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

Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

bmj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 307 posts

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#141

Post by robmccoll »

evancoop wrote: post #135

On some level, this is the strongest argument in favor of Facebook's original position - that they oughtn't be responsible for distinguishing fact from fiction. Ask any entity to discern truth at scale and there will be errors and vociferous debates. So, what's preferable? Unfettered venom and lies mixed with the best attempts at rationality or the discourse moderated by unseen arbiters and algorithms? Ideally, there…

Neither. Change the law to make platforms like Facebook accountable for the content published on them. Here's how you do that without damaging speech or making platform companies impossible: make platform protections dependent on revenue stream. If you are paid by the author to publish their work, you are a protected platform and it isn't your content. If you make money by selling advertising alongside the content or by selling a subscription to the content stream, you are exposed to libel lawsuits, incitement, hate speech, false advertising, etc. The rest will sort itself out.

Previously journalism cleaned itself up because it could be held accountable for outright lies. There is incentive to make outrageous claims because outrage sells. The balance is to create civil and criminal repercussions for provable lies. Lies spread on social media like wildfire because outrage sells and more eyeballs means more money for the platform, so the platform and the authors are incentivized to create and spread misinformation. There is no balance against it, so it will continue to grow.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#143

Post by MauranKilom »

etherael wrote: post #108
b112 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really bugs me here is, everyone yells at facebook, saying it is spreading propaganda, lies, societal harm, etc. Then, fact checking is attempted, and people claim censorship, an imperfect job, and the idea that "How dare they!" I literally loath, hate, and despise facebook. But come on, they're only doing this because everyone piled on them, claiming they must fact check and validate things. If I was facebook,…

They should indeed just ignore them, free speech wasn't arrived at as an optimal path by accident. Nothing changed to make it not-optimal. People need to adapt to not believing every stupid thing they read on the internet and actually thinking critically about things. The information streams of the world should not be tailored to the critical thinking ability of complete morons. It blows my mind we went from "trying…

> People need to adapt to not believing every stupid thing they read on the internet and actually thinking critically about things.

Sure, free speech is optimal if this happens. But what if it doesn't happen? People are extremely irrational [0], and that certainly won't change anytime soon. What changed is that we got better at exploiting that irrationality at scale.

There's no practical value in stating "in an ideal world, free speech is the solution". We don't live in that world, and we don't get any closer to it by complaining on HN about people not doing enough critical thinking.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#144

Post by sertraline »

civilized wrote: post #126

I'm not familiar with the fact checker Lead Stories and was curious what else they publish. I went to their Twitter feed [1] and something caught my eye, a story about the mortality of COVID vs the Spanish Flu [2]. The headline posted on Twitter was "Fact Check: COVID-19 IS Deadlier Than The Spanish Flu And Seasonal Flu" [3]. That headline shocked me, because if you follow the mortality statistics, there is no way CO…

Entire fact-checking thing is just the media under disguise, so click-baity articles are to be expected. They often try to present their claims as if the subject they write about is entirely false, even when it isn't. Moreover, it's not only that they are not qualified to write on most topics they write about: all fact-checking studios act under guidelines of IFCN, the "International Fact-Checking Network", so it doesn't matter whether cases like these happen on Facebook or Twitter, they are governed by the same entity that is likely to pursue its own political interests and bias.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#145

Post by krapp »

evancoop wrote: post #135

On some level, this is the strongest argument in favor of Facebook's original position - that they oughtn't be responsible for distinguishing fact from fiction. Ask any entity to discern truth at scale and there will be errors and vociferous debates. So, what's preferable? Unfettered venom and lies mixed with the best attempts at rationality or the discourse moderated by unseen arbiters and algorithms? Ideally, there…

False dichotomy. We can and do already have both, on multiple forums, and even on the big social media platforms. That's the case despite there being a few large entities, just as small restaurants continue to exist despite the existence of MacDonald's. The premise that "centralization" of the internet through FAANG gatekeepers forces people to adopt either one or another model as universal to either accept or reject those gatekeepers is fallacious. Centralization of attention isn't centralization of the network.

If this trend of fact-checking causes too much bad press and hassle for social media platforms, then platforms will simply stop fact checking or people will turn to alternatives. But the internet isn't going to turn into an Orwellian thoughtcrime dystopia nor will it turn entirely into 4chan.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#146

Post by [deleted] »

nickelpro wrote: post #129
peteradio wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inadvertent is no excuse and adding that "context" to the statement would tend to be misinformation as its not a valid excuse in the context of clinical trials governed by strict policy. Its "we followed policy" or "we failed to follow policy", FDA is not equipped to audit the entirety of all locations and there is a hell of a lot of trust involved. Pfizer getting their bell rung over these infractions should be expe…

The complete story of what happened is never misinformation. Greater and more complete sets of facts, un-editorialized, is the basis from which we draw out conclusions. That you view something through a certain binary lens does not make that the only valid lens through which the scientific community and the public will perceive something. An article that purports to be "just the facts" must report just that, the comp…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#147

Post by kgwgk »

germandiago wrote: post #52

In my country there is no media I believe less than the fact-checking one, officially given to friends of my current government to the wife of one of the most well-known people in Spain, for its channel "La Sexta", her name is Ana Pastor, wife of Ferreras. Besides controlling the media nearly as a monopoly, they receive favors from government like public money, when they are supposed to be private media. Same for Cad…

> they have been caught several times doing fact-checking by denying some fact, and when it was proved true

I loved the time there was a claim that you could spend three days in jail for such and such and they 'fact-checked' it as false because you could be detained for a maximum of 72 hours.

[Edit: I misremembered slightly. It was "a few days" but the point stands. Three days qualify as "a few".]

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#148

Post by pessimizer »

tpoacher wrote: post #132
pessimizer wrote: post #118

I'm an absolute enemy of both "fact checking" and corporate regulation of speech, in coordination with government, on forums as large and general as Facebook. That being said, this supporter of the Facebook action, who is well qualified to speak, offers very good arguments that this was not science but instead guest editorial by a regular woo/conspiracy pitcher, and another specific indictment of recent BMJ editorial…

I don't think a blogpost full of empty vitriolic arguments is the best rebuttal proving "the content was shit". It just shows this particular blogger had some axe to grind and cannot be taken seriously. My understanding of the issue is that the content itself was "not shit", but the timing and context in which it was likely to be perceived at the very least, associated it with less palatable implications, which may o…

Your characterization of the blog post lacks any reference to the blog post.

Here's one:

> Thacker’s main source was a “whistleblower” named Brook Jackson, who had worked at Ventavia for only two weeks. As I described, the allegations were either big nothingburgers that wouldn’t have affected the quality of the data (e.g., not appropriately using sharps containers to dispose of sharps) or were mainly insinuated and implied without actual evidence (e.g., unblinding or even falsifying clinical trial data). The article follows a familiar format for disinformation. Very definitive and serious accusations are leveled very early in the article, followed much later in the article by “facts” that do not actually substantiate such definitive and serious allegations.

-----

It might actually help if I include a better link, what I posted was actually a follow-up that was the first to come up in my history: https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/11/15/wtf-happened-to-t...

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#149

Post by tremon »

civilized wrote: post #126

I'm not familiar with the fact checker Lead Stories and was curious what else they publish. I went to their Twitter feed [1] and something caught my eye, a story about the mortality of COVID vs the Spanish Flu [2]. The headline posted on Twitter was "Fact Check: COVID-19 IS Deadlier Than The Spanish Flu And Seasonal Flu" [3]. That headline shocked me, because if you follow the mortality statistics, there is no way CO…

a bizarre case of cherry-picking

One man's cherry-picking is another man's apples-to-apples comparison. If you want to compare the base mortality of two diseases in different times, you do need to correct for differences in lifestyle and healthcare standards, otherwise the comparison is meaningless.

I have no opinion on the merits of the chosen comparison, but if your position is that it is fair to compare the baseline mortality rate of a pandemic that occurred right after a devastating world war with the baseline mortality rate of a pandemic under 21st-century health care and information systems, then I would also accuse you of cherry-picking your statistics: you need to include both the differences in healthcare and the differences in case numbers in your comparison.

Re: Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

#150

Post by MauranKilom »

alignItems wrote: post #53

From Lead Stories' Response [1]: > The "Missing Context" label applies to content that (while true or real) might still be misleading because crucial information is missing. Given the enormous engagement the article received and the kinds of reactions it elicited that certainly seems to have been the case here. “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial” > The BMJ.com h…

I didn't walk away with a clear picture: Was it "data integrity issues at 3 out of 153 sites [no idea about the remaining 150]" or was it "... [the others were fine]"?

The FDA audits were at some other sites of those 153 and reportedly did not find any incongruences. Which need not mean there were no issues, but it's certainly a prior.

Post reply on HN