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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

#651

Post by mrguyorama »

qingcharles wrote: post #213
FergusArgyll wrote: post #202

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.

But community notes have been around since before Musk bought twitter and they have not had any effect at reducing the amount of outright falsehoods passed off as "news" on that hellscape. Why do people keep championing it as a success story when it demonstrably hasn't helped?

Frankly, if it worked, it would have been removed by now. It's "controlled opposition" basically.

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

#652

Post by timeon »

raxxor wrote: post #7
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…

How would fact checkers access the 90% of private content? And should they? I don't think so, even if the respective private content is questionable. The EU goes its own way with trusted flaggers, which is more or less the least sensible option. It won't take long until bounds are overstepped and legal content gets flagged. Perhaps it already happened. This is not a solution to even an ill-defined problem.

Yes. Those are all bad solutions. Banning social networks would be probably better.

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

#653

Post by tptacek »

jimbokun wrote: post #516
davidw wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fact checking, Community Notes, whatever you want to call it, is inherently political.

To be clear: I absolutely do not dispute this. But in 2025 it seems pretty clear that you cannot run a mainstream large-scale social network without some kind of moderation, so every platform is going to do something. And all I'm saying is: what Facebook was doing before was bad, just as a product experience. Just wretched. Solved no problems, mostly surfaced stuff I wouldn't have paid attention to in the first place.

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

#655

Post by mrguyorama »

matrix87 wrote: post #492
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

The twitter files that showed that accounts of conservatives got special treatment that explicitly prevented them from facing consequences of breaking site rules?

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

#656

Post by irisgrunn »

jimbokun wrote: post #514
davidw wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can’t help but roll my eyes at mindless euphemisms like “attacking trans people.” There are very serious issues involving trans people with no easy answers. Like allowing minors access to irreversible treatments. Like women’s sports. Like the safety of women only spaces. I bring this up because on so many questions like these, the progressive reaction is to shut down any discussion and isolate themselves from expos…

[flagged]

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

#657

Post by timeon »

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…

> but at least for the Threads app

Sorry for OT but what is the point of Threads? Twitter/X is already thing if you do not care about corporate-owned social media.

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

#659

Post by ternnoburn »

lobf wrote: post #478
ternnoburn wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

...how do you mean? What are you defining 'left of center' as?

The Left Right dichotomy is a fairly broad set of political ideas, especially globally. The Left typically includes socialists, communists, anarchists, labor movements, syndicalists, and social democrats. Typically, these movements are collectivist, whether that's collectivist in a big government or collectivist in small local communities.

Classical liberal policies, looks those of the Democrats and Republicans, are right of center.

An example, when was the last time the Democratic Party pushed for nationalization of a whole industry? Eg aerospace, rail, or energy? What about offering food and housing for everyone? Abolishing private property? Those are leftist policies.

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

#660

Post by timeon »

megous wrote: post #185
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #134

Perhaps, given the situation with Twitter, now "X", more web and mobile app users will come to understand that despite its size, Facebook is someone's personal website. Like "X", one person has control. Zuckerberg controls over 51% of the company's voting shares. Meta is not a news organization. It has no responsibility to uphold journalistic standards. It does not produce news; in fact, it produces no content at all…

News organizations have no responsibility either. And I don't see why publisher of news even if they just re-publish should not be held to some responsibilities, like eg. abstaining from nefarious manipulation of content people see on their platform.

Not sure about US but unlike Facebook, news publishers are regulated by law where I live.
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