Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

blog.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 40 posts

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#11

Post by jahaja »

taxicab wrote: post #9
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the “context” is never fairly applied. I want a little bubble that lights up every time a Democrat says we’re cutting school funding and teachers are under paid. It would just be a chart showing that school funding has tripled since I was a kid and showing American teachers are paid higher than the OECD average. This is a bread-and-butter Democrat assertion that’s made literally everywhere, but fact checkers…

I looked up your statistics and the reason there is nobody calling it out is because, first, that's not the claim being made (the argument is that they earn far less than equivalently trained professions which is objectively true no matter how you dice it) and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading. In fact, the gap in lifetime earn…

He's already tried to pull this one multiple times before, apparently hoping that nobody bothers looking things up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798212

No reply to that answer either. Just to repeat it two weeks later.

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#14

Post by vorpalhex »

zorpner wrote: post #8
dgrin91 wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me REALLY nervous. Its one thing to have a discussion about the here and now and debate what is true or not. There are plenty of very good fact checkers to help with this. Wayback though is now going back and promoting a chosen context. History should be preserved for its integrity. If someone said something false let it stand on its own feet. Let individuals look at the content and context and decid…

The lesson of the past ten years should be that most people are incapable of looking at the content and context and deciding on their own if it is true, and additionally are being subjected to a constant barrage of paid-for (whether by advertisers, corporate interests, or state actors) psychologically manipulative content. I'm unsure about this and I don't know the answer -- but it's definitely not Present All Things…

Ah yes we should make sure we tell people The Truth, with warnings on Not Truth, such that they don't make Wrong Decisions.

The next step will be to "sanitize" Wrong Think from the archive, lest some poor easily convinced soul be led to it.

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#16

Post by csnover »

dgrin91 wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me REALLY nervous. Its one thing to have a discussion about the here and now and debate what is true or not. There are plenty of very good fact checkers to help with this. Wayback though is now going back and promoting a chosen context. History should be preserved for its integrity. If someone said something false let it stand on its own feet. Let individuals look at the content and context and decid…

Adding context and giving suggestions for additional material is something librarians and museum curators have done probably since the dawn of the profession, and it’s all I can see happening here. I’m really struggling with your take that this is somehow a new or bad development.

Have you ever been to a library and asked for help finding something and received a suggestion that if you are looking to read X, you might also want to read Y? Have you ever been to a museum and seen a placard next to an object describing its historical significance? How is this somehow different? Because it’s “on the internet”?

IA is not compelling anyone to click on the link to PolitiFact, or the link to the report on foreign interference, or the link to the Medium content policy. They aren’t deleting or rewriting the content of the page. They’re attaching a link.

Do you think that a book or a documentary destroys the “integrity” of the original material by adding a non-destructive narration or voice over that offers extra context?

How could someone can even do what you want, to “look at the content and context”, if IA doesn’t provide any context?

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#18

Post by pessimizer »

taxicab wrote: post #9
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the “context” is never fairly applied. I want a little bubble that lights up every time a Democrat says we’re cutting school funding and teachers are under paid. It would just be a chart showing that school funding has tripled since I was a kid and showing American teachers are paid higher than the OECD average. This is a bread-and-butter Democrat assertion that’s made literally everywhere, but fact checkers…

I looked up your statistics and the reason there is nobody calling it out is because, first, that's not the claim being made (the argument is that they earn far less than equivalently trained professions which is objectively true no matter how you dice it) and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading. In fact, the gap in lifetime earn…

> and, second, teachers really are paid less on a per hour basis than the OECD average which makes your statistic super misleading.

Do you see how this turns into editorial really fast?

The WaPo and Politifact are particularly trash "fact check" brands. They're pure editorials.

edit: To hopefully ward off reflexive political downvotes: my politics are the opposite of rayiner's, I have the opposite opinion on what teacher pay should be, and certainly would argue about what the historical record shows about it. I wouldn't have my argument pop up in a tooltip when you mouse over rayiner's comment, and I certainly wouldn't call it a "fact check."

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#19

Post by csnover »

vorpalhex wrote: post #14
zorpner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson of the past ten years should be that most people are incapable of looking at the content and context and deciding on their own if it is true, and additionally are being subjected to a constant barrage of paid-for (whether by advertisers, corporate interests, or state actors) psychologically manipulative content. I'm unsure about this and I don't know the answer -- but it's definitely not Present All Things…

Ah yes we should make sure we tell people The Truth, with warnings on Not Truth, such that they don't make Wrong Decisions. The next step will be to "sanitize" Wrong Think from the archive, lest some poor easily convinced soul be led to it.

Your first sentence could be a literal description of the concept of education: telling people the truth and warning them about false truths so they don’t make wrong decisions.

Your second sentence is a bad faith slippery slope fallacy designed to trigger emotional reactions that reaffirm group-think in other people. This seems ironic to me since you seem to be expressing a lot of worry about other people causing group-think.

Re: Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages

#20

Post by pessimizer »

vorpalhex wrote: post #14
zorpner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson of the past ten years should be that most people are incapable of looking at the content and context and deciding on their own if it is true, and additionally are being subjected to a constant barrage of paid-for (whether by advertisers, corporate interests, or state actors) psychologically manipulative content. I'm unsure about this and I don't know the answer -- but it's definitely not Present All Things…

Ah yes we should make sure we tell people The Truth, with warnings on Not Truth, such that they don't make Wrong Decisions. The next step will be to "sanitize" Wrong Think from the archive, lest some poor easily convinced soul be led to it.

I suspect the next step will be to license journalists, with a background check searching for Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban and Iranian connections.
Post reply on HN