Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
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Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#2Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions.
If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label “not suitable for your pets” on a microwave!
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#3Most of the misinformation and propaganda out there is presented as "opinion" on all networks. The very little actual news on Fox, for example, is always accurate (and actually pretty good), so not being able to call them out on that takes away from the entire effort.
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#4Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions. If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label “not suitable for your pets” on a microwave!
I'm already looking forward to serious articles that are going to be ironically labeled as satire (obviously again misunderstood by some percentage of the population)
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#5I can't help wondering if this was triggered by the whole Babylon Bee vs Snopes situation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/snopes-babylon-bee.htm...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fact-checker-declares-war-on-...
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#6Welp, that's a shame. That will make their fact-checking stuff completely useless, as the majority of "news" shared that tends to get people riled up seem to be opinion pieces.
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#7Most of the misinformation and propaganda out there is presented as "opinion" on all networks. The very little actual news on Fox, for example, is always accurate (and actually pretty good), so not being able to call them out on that takes away from the entire effort.
Most reporting is based on opinions, or is at least misleading in the sense that it tends to be reported from well defined perspective. The editorial decisions about what to report, what to not report, what to report as important or credible, and what to report as irrelevant or non-credible, can all be used to mislead the audience and misrepresent events. I can’t think of one mainstream news outlet that doesn’t do this, and I think all of them do it quite excessively.
The problem with trying to moderate this is that you can only do so from what your idea of which is the orthodox truth, and “propaganda” simply becomes any political speech that you disagree with.
We’ve seen plenty of attempts to regulate the truth throughout history. It was one of the most corrupt elements of the soviet system, and it quite literally Orwellian. The only person who can discern the truth is the individual, and any attempt to take that responsibility away from them can only ever end disastrously. This isn’t something we should be happy with Facebook doing.
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#8yeeeaaaaahhhh. 'its just a joke' is already a thing...
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#9Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions. If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label “not suitable for your pets” on a microwave!
> Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire
Satire, snark, and sarcasm have to be least effective way you could possibly choose to communicate. You are absolutely begging to be misunderstood and misquoted, either genuinely or maliciously, and then it's nigh on impossible to explain yourself as all your excuses just sound like like it-was-a-prank-bro.
Another huge problem is that satire is often used as cover for telling not-quite-truths. I listen to satirical radio programmes (we have a lot of those in the UK) and sometimes I think they're really bending the truth quite a bit to get the joke and their criticism isn't really fair. That'd be fine if these people weren't simultaneously actual political activists who the next night are saying they're making genuine political arguments, and if people didn't think it's-funny-because-it's-true. I'm pretty sure some of them do satire just to get away with attacking without having to back any of it up, and so they can absolve themselves from responsibility when challenged.
Quite often, I think really I'm just listening to some nasty bullies.
All-in-all, I think satire is a bit toxic for everyone involved.
Re: Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking
#10Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions. If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label “not suitable for your pets” on a microwave!
Scott Adams also claimed that women are treated with deference for the same reason children and mentally handicapped people are[0], so you'll have to forgive me for not giving too much credence to his unsourced statistics about the incompetence of a large fraction of humanity.
[0] https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-deletes-misogynist-rant-...