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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

#291

Post by MrsPeaches »

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #91
MrsPeaches wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask where this quote came from? It seems utterly nonsensical to me. Edit: maybe it’s Politics with an uppercase P rather than politics with a lowercase p? That would make more sense.

Sorry, I have no source and also I think the actual quote goes something like this (I just tried to follow the template from the parent comment): "If art gets involved with politics, it stops being art and becomes propaganda." I think it was some kind of retort to the Frankfurt school[0],[1] philosophical movement. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_c…

> If art gets involved with politics, it stops being art and becomes propaganda.

Does that actually make any sense to you?

Would you consider Guernica by Picasso[1] propaganda?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

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

#292

Post by dundarious »

8note wrote: post #283
dundarious wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If the proper ideological context is "we want to go to war with Iraq" The statement "Iraq has WMDs" switches from false to true Similarly, "we want to go to war with China" vs "we don't want to go to war with China" switches "the virus is a lab leak" to "the virus is not a lab leak"

There are definitely lineups like that, yes. It's a bit unfair to put all lab leak stuff in the China sabre-rattling camp, but there's plenty like that too.

Havana syndrome is another one. I was accused of being a unwitting stooge for Putin (on HN) for doubting "Havana syndrome", or at least saying it's also really quite plausible that there's nothing there -- no weapon, no attacks. Now the CIA itself says it does not exist. Which is an interesting position to be in because based on historical precedent you should never trust a word the CIA says, unless they're admitting "we did that"!

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

#293

Post by woobilicious »

MauranKilom wrote: post #143
etherael wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No one is saying "in an ideal world" that's a strawman.

Fact checkers, corporations, the media, the state, and any of the elite are just people and so extremely irrational, Why on earth would you want to give any of them power above and beyond the general public, it's so easy to manipulate the so called "rational" with selective publication of information. Do we just forget that covid human to human spreading was "fake news" for an entire month, and basically changed the course of history because some bureaucracy decided it had more authority on the matter than a doctor treating the patients.

Or what about the "Ricard Spencer is a nice guy in Germany" effect, because people in Europe can't see the hate speech he makes, so they think he's fairly reasonable person.

To me it seems that it's the general public, from Snowden to Li Wenliang that is keeping fake news in check, not the elite, keeping the public in check.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #285
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think individuals like FredPret have never tried to run any kind of forum or publicly editable resource on the internet. Bad actors telling simple lies for lol's and/or profit do exist and they will ruin communities. Inline fact checking is a feature of all successful forums, whether the fact checking is done by the institution or the community is immaterial to the true existence of the need. If computers with all…

Thinking that one can compare a checksum with a factchecker is exactly the kind of misunderstanding that I’m referring to. A checksum can be computed and compared. It is simple. A political statement will be higher up the ladder of abstraction and cannot be parsed as precisely or understood out of context. It is complex. It can only be judged by millions of complex brains coming up with their own nuanced opinions. Wi…

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by slavik81 »

willcipriano wrote: post #177
nailer wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It's kind of beside the point, but Mohamed Atta would never be considered a domestic terrorist. He travelled to the United States on a tourist visa, specifically to engage in terrorism. That disqualifies his actions from being 'domestic'.

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

#297

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

> but why does Zucc think facebook's checkers are superior to the BMJ

Because they are his fact checkers. It isn't an argument against Zuckerberg or a condemnation, this is just the obvious explanation.

Whoever came up with the concept of fact checkers plainly wanted to establish some form of authoritative voice or judge. I believe the concept is futile and the motives often dishonest. It will not work for whatever reason though.

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

#298

Post by nailer »

ModernMech wrote: post #272
nailer wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Terrorism has a pretty well accepted definition - violent acts against civilians to gain political power. >If we go by this well accepted definition, then almost every government on the planet fits, particularly the US government. Violent acts specifically targeted against civilians to gain political power. > I'm sure you will now argue a caveat and qualifications to the well accepted definition you presented abov…

Just to answer your other post > do you think Mohammed Atta was a terrorist I think he was a terrorist, but he's not a convicted terrorist. I don't believe he's been convicted of anything to this day. > Violent acts specifically targeted against civilians to gain political power. Like I said, the definition of terrorism presented was characterized as "well accepted", but as I predicted, you've now presented an amendm…

> as I predicted, you've now presented an amendment to what was already purported to be definitional.

Please read the post you’re replying to, which specifically addressed this point.

> let's not turn this into personal attacks

You have not been personally attacked. I insisted you were an intelligent person and understood the logical conclusion that terrorism has to be targeted at civilians, and your actions are in bad faith. Criticising your actions is not a personal attack.

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

#299

Post by raxxorrax »

tablespoon wrote: post #219
jerf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>> "The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false," > Prove it, I mean, isn't it obvious from recent history that social media fact checking emerged as a band aid , because of demonstrably false blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery were spreading like wildfire on social media? And at every step of the way the social media compa…

> false blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery

You start to assume that criticism against your position comes from one of these places. It is a real strawman for once. Pretty sure that the media story of Russian election interference was made up by PR agencies and we heard about it for month. Nobody asked real questions and demanded evidence. Voters were lied to and it was easy since people that believed in QAnon acted as a distraction. But in the end it was much more damaging because official sources mirrored lies.

> "Corporation" is a loaded word with negative connotations

Corporations do what they believe is best in their strategic interest. That does not make them evil. But they cannot ever defend any moral position that runs counter to their goals and management has a responsibility to all their employees.

This is not a negative connotation, it is just the reality of the situation. And if you accept that fact there can be quite a productive exchange with corporations, even with their handicap on ethics.

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

#300

Post by raxxorrax »

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.

No, it was preventative to hinder people to jump to false conclusions while there cannot be definite certainty about it.

I do condemn this lie and believe people had a right to know that it is a possibility. But the condition for that would be that people are able to restrain themselves to not act on suspicions. This was not fully the case.

But even with that they should have come clean with their suspicions and adapt them as further evidence surfaced.

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