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Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong

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

#21

Post by 300bps »

danuker wrote: post #10
dragonwriter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are actually being labelled as false as part of the justification , there is at least an arguable case of defamation, stronger in a jurisdiction like Britain where truth of the damaging published characterization is a defense that the defendant must prove rather than falsity of the claim being an element that the plaintiff must prove.

Defamation by... censoring?

I think from a legal standpoint, they’re on firm ground with simply censoring them under the “missing context” category. Everything under the sun could arguably be said to be missing context.

Where they went too far is with their “hoax alert” and their headline that said their article was false without evidence.

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

#22

Post by bobcostas55 »

The entire idea of "fact checking" on social media is premised on the notion that fact checkers have some kind of superior epistemic merit compared to the checkees. When you're fact checking random people or journalists that may or may not be true, but why does Zucc think facebook's checkers are superior to the BMJ? What are the fact checker's credentials, and most importantly what is their track record? The extreme opaqueness of the process is certainly not an encouraging signal.

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

#23

Post by Blahah »

danuker wrote: post #10
dragonwriter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are actually being labelled as false as part of the justification , there is at least an arguable case of defamation, stronger in a jurisdiction like Britain where truth of the damaging published characterization is a defense that the defendant must prove rather than falsity of the claim being an element that the plaintiff must prove.

Defamation by... censoring?

Defamation by claiming that the authors of the article in question were lying, or perpetrating a hoax.

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

#24

Post by denton-scratch »

fabian2k wrote: post #8
azalemeth wrote: post #4

Frankly, if I were the BMJ I would start contacting lawyers and issuing writs. I'm unsure of exactly what or where or how , but the principle that peer-reviewed scientific articles are being shadowbanned as "false" and unshareable by a for-profit, unqualified US organisation is...deeply offensive. A large lawsuit by an organisation such as the BMJ (an impact factor 40 journal first published in its current form in ab…

Just to clarify, the article in question is not a scientific paper in BMJ. It's a feature, so pretty much like a regular news article.

> pretty much like a regular news article.

...but not a "news blog", as claimed by Lead Stories.

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

#25

Post by mfcl »

sascha_sl wrote: post #19
jjgreen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there will be response articles which expose those errors as such, a consensus will be reached and we will move on to other issues. That is the nature of scientific discourse. Expecting everyone to shut up just because you shout "ANTIVAX" is not.

We all know it this ideal of "just debunk it" doesn't work. Not just because a correction doesn't have the same reach, but because one audience will actively reject and ignore the evidence and then continue using the article on social media as "evidence" itself.

I want to say the opposite. The truth tends to win on the long run. On the other hand, allowing institutions to simply censor whatever it does not like by pressing a button never ended well.

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

#26

Post by NoPie »

fabian2k wrote: post #20
undecisive wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the article in question: > Footnotes > Provenance and peer review: commissioned; externally peer reviewed. While it is an article, it has (in theory) been peer reviewed. Compare that to this article: > Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally reviewed.

Interesting, but really hard to interpret what that means in this case. Peer review is for scientific content, and there is no science in this article. It's investigative reporting, so this would require an entirely different kind of review, and probably not one by scientists.

Nothing prevents to peer review an investigative article. Clinical trials are complicated and reviewers were probably professionals who have at least some experience in clinical trials.

Clinical trials are all about science. Everything is important, including data collection.

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

#27

Post by gadders »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #22

The entire idea of "fact checking" on social media is premised on the notion that fact checkers have some kind of superior epistemic merit compared to the checkees. When you're fact checking random people or journalists that may or may not be true, but why does Zucc think facebook's checkers are superior to the BMJ? What are the fact checker's credentials, and most importantly what is their track record? The extreme…

I think they are mostly journalists that couldn't get hired on at a major newspaper.

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

#28

Post by lanerobertlane »

frereubu wrote: post #5
azalemeth wrote: post #4

Frankly, if I were the BMJ I would start contacting lawyers and issuing writs. I'm unsure of exactly what or where or how , but the principle that peer-reviewed scientific articles are being shadowbanned as "false" and unshareable by a for-profit, unqualified US organisation is...deeply offensive. A large lawsuit by an organisation such as the BMJ (an impact factor 40 journal first published in its current form in ab…

Deeply offensive doesn't mean illegal. Unless there's a law that you can point at which bans this, there's no point in hiring lawyers because any challenge will be immediately thrown out. The real issue here in my view is that Facebook - a private company with no legal requirement to keep publishing anything that people post - is becoming the de facto news source for vast numbers of people. And, God help me, I have s…

in the UK, where the journal is based, I think the libel laws would more than cover 'a law which bans this'.

English libel law permits individuals and companies to go to court to defend their reputations against the harms caused by false and defamatory publications made by others.

Since the statement that this is misleading, and a 'HOAX CLAIM', it would fall into "A statement is defamatory if its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant."[1]

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/26

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

#29

Post by differentView »

alignItems wrote: post #17

The BMJ itself tightly controls who can say what on its platform, and that is precisely why it gained its reputation. Granted, Facebook is supposed to be more open for everyone, but it’s still their platform, their reputation, and they can decide what to filter - and people can decide to take their discussions somewhere else.

But when the largest font describes it as "Partly False Information", it's more than just excluding information, it's making an accusation.

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

#30

Post by Veen »

alignItems wrote: post #17

The BMJ itself tightly controls who can say what on its platform, and that is precisely why it gained its reputation. Granted, Facebook is supposed to be more open for everyone, but it’s still their platform, their reputation, and they can decide what to filter - and people can decide to take their discussions somewhere else.

The issue is not whether Facebook, as a private company, can filter whatever it likes, but whether it does so reliably and truthfully in a way its users can trust.

Facebook can indeed decide what to filter, but its also permissible for other organizations to make users aware that Facebook may filter and display misleading messages based on inaccurate fact checking and that the fact-checking organization that caused the filtering defamed a reputable publication by falsely alleging that their content is a hoax.

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