Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by jerf » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #95

wolframhempel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, there are fundamental problems with the concept of "fact-checking". Often the "fact" is just the majority consent, as e.g., demonstrated by the banning of the Wuhan lab leak theory prior to it becoming mainstream. But more broadly, there is a stark imbalance between the resources of the fact-checker (a few minutes or hours to decide) and the author who (e.g. in this case) conducted a month-long, in-depth i…

Be careful not to jump the gun here. The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false, and it's to their credit that social media platforms link a refutation. But when you have a huge number of stories, there are going to be edge cases, and BMJ got snared by one here. As I understand it: BMJ found legit problems with one vaccine's clinical trial. But this kind of thing gets seized…

"The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false,"

Prove it, and prove that the underpaid non-specialist moderator who labelled it as such was justified even if they were right.

Facebook is not and can not be an arbiter of truth in the abstract, and in the concrete the specific people doing the work certainly are not. Where are Facebook getting these experts who know so much about all the hot issues of the day? Are they calling Harvard PhDs in to look at this specific post? Are they getting people with decades of experience in the fields to debate and come to consensus about whether or not this post is in the gray area or shading to the white?

Or are the "fact checkers" random shmoes being paid a pittance to do even less due diligence on what is being posted than the person writing the original post, just checking things off a list that probably fits on a handful of sheets of paper? Assuming it even gets that far, of course, because it's probably also largely just an AI.

Fact checking is a marketing term scam. There is no such thing, or at the very least, Facebook moderators staring at things for a few seconds and clicking based on official Facebook dogma isn't it. Facebook moderators are no different than any other random poster on Facebook, they've just got a particular party line to enforce and a special megaphone nobody else gets. That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?

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

#172

Post by AvocadoPanic » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

apatters wrote: post #93

mensetmanusman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-stop-labeling-posts-questi... Arguable whether adding a ‘fake news’ label is censorship.

This is an important distinction. Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. What it is though is confirmation that Facebook is a publisher which publishes editorial opinions about things. (It's incidental that they claim their opinions are facts, publishers have been doing that since the beginning of time.) The only real question is why the government exempts this particular corporation…

Look over here and watch me wave my hand while I say 'platform' over and over.

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

#173

Post by djohnston » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #145

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…

> We can and do already have both, on multiple forums, and even on the big social media platform

Give me one example

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

#174

Post by addicted » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

Fact checking on media is bad.

The BMJ article, however, was horrible. Poorly sourced (based entirely on someone who was fired and didn't have the technical capabilities they had to judge the claims they were making) and the BMJ editors have basically descended into new age woo instead of real science (I am not sure if this affects the journal, but the specific article was BS).

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

#175

Post by nailer » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #123

SilasX wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful not to jump the gun here. The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false, and it's to their credit that social media platforms link a refutation. But when you have a huge number of stories, there are going to be edge cases, and BMJ got snared by one here. As I understand it: BMJ found legit problems with one vaccine's clinical trial. But this kind of thing gets seized…

I’m not sure about the prevalence but one major peeve of mine is when someone states, X is ten meters high. Fact check: Wrong, X is 9.6 meters high. It takes away credibility.

This is one of my favourites: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/

Snopes acknowledges that a convicted terrorist (ie, someone that targeted civilians to enact political change) sat on the board of a BLM funding body then concludes 'mixture' because there is no universally agreed definition of 'terrorism'.

> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."

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

#176

Post by nradov » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #170

jakobnissen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Facebook really censor the lab leak idea? Last I checked, Facebook only censored the idea that the virus was manufactured, not that it merely leaked - and that theory is still fringe.

The “lab leak” theory, “gain-of-function” and “manufactured virus” theory were deliberately conflated by mainstream media to suppress the former two.

In their defense, most members of the mainstream media are so scientifically ignorant that they probably don't even understand the difference between those theories.

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

#177

Post by willcipriano » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #175

mc32 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure about the prevalence but one major peeve of mine is when someone states, X is ten meters high. Fact check: Wrong, X is 9.6 meters high. It takes away credibility.

This is one of my favourites: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/ Snopes acknowledges that a convicted terrorist (ie, someone that targeted civilians to enact political change) sat on the board of a BLM funding body then concludes 'mixture' because there is no universally agreed definition of 'terrorism'. > In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter…

I'd like to watch them sweat if you forced them to fact check "The 9/11 hijackers were terrorists" using the same priors.

> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions of Mohamed Atta - leading a group of young men to hijack planes and fly them into buildings — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."

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

#178

Post by SilasX » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #171

SilasX wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful not to jump the gun here. The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false, and it's to their credit that social media platforms link a refutation. But when you have a huge number of stories, there are going to be edge cases, and BMJ got snared by one here. As I understand it: BMJ found legit problems with one vaccine's clinical trial. But this kind of thing gets seized…

"The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false," Prove it, and prove that the underpaid non-specialist moderator who labelled it as such was justified even if they were right. Facebook is not and can not be an arbiter of truth in the abstract, and in the concrete the specific people doing the work certainly are not. Where are Facebook getting these experts who know so much abou…

>Prove it, and prove that the underpaid non-specialist moderator who labelled it as such was justified even if they were right.

>Facebook is not and can not be an arbiter of truth in the abstract,

I'm not sure you're replying to the right comment, because I wasn't claiming that the BMJ story was demonstrably false[1], and I wasn't defending any action that labeled it as such. The action was to label it as "needs context", a category which specifically exists not to claim that the story is false.

So what are you replying to?

And are you really disputing that social media spreads a lot of clearly false stuff that isn't a mere matter of interpretation? Why do you consider that so implausible?

Edit: As exhibit A, I could probably cite your attribution of claims to me that I didn't make. Now, imagine all the people on social media without your exacting standards of integrity!

[1] Just the opposite -- I accepted that they found legit problems!

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

#179

Post by krapp » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #173

krapp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We can and do already have both, on multiple forums, and even on the big social media platform Give me one example

An example of what, the existence of other forums? Hacker News.

An example of different styles of moderation on the same platform? Reddit. Some subreddits are very loosely moderated, some are strictly moderated. See: /r/politics vs. /r/askhistorians.

An example of people moving to alternative platforms? Plenty of Youtubers are advertising their content on their own domains or services like Nebula because Youtube's own algorithms make monetization unreliable. Whang and Corridor Digital are two examples I can come up with off the top of my head.

An example of multiple points of view being expressed on large forums, despite the existence of fact checking? That should be obvious - discussion about these topics was never actually stopped or even hindered by the presence of fact checks. You can still find plenty of anti-vaxx content on every platform.

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

#180

Post by dundarious » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

ewidar wrote: post #137

aa-jv wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fact checking is better referred to as "authority enforcement" or "mainstream validation". Here's how you know the fact checkers are actually propagandists: you can't find their name or their credentials, or who they work for/paid them.

It might be true for the fact checking groups described here, but to state that as a general case is incorrect. > Fact checking is better referred to as "authority enforcement" or "mainstream validation". Fact checking at its core is about analysing assertions that can be objectively verified. Fact checking must bring forth strong references/sources or proofs to either go in or against the initial assertions. > Here'…

> Fact checking at its core is about analysing assertions that can be objectively verified.

"Missing context" does not meet this standard of objective verification. Many fact-checking desks and organizations dish out Pinocchios in cases where the "proper context" is political/ideological.