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Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

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Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#101

Post by jasonheh »

kick wrote: post #69
jasonheh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do go to Facebook for their news. Whether you like it or not, or think those people are fools, it's true. What Facebook decides is deserving of censorship matters because we have to live with those fools.

If you believe that Facebook is something more than a toy, then it seems reasonable that they'd have freedom of expression, press, speech, so on. As such, if people choose to get their news from Facebook, it's no different than them getting their news from Reuters, FOX, the New York Times, or Bloomberg. Surely you wouldn't imply any of them wouldn't have editorial control. Comment sections on news outlets can remove…

Legally im sure they can do almost whatever they want in terms of filtering/censoring/etc, so I don't think talking about their legal obligations or rights is very interesting.

They have behaved a certain way for their 15-20ish year history, and I'd argue that it was mostly as a neutral platform for communication, not really anything resembling a publisher, and they've gained an enormous userbase under this model. I think this is the correct way for a platform like facebook to operate, and that's in part why I use their platform.

I don't welcome them deciding to fundamentally change how they operate and begin filtering more content, especially due to what I view as partisan political reasons.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#102

Post by okintheory »

ummonk wrote: post #39
okintheory wrote: post #15

It seems to me that there's an obvious alternative to checking facts, but it's one that scares FB much more than fact checking. Suppose they were transparent! Suppose it was easy to see unobfuscated statistics about who is paying for what on FB. Suppose journalists could easily look up how much white nationalists are spending on targeted advertising in each US state. Suppose we could see how much Exxon, Chevron, Koch…

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ has most of what you’re asking for I believe.

That's funny! Did you try it? I find it impossible to get any useful information out of it.

Literally the first ad that Facebook shows on my "newsfeed" is by "Jellop", but when I search for Jellop in their ad library, I get no results. In fact, I can't seem to get any results at all, regardless of what I search for, or what I select as the country.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#103

Post by mansion7 »

protonfish wrote: post #85
xienze wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that many of the things shared on Facebook et al are subject to debate on what the actual truth of the matter is, subject to one’s political biases. We’re not necessarily talking about content stating that the sky is green but say, the accusations Tara Reade made against Joe Biden.

That is ridiculous. Nobody is asking FB to takes sides on the Reade vs Biden issue. We are asking them to remove QAnon level insanity.

As you have no proof "Q" is not real, you would be censoring people's speculations based on your own speculations.

And since there is no objective proof of God, the supernatural, witchcraft, numerology, astrology, aliens, or the efficacy of communism, you'd better be ready to censor a lot of folks.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#104

Post by ummonk »

okintheory wrote: post #102
ummonk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ has most of what you’re asking for I believe.

That's funny! Did you try it? I find it impossible to get any useful information out of it. Literally the first ad that Facebook shows on my "newsfeed" is by "Jellop", but when I search for Jellop in their ad library, I get no results. In fact, I can't seem to get any results at all, regardless of what I search for, or what I select as the country.

Perhaps I misunderstood. The tool shows any ads on political and social issues, which should cover all the ads you mentioned (e.g. Exxon, Koch, insurance cos.), but won't cover Jellop ads.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#105

Post by okintheory »

ummonk wrote: post #104
okintheory wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny! Did you try it? I find it impossible to get any useful information out of it. Literally the first ad that Facebook shows on my "newsfeed" is by "Jellop", but when I search for Jellop in their ad library, I get no results. In fact, I can't seem to get any results at all, regardless of what I search for, or what I select as the country.

Perhaps I misunderstood. The tool shows any ads on political and social issues, which should cover all the ads you mentioned (e.g. Exxon, Koch, insurance cos.), but won't cover Jellop ads.

That is a fair point! I did mainly mean to focus on social and political issues. I guess the question is what counts as transparent. In my mind, it should not be as easy as creating a new "page" to hide the connection between different sources.

Perhaps I'm being cynical, but my impression is that FB is aiming to provide just enough information that people will say "they're doing that already", and not enough that people can really understand what's going on. But I might be wrong.

The Ad Library claims to show all active ads, not just political/social ones. That's presumably true, but hard to verify or make use of. The "Jellop" ad that I couldn't find was missing precisely because the page name was something else they'd created for that ad.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#106

Post by jumpman500 »

Frondo wrote: post #82
jumpman500 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't save people from their own stupidity. I'd rather have stupid thoughts said out loud so they can be analyzed and detected rather than repressed inside ones own mind. I think that the non-sense that a lot of people are preaching online shows how much our education system is failing us. If this was covered up I might be able to delude myself into thinking differently about that. In modern times it's easy to on…

I've used this analogy in another thread, and I'd like to post it again to understand better the differences between public health and traffic laws. "You can't save people from their own stupidity." Agreed, but how does that explain the rights-restraining acceptability of red lights and speed limits? Red lights tell me, a law-obeying driver, that I must stop periodically while I drive through a city. Speed limits tel…

Nah not snarky.

The difference is mostly that Facebook is a company creating restrictions for speech on their platform based on the views of employees and shareholders of the company on what speech should be acceptable on their platform. Rules of the road are determined by governments and all people have stake in the process.

For most publishers I don't mind them having their own rules on what speech they would publish because there are other publishers you can go to, but Facebook has almost a monopoly on social media. And because it's free for anyone to sign up it's almost impossible to compete with their network. If you want to post or publish social media content and have a lot of people view it you basically have to use Facebook's network. So you have to obey Facebook's rules.

It'd be like if a road company owned 90% of America's road and had rules you had to follow in order to drive on them. Sure there could be existing government rules of the road, but they wouldn't really matter because you have to follow the road companies rules on 90% of all roads.

It's fine to have restrictions on freedom of speech. We have them already. You can't lie under oath, you can't make death threats, you can't yell fire in a crowded room, etc. Now because of Facebook's monopoly they get to choose what speech is acceptable and what isn't at least for most social media. We don't really have any insight into what choices were made and why they were made either. I would rather have governments and their people decide this in courts and legal system. We at least we deserve more transparency into how Facebook chooses to filter and select content for people to view.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#107

Post by TomMckenny »

dang wrote: post #96
TomMckenny wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the enormously popular post telling parents to make their kids drink Lysol should not have even the slightest warning next to it because the poster could be like Galileo or Einstein?

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying to avoid the tedious, nasty, predictable road to hell. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note this one: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

It might seem that way but, as the many posts bellow show, that is literally what is being advocated. There should be no disclaimer on posts advocating drinking Lysol because: the parents would have hurt the kid anyway, there are already warnings on the bottle and, the sole remedy should be punishing the parent. It is Poe's law incarnate.

Re: Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?

#108

Post by dang »

TomMckenny wrote: post #107
dang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying to avoid the tedious, nasty, predictable road to hell. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note this one: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

It might seem that way but, as the many posts bellow show, that is literally what is being advocated. There should be no disclaimer on posts advocating drinking Lysol because: the parents would have hurt the kid anyway, there are already warnings on the bottle and, the sole remedy should be punishing the parent. It is Poe's law incarnate.

I know (we all know) how hard it can be hard to let go when other people say wrong or otherwise bad things on the internet, but it's a skill we all need to develop. If you simply foment against the badness and wrongness, it only adds more badness. HN is an experiment in trying to co-create a place on the internet that doesn't collapse into rancor this way. Maybe you don't owe the person you're arguing with better (though maybe you do), but for sure you owe this community better if you're posting here.

Even if your interpretation was accurate, no one is going to give their kids Lysol to drink because of any comment in this thread. Meanwhile you do actual damage to this place by posting in the flamewar style.

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