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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

#301

Did the people who pushed the “Fact Checking” system ever consider what the people reading the misinformation the fact check would appear under would think when they saw the fact check? Because I really doubt the thing going through their head is “wow this might be wrong”. Trust in any government, media or institution has already been completely burned for those people and things like “Fact Checks” to them only makes…

That's a nice idea, but not actually true. > “When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content,” the company says. Moreover, if an article is rated “false” by their “fact checkers”, the network will “reduce its distribution”. This means that, while an author or poster is not aware that censorship is taking place, the network could be hiding their content so it is n…

> the network will “reduce its distribution”

That's a different subject, I'm talking about what's happening in the persons head when they see it. Not about if the network actually just shadow-censors it so they never see it in the first place.

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

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warning alongside links on Social Media for 'missing context', where the Article is being used as evidence if something it's not seems like a good logical end.

So, suppose you take a picture of the sea and some flat earther reposts it as proof that the earth is flat. You're ok with FB putting a note on your picture, if anyone wants to like or share it they get a little nag beforehand, further posts you make are placed under additional scrutiny and not shown on the feed? That's giving a lot of power to the wingnuts.

No, and you're stretching... I'm not a scientific journal for one thing..

But if I was, and if I posted a picture of the sea, saying I was performing an experiment to measure the circumference of the earth.. Then yes, missing context label would be relevant. I wouldn't claiming that the Earth is flat, and context outside the picture would account for why 1 data point my suggest otherwise.

> placed under additional scrutiny and not shown on the feed

I'm not sure the 'missing context' label affects visibility like others do.

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

#303
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> your actions are in bad faith

Why? What specifically did I say that is taken in bad faith? I've engaged with all your points, I've replied to you extensively, I've given responses with citations and spoken directly to the facts in front of us... and yet you say that my intent here is to deceive? How is that not attacking me, if you are saying my intent in posting here is deceptive? This sounds like an ad hominem argument to me. I'd prefer to stick to arguments relating to the actual Snopes article, and not your interpretation of my intentions.

If you really think I'm acting in bad faith, why are you still engaged in this conversation?

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

It really didn't, and neither did you. Let's just back up a step and get some perspective. The original claim under fact check was this:

  “This is convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg, she sits on the Board of Directors for the fundraising arm of Black Lives Matter. She was convicted for the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assoc.”
Let's sidestep the fact that the second sentence is flat out wrong; Rosenberg was not convicted for any bombings.

Your problem with the Snopes result of "mixed" is that it hinges on the idea that the definition of domestic terrorism is not universal or well accepted, making the determination that she's a terrorist subjective. You are arguing that there is in fact a generally well-accepted definition of terrorism. In support of your position, you proffered a definition that you claimed is a "logical conclusion" and flatly asserted it's generally well-accepted. Notably, you have not provided a citation for your claim, you haven't provided a proof (I assume you have a logical proof, since you said it's a logical conclusion), and you haven't grappled with the fact that your definition is so broad that it applies to literally all governments on Earth.

If you want to assert that your definition of terrorism is generally well-accepted, then prove it. Presumably you can do so without calling me disingenuous. If you can't, then I think you need to reevaluate your original premise: that there's one generally accepted definition of terrorism.

--

Here's my bottom line:

I have a problem with Susan Rosenberg and what she did. However, I would never describe her as a "convicted terrorist" because she wasn't convicted of terrorism. I also wouldn't describe her as being convicted of bombings because she wasn't convicted of bombings. This alone makes the "mixed" fact check verdict well-deserved, and frankly I would be very concerned if a fact checker labeled a thing as "true" which is demonstrably not.

I think it's important to point out that this individual harbors a violent past, but I don't think it's okay to misrepresent her past in doing so. I think the original tweet is deceptive, lacks context, and lacks sourcing; and I think the Snopes article is very thorough, nuanced, and well-sourced. It does not attempt to exonerate or white wash Rosenberg's actions, and actually provides a great summary of all the relevant facts. Reading this article, I am left with a very negative portrait of a violent person, whose past nevertheless was exaggerated and misrepresented in the original tweet. Her past is violent and problematic enough without misrepresenting it.

In short: fewer inflammatory tweets, and more well-sourced nuanced fact checks like the linked Snopes article would benefit political discourse greatly.

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

#304

"Facebook versus The BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong" Where has it gone wrong? “We did not call into question the integrity of The BMJ’s story, only the comprehensiveness of it. That’s the point of a ‘Missing Context’ rating. The BMJ article is being used as evidence of Vaccine Conspiracy theories, it's not like the warning is on the Article, it's where it's shared on Facebook and the missing context label is rele…

1. The screenshot shows Facebook is telling owners groups of group that the information is "partly false." "Partly false" is obviously a distinct claim, and one that does not appear to be supported. 2. Quality reporting is being censored by selectively applying a label that belittles its objectiveness.

> 1. The screenshot shows Facebook is telling owners groups of group that the information is "partly false." "Partly false" is obviously a distinct claim, and one that does not appear to be supported.

This is only shown to Group Admins, you're correct that it's wrong however it's clearly a simple wording mistake with limited impact.

> 2. Quality reporting is being censored by selectively applying a label that belittles its objectiveness.

That's a big stretch, 4,000 - 8,000 thousand articles are published to the BMJ each year, one of them having a label on social media with 'missing context' is not censoring quality reporting.

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

#305

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…

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…

That is a whitewash of what the early wuhan lab leak proponents were doing. At a time when very little was known about the origins, lab leakers latched on to the hypothesis not due to facts, because there were none, but because they acted as if they could absolve themselves of pandemic measures and our own poor preparation.

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

#306
post #153
post #64

> Facebook’s ‘independent fact-checker’ doesn’t like the wording of the article by the BMJ. And if I don’t delete my post, they are threatening to make my posts less visible. Obviously, I will not delete my post . . . If it seems like I’ve disappeared for a while, you’ll know why.” Just treat them as ideological censors, not unlike those employed by authoritarian regimes. You want to publish an article criticizing th…

> No, they won’t send you to a labor camp or come after your family. And, yes it’s a private company and if anyone doesn’t like it they can leave, but the mechanics of censorship are exactly the same. If you have to ignore 2 mechanisms by which authoritarian regimes enforce censorship in order to say that "the mechanics of censorship are exactly the same", then they're not _exactly_ the same.

> If you have to ignore 2 mechanisms by which authoritarian regimes enforce censorship in order to say that "the mechanics of censorship are exactly the same", then they're not _exactly_ the same.

I didn't say they are _exactly_ the same, that's pretty obvious. Especially that one is a country and the other is a company. So it's a bit of straw man, isn't it?

Not every single person who criticized the government or published anything that was censored was sent a labor camp. Those had been eliminated by the 60s. However people didn't get promoted, lost their jobs (is a journalist losing their job and not being able to be hired because they pointed out something controversial that different?), added to blacklist. The response to that was the people auto-censored themselves. They didn't want to get in trouble so they didn't talk about certain things. Those that tried used a few trick to get around the censors, and I outlined those already.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m really uncomfortable with Fact Checking on the Internet, particularly because we don’t know who we are anointing as the checkers. But I have yet to see a better alternative. The status quo of just giving everyone in the world a megaphone is clearly worse and not working. It would be better if, instead of trying to claim that they were some kind of authority on what is a fact and what isn’t, they just said “this c…

> I have yet to see a better alternative. I find the notion of allowing an organization with zero reputation to censor a peer reviewed medical journal that has been continuously published since 1840 to be particularly ridiculous.

> zero reputation

That may be a charitable assessment.

> censor a peer reviewed medical journal

Is Facebook's content moderation actually censorship? Certainly the BMJ is still free to publish whatever it wants, as it always has.

What obligation (legal or otherwise) does Facebook have to permit content it doesn't approve of (for whatever reason) to be published on its platform?

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