.

> Well the most mainstream "news" source Fox news had to pay out almost a billion dollars for dis-information […]

The case in question did NOT go to trial, so your claim isn’t entirely correct, but yes, all mainstream “news” outlets (including Fox) abuse our trust by constantly lying to us—I don’t watch or trust any of them.

I remember when Rachel Maddow told us, “Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus? The virus does not infect them; the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else.” [0]

[0]: https://x.com/kevinnbass/status/1839635641019081160

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