"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 about all the hot issues of the day? Are they calling Harvard PhDs in to look at this specific post? Are they getting people with decades of experience in the fields to debate and come to consensus about whether or not this post is in the gray area or shading to the white?
Or are the "fact checkers" random shmoes being paid a pittance to do even less due diligence on what is being posted than the person writing the original post, just checking things off a list that probably fits on a handful of sheets of paper? Assuming it even gets that far, of course, because it's probably also largely just an AI.
Fact checking is a marketing term scam. There is no such thing, or at the very least, Facebook moderators staring at things for a few seconds and clicking based on official Facebook dogma isn't it. Facebook moderators are no different than any other random poster on Facebook, they've just got a particular party line to enforce and a special megaphone nobody else gets. That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?
>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,
I'm not sure you're replying to the right comment, because I wasn't claiming that the BMJ story was demonstrably false[1], and I wasn't defending any action that labeled it as such. The action was to label it as "needs context", a category which specifically exists not to claim that the story is false.
So what are you replying to?
And are you really disputing that social media spreads a lot of clearly false stuff that isn't a mere matter of interpretation? Why do you consider that so implausible?
Edit: As exhibit A, I could probably cite your attribution of claims to me that I didn't make. Now, imagine all the people on social media without your exacting standards of integrity!
[1] Just the opposite -- I accepted that they found legit problems!
> I wasn't claiming that the BMJ story was demonstrably false[1], and I wasn't defending any action that labeled it as such. The action was to label it as "needs context", a category which specifically exists not to claim that the story is false.
which stories on facebook dont need context?
this is not snark and the question is not trivial. nothing - NOTHING - means the same in isolation as contextually. facebook isnt applying this label equally. theyre selectively moderating and claiming impartiality.
Probably not many, but the label is like a "watch your step" sign. People should be careful all the time, but sometimes it's best to remind them. You don't put those signs on everything and you don't put them on nothing, you put them in situations where there's a reason to think it's necessary.
>> "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 companies dragged their feet before they tried to do anything to address that problems
IMHO, social media fact checking is a bad solution to a real and serious problem. However, the proper solution is probably to nuke social media from orbit; but technology doesn't serve us, we serve technology, so that's not going to happen.
> That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?
"Corporation" is a loaded word with negative connotations. Let me put it this way: institutions are far, far better at reliably determining facts than individuals. That's true because the world is complicated, busy place and it requires far more effort and knowledge than one person can possess. Corporations are a class of institution, and some of them actually do a fairly good job of fact checking (e.g. publishing and media corporations). That said, Facebook is a shitty institution, but it's the only one in a position to do anything about the crap on its platform.
Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
Powerful people have acted to suppress dissenting opinions; whether it's whether Covid leaked from a lab or Galileo Galilei's 'Eppur si muove' way back in 1633[0], and most likely this has been going on long before that.
When I look at social media I can't help thinking of that line: "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so'?"
>Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
More often than not. Just look at the politicization of COVID. In the last couple of months we have seen a complete 180 on messaging around the lab leak theory, the vaccines don't prevent infection after all, vaccines don't prevent spread by the vaccinated after all, CDC director admitting that at least 40% of COVID hospitalizations weren't because of COVID but because people went to the hospital with something else why also happening to have COVID...
I could go on. All things that would get you "fact checked" just a few months ago (and hell probably still will get this post flagged). It's nuts.
If you really want to get angry just do some searching on Japan and the much maligned horse dewormer. Millions of people sentenced to hospitalization when there are multiple treatments that we know (now and then!) that could have prevented them? Many of these "fact checkers" were (and still are) in the middle of peddling politically motivated BS instead of actual science.
People are literally dying because of it - and still folks here are advocating for better fact checking. Simply amazing...
>> blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery
> Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
> Powerful people have acted to suppress dissenting opinions; whether it's whether Covid leaked from a lab or Galileo Galilei's 'Eppur si muove' way back in 1633[0], and most likely this has been going on long before that.
That's certainly true, but it's also important to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, either. It doesn't help those "dissenting opinions" if they're drowned out in a sea of lies or if the lies (collectively) do far more damage.
Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen by anyone (in fact, this case it was little more than a caution sign), and IMHO it's probably better for the truth if it has to pass some hurdles and gets slowed down a bit, just as long as those hurdles increase the single-to-noise ratio. There's reason process like scientific peer review are respected.
> It doesn't help those "dissenting opinions" if they're drowned out in a sea of lies or if the lies (collectively) do far more damage.
It's a fairly central part of the scientific method to be able to construct falsifiable hypotheses and then to attempt to test them.
> Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen [..]
Except it just did: discussion on the origins of Covid was almost completely shut down for well over a year by the actions of one or more bad actors, hugely amplified by well-meaning but weak-minded media and social media outlets?
>> Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen by anyone (in fact, this case it was little more than a caution sign), and IMHO it's probably better for the truth if it has to pass some hurdles and gets slowed down a bit, just as long as those hurdles increase the single-to-noise ratio
> Except it just did: discussion on the origins of Covid was almost completely shut down for well over a year
So? The idea made it out, though it's far from proven. In any case social media chatter and speculation about the idea like that has little value.
And this is something I'm totally fine with. I think it's totally in the service of truth to let an idea cook, before it's blasted to the public over social media at a loud volume.
>So? The idea made it out, though it's far from proven.
It only "made it out" because (thankfully) not all communication has yet to be fully gatekept through "fact checkers".
In the world you are advocating for it would have never made it out.
If that doesn't scare the utter crap out of you I would strongly advocate you are GROSSLY ignorant of history and need to do some serious learning - especially about how a certain party in Europe happened to come to power before world war II. And if you don't think what we are going through right now isn't a precursor on that level - again do some serious reading (preferably from books with copyrights before the 1990s and not online) about the rise of said party. The parallelism going on right now is pretty breathtaking when you stop and really look around.
> 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.
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 about all the hot issues of the day? Are they calling Harvard PhDs in to look at this specific post? Are they getting people with decades of experience in the fields to debate and come to consensus about whether or not this post is in the gray area or shading to the white?
Or are the "fact checkers" random shmoes being paid a pittance to do even less due diligence on what is being posted than the person writing the original post, just checking things off a list that probably fits on a handful of sheets of paper? Assuming it even gets that far, of course, because it's probably also largely just an AI.
Fact checking is a marketing term scam. There is no such thing, or at the very least, Facebook moderators staring at things for a few seconds and clicking based on official Facebook dogma isn't it. Facebook moderators are no different than any other random poster on Facebook, they've just got a particular party line to enforce and a special megaphone nobody else gets. That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?