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Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

bmj.com

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Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#681

Post by _djo_ »

freewinz wrote: post #496
r-w wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people kept it taboo for as long as they could because: people were literally dying due to low vaccination rates, which were caused in large part by such specious conspiracy theories. Fact checkers did not do a 180, it is still widely considered a conspiracy theory, and its very existence harms public health even if there's a remote possibility it's true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory…

The Wikipedia article is frankly disgusting. The two options are natural origins or leaking from a lab and currently there is more evidence for leaking from a lab. There is no debating this. The Wikipedia article has already chosen a conclusion with no evidence and also is slandering the other possibility for political reasons while simultaneously saying that it can't be the other potential cause because it might be…

There is no Wikipedia editorial board. If you disagree with the article, you can engage in the discussion regarding it and make edits of your own.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#682

Post by peterashford »

xwolfi wrote: post #622
spaniard89277 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure I understand what you mean, sorry. Who would demand what? What's "editorial transparency"?

In France we mean by that that all newspaper have a public well accepted stance on the political spectrum, with candidates they push without hiding and ideologies they maintain. As long as their leaders and famous journalists are clear they're a perspective and not "the truth", I m fine with the communists fighting the nationalists in their respective newspapers even if I disagree with what I read. At least I know wh…

I think the biggest issue issue is FPTP. You need mixed representation to allow expression of a broader range of ideas imo

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#683

Post by peterashford »

rendall wrote: post #583
stjohnswarts wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to embrace diversity of opinion. However recently in the USA some right wing outlets have become nothing short of 50% straight lies and right-wing propaganda mixed in with some small amount of truthful reporting. See Newsmax or OANN which are mostly lies and Fox which is a strange mix of normal news and "opinion news" that often also full of lies but not as often as the others.

So what? Honestly, I don't understand the direction of your point. Is it Don't have opinion diversity? Control what people hear and believe? Don't allow (what you consider to be) lies? There are so many responses to each of these.

I would argue that hyper partisan outlets like Fox which don't even care to try to be truthful has exacerbated tribal nature of US politics and reduced its ability to actually have any meaningful competition of ideas. Sure, having a perspective or ideology is fine but I think out and out lying should have consequences. I think you need a regulator preventing misinformation. Beyond that, having a point of view - which you can back up with reasonable argument - is to be desired.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#684

Post by rendall »

peterashford wrote: post #683
rendall wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Honestly, I don't understand the direction of your point. Is it Don't have opinion diversity? Control what people hear and believe? Don't allow (what you consider to be) lies? There are so many responses to each of these.

I would argue that hyper partisan outlets like Fox which don't even care to try to be truthful has exacerbated tribal nature of US politics and reduced its ability to actually have any meaningful competition of ideas. Sure, having a perspective or ideology is fine but I think out and out lying should have consequences. I think you need a regulator preventing misinformation. Beyond that, having a point of view - which…

> you need a regulator preventing misinformation

Who would be the regulator? How would the regulator be chosen? How would information be determined to be misinformation? When something truthful is named misinformation, what happens? When a political group accuses this regulator of suppression, what then? When your political opposition gains control of the regulator, what then? How would this regulator also comply with the US Constitution, particular its free speech guarantees?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#685

Post by clarge1120 »

sharklazer wrote: post #110
clarge1120 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fact checking" as guard rails for protecting a narrative is (hopefully) a fad that will pass us by like bad fashion choices in the 1980's.

Fact checking has only become a PR management tactic that arrived in the 2000's, only as the cost of sharing your mind rapidly became zero. Before the widespread adoption of the internet, you were limited to broadcast and print. You could pay for a license from the FCC, or license a station with cable or go and print and distribute your text. Very little incentive for non-commercial work and certainly no avenue for s…

It was this way in radio, called wireless at the time, before the advent of the FCC and spectrum regulators.

If the FCC ever got regulatory hooks into the internet we’re done with web innovation.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#686

Post by CRConrad »

xwolfi wrote: post #622
spaniard89277 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure I understand what you mean, sorry. Who would demand what? What's "editorial transparency"?

In France we mean by that that all newspaper have a public well accepted stance on the political spectrum, with candidates they push without hiding and ideologies they maintain. As long as their leaders and famous journalists are clear they're a perspective and not "the truth", I m fine with the communists fighting the nationalists in their respective newspapers even if I disagree with what I read. At least I know wh…

> we investigated together to realize she was sourcing it from a facebook post by our "the onion" equivalent !!!

The chained duck? (I prefer mine au confit, not enchainé.)

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#687

Post by CRConrad »

hammock wrote: post #457
colinmhayes wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bad, the actual quote is "Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people" As far as whether Facebook should become "optics police" I think it's obviously a difficult decision, but with life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" I have to go with yes, facebook shouldn't let itself propagandize people who decide to read headlines instead of articles.

>life and death questions such as "is the vaccine safe" Is that not a misleading thing to say yourself? Plenty of vaccinated have died. And for those unjabbed but with permanent acquired immunity, the jab may be safe yet at the same time have no material effect to save their life.

> Plenty of vaccinated have died.

From the vaccine?!?

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#688

Post by CRConrad »

philovivero wrote: post #621
mitigating wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

". You cannot trust mainstream newspapers. " Which newspapers can you trust?

It used to be a pretty short list, like NYT and Washington Post. But since the Trump era... honestly? None of them. I am literally unaware of a single mainstream television station, newspaper, or magazine that hasn't been caught in blatant politically-motivated lying. My rule-of-thumb for news sources is: I need to see zero lies for at least two years before I trust them again. This is different than mistakes which a…

> It used to be a pretty short list, like NYT and Washington Post.

I opened a post here the other day (or yesterday?), intending to reply along the lines of "Oh look, the New York Post -- the new 'paper of record', together with the Washington Times!", but by the time I was ready to start snarking, the post was dead.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#689

Post by CRConrad »

ospzfmbbzr wrote: post #347
AlexandrB wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion? And if you agree with that, all we're arguing about is where to draw the line between "obviously false" and "disputed" facts. > It becomes necessary when you lie all the time. There are plenty of people lying and/or griftin…

> If I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false Isn't that implying that the reader is too ignorant to know at a glance? In the marketplace of ideas shouldn't that nonsense content just get buried anyway? > There are plenty of people lying and/or grifting on the other side of this power structure as well. Agreed. Lying is how you create something out of nothing after all.…

> Isn't that implying that the reader is too ignorant to know at a glance?

Yes. Have you been on Facebook?!? It's pretty much Ignorance City.

> In the marketplace of ideas shouldn't that nonsense content just get buried anyway?

Maybe it would... If the "marketplace of ideas" weren't a marketplace of sheep.

Re: Open letter from the BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

#690

Post by dang »

NoPie wrote: post #299

HN is also complicit. I learned about the BMJ letter ( https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2957 ) from the HN article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29582147 As you can see, it is gone, practically in a few minutes after I had read it. Why? Is it because HN is a tech website and this not related to tech? Even though there are many articles related to covid? Or is it because BMJ articles are meant for healthcar…

Users flagged the post you're linking to. We didn't see that one. I probably would have turned off the flags if I had seen it.

Be careful not to draw excessively general conclusions from these data points. The current post, for example, spend 22 hours on HN's front page. That's as much exposure as anything gets here.

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