The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
Can you imagine what would happen if all the engineers who check bridge designs, buildings, engines in cars, etc thought this way?
There is a reality out there which has undeniable facts about how things work, despite what all the crooks in the world seeking money/power are trying to convince you of for their own personal gain.
That's not what it's about though and this was covered in the interview. Zuckerberg said the government had been forcing them to suppress information and had people screaming obscenities down the phone to suppress truthful information, they were trying to get memes/satire taken down.
Facebook's original intent was to fact-check clearly factual things (Zuckerberg mentioned flat earth as an example) and only those things but it evolved into political bias where they felt they were deciding between opinions. Some of the bias was in which things they chose to fact-check. This makes up a lot of the bias in the media that people don't pay attention to, which is selective reporting. One news company will push a story down or not even report it that doesn't fit with their general views or audience and another company will do the opposite with the same story.
Fact-checkers sometimes leave articles labeled 'inconclusive' if something is say 60% likely to be true. What is true or not isn't always binary, it can be a probability until more information is available or subject to interpretation and things that are considered indisputable are 99%+ true. A lot of things, especially in politics, have a lower probability of being true because they rely on hearsay, who witnessed the event and whether they are credible. Deciding whether someone is a credible witness is a biased process.
Here's an example where a fact-checker is trying to figure out if a word that was spoken had an apostrophe and had a different meaning, both interpretations are plausible but not everyone will see each interpretation as being equally plausible:
This is the kind of vague political nonsense that is a waste of time getting involved with. Politics is an argument that never ends and at the scale Facebook operates at, it is a near impossible task to fact-check everything in a consistent and reliable way. They will get a reasonable proportion of the checks correct but those are rarely the problem because they are obvious to most people too, it's the vague ones that slip through.
There are highly respected officials saying on record that UFOs with non-human creatures exist and mainstream news outlets report it, should this be reported and spread as truthful without them providing evidence or suppressed as misinformation until they provide evidence:
It's not enough to absolve themselves of responsibility by saying they aren't reporting that what is being said is true, only that those people said it (which is objectively true) because they could do the same for a quack doctor that says drinking pineapple juice every day prevents cancer. The 'we're just the messenger' defense.
The addition of memes/satire complicates things. If someone is spreading misinformation in text, it can be labelled as such and suppressed but it can be wrapped into a meme and permitted to spread because it's just a joke.
Having a central committee overseeing what constitutes what's true or not has the benefit of being authoritative and methodical but it also has a limited perspective, especially on international issues. While using the public for fact-checking can allow crazies to hijack the process, at a large enough scale this doesn't happen because the extremists are usually in the minority. The community notes on X.com have been very reliable and unbiased and that's what Facebook plans to use. It will probably catch misinformation, misleading content, AI content much faster than before because people who have a vested interest in opposing it will try harder to get it corrected than a team whose job is to clean up after it becomes a liability for them.
The platform operators aren't trying to increase hateful content or misinformation, they are trying to make their platforms the least oppressive platforms for discussion. Elon Musk's interview with the BBC shows how each side views the problem:
Musk says at 18:00 that they want to try to limit speech to what is limited by law. The people of a country agree what speech should be suppressed by law and that's what the platform abides by. This is a reasonable stance but obviously leaves platforms wide open for abuse on a large scale.
I think the focus on factual accuracy isn't the best approach. Misinformation and hateful rhetoric spreads much less in person than it does online and the reason for this I suspect is civility. In the real world, there's a social contract where people exchange information politely and with positive intent. This is opposite in the digital world because the social contract is different. Online, people who are centrists are nobodies, people who have opposing views are enemies, people who have more extreme views on a supporting side are allies and reward each other with affirmation. This breeds ever more extreme perspectives because it rewards it. Unfortunately, the more people spend online, this is making its way into the real world.
Focusing on promoting and rewarding civil conversation would create more wholesome platforms where the participants don't want to share hateful or misleading content because they won't be rewarded for it. This can be aided using AI where when someone posts a comment with expletives, incendiary content, some kind of attack, it will be detected and the platform can tell the user to write their comment more politely or it will be suppressed and count negatively against their digital persona. The digital persona will be tagged as a hateful, misleading persona and the worst personas and content can be suppressed by the platform. This can be applied retroactively. Reward people who are polite, tackle behavior rather than ideas, how people express themselves rather than what they express and the platforms will improve.
An example AI summary of an online user would say something like: this user frequently posts aggressive messages, is politically left/right/center, shares offensive/misleading memes, promotes extremist users etc and put the summary right where they can see it. Embarrass them into being a better person online.
A few points about your post:
Your claim that Zuckerberg said the U.S. Government forcing him to suppress information is untrue. Here is what he said: "They pushed us super hard to take down things that were true." Nothing about being forced to do anything. The government would need a court order to require Meta to take something down. The paper trail for that would exist, and it doesn't. He did say that they screamed and cursed; you got that right. That said, Zuckerberg has a well-documented history of making untrue statements. His troubled relationship with the truth almost got him a contempt of Congress vote. And if you want other examples, look at any of his comments after there was some sort of data breach. Without fail, he diminishes the impact only to have to walk it back later. So, you are accepting someone that is an unreliable witness at their word with no attempt to validate the story. Not even that, you are taking an unreliable witness and you are embellishing what they said to the point that it is no longer a truthful characterization of what was said.
Snopes is not a Meta fact checker. Bringing them up is a complete red herring as they are in no way relevant to the conversation. I can't read your mind, so I don't know your intent in doing so, but you seem to want to diminish all fact checkers due to a single article by one. That is like me trying to diminish all football players based on the behavior of Aaron Hernandez. Just because they all have the same job title doesn't mean they all act or do things in the same way. Also worth pointing out that Snopes is transparent in what they are doing, and we can read the article and evaluate if their argument makes sense. Meta was not transparent in their fact-checking. They could have opted to just be transparent and let people draw their own conclusions.
I can't say Meta is trying to increase hurtful content but clearing the way for people to claim women are property and LGBTQ+ people are all mentally ill does increase the amount of harmful content and misinformation. It also doesn't make the platforms less oppressive. It opens the door for harassment.
Elon Musk has said many things that are outright lies; it is mind-bending that anyone would defer to him. Also, he regularly surpasses speech on X that he disagrees with. Not that it is factually incorrect but he simply doesn't like it. He has in no way lived up to his claims to be a free speech absolutist, rather the opposite.
What I find particularly odd in this situation is that Zuckerberg is pitching this as Meta going back to its roots of free expression as if this were some point he had been right on all along. He acts like this whole fact-checking thing was a decision of some outside force. Mark Zuckerberg is the person that decided to do this in the first place; he was rather proud of it when he did it. So the person that Mark Zuckerberg is in conflict with is Mark Zuckerberg. This is a problem of his own creation. This is also something he has a history of. In 2013, he decided to flood-feed with news publishers only to walk it back in 2016 to focus on friends and family. In 2017, it was groups and pages, only to have the backfire and in 2021, they stopped pushing those. Then he moved on to fact-checkers and protecting elections. There is a clear pattern here. The man doesn't really take responsibility for his own actions and seems to be a bit in denial of the fact that he himself is the person that keeps creating the messes that he has to clean up. I'd say the board should fire him, but he owns too much of the company. The problem with Meta isn't free speech or fact-checking; it's Zuckerberg.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
Can you imagine what would happen if all the engineers who check bridge designs, buildings, engines in cars, etc thought this way?
There is a reality out there which has undeniable facts about how things work, despite what all the crooks in the world seeking money/power are trying to convince you of for their own personal gain.
That's not what it's about though and this was covered in the interview. Zuckerberg said the government had been forcing them to suppress information and had people screaming obscenities down the phone to suppress truthful information, they were trying to get memes/satire taken down.
Facebook's original intent was to fact-check clearly factual things (Zuckerberg mentioned flat earth as an example) and only those things but it evolved into political bias where they felt they were deciding between opinions. Some of the bias was in which things they chose to fact-check. This makes up a lot of the bias in the media that people don't pay attention to, which is selective reporting. One news company will push a story down or not even report it that doesn't fit with their general views or audience and another company will do the opposite with the same story.
Fact-checkers sometimes leave articles labeled 'inconclusive' if something is say 60% likely to be true. What is true or not isn't always binary, it can be a probability until more information is available or subject to interpretation and things that are considered indisputable are 99%+ true. A lot of things, especially in politics, have a lower probability of being true because they rely on hearsay, who witnessed the event and whether they are credible. Deciding whether someone is a credible witness is a biased process.
Here's an example where a fact-checker is trying to figure out if a word that was spoken had an apostrophe and had a different meaning, both interpretations are plausible but not everyone will see each interpretation as being equally plausible:
This is the kind of vague political nonsense that is a waste of time getting involved with. Politics is an argument that never ends and at the scale Facebook operates at, it is a near impossible task to fact-check everything in a consistent and reliable way. They will get a reasonable proportion of the checks correct but those are rarely the problem because they are obvious to most people too, it's the vague ones that slip through.
There are highly respected officials saying on record that UFOs with non-human creatures exist and mainstream news outlets report it, should this be reported and spread as truthful without them providing evidence or suppressed as misinformation until they provide evidence:
It's not enough to absolve themselves of responsibility by saying they aren't reporting that what is being said is true, only that those people said it (which is objectively true) because they could do the same for a quack doctor that says drinking pineapple juice every day prevents cancer. The 'we're just the messenger' defense.
The addition of memes/satire complicates things. If someone is spreading misinformation in text, it can be labelled as such and suppressed but it can be wrapped into a meme and permitted to spread because it's just a joke.
Having a central committee overseeing what constitutes what's true or not has the benefit of being authoritative and methodical but it also has a limited perspective, especially on international issues. While using the public for fact-checking can allow crazies to hijack the process, at a large enough scale this doesn't happen because the extremists are usually in the minority. The community notes on X.com have been very reliable and unbiased and that's what Facebook plans to use. It will probably catch misinformation, misleading content, AI content much faster than before because people who have a vested interest in opposing it will try harder to get it corrected than a team whose job is to clean up after it becomes a liability for them.
The platform operators aren't trying to increase hateful content or misinformation, they are trying to make their platforms the least oppressive platforms for discussion. Elon Musk's interview with the BBC shows how each side views the problem:
Musk says at 18:00 that they want to try to limit speech to what is limited by law. The people of a country agree what speech should be suppressed by law and that's what the platform abides by. This is a reasonable stance but obviously leaves platforms wide open for abuse on a large scale.
I think the focus on factual accuracy isn't the best approach. Misinformation and hateful rhetoric spreads much less in person than it does online and the reason for this I suspect is civility. In the real world, there's a social contract where people exchange information politely and with positive intent. This is opposite in the digital world because the social contract is different. Online, people who are centrists are nobodies, people who have opposing views are enemies, people who have more extreme views on a supporting side are allies and reward each other with affirmation. This breeds ever more extreme perspectives because it rewards it. Unfortunately, the more people spend online, this is making its way into the real world.
Focusing on promoting and rewarding civil conversation would create more wholesome platforms where the participants don't want to share hateful or misleading content because they won't be rewarded for it. This can be aided using AI where when someone posts a comment with expletives, incendiary content, some kind of attack, it will be detected and the platform can tell the user to write their comment more politely or it will be suppressed and count negatively against their digital persona. The digital persona will be tagged as a hateful, misleading persona and the worst personas and content can be suppressed by the platform. This can be applied retroactively. Reward people who are polite, tackle behavior rather than ideas, how people express themselves rather than what they express and the platforms will improve.
An example AI summary of an online user would say something like: this user frequently posts aggressive messages, is politically left/right/center, shares offensive/misleading memes, promotes extremist users etc and put the summary right where they can see it. Embarrass them into being a better person online.
Lmao, that last bit is just Reddit karma but worse because it labels you based on political views. That's was a lot of words to say "crowdsourced opinions are more reliable than facts."
Community notes are a joke. They don't work. Facebook and X both have policies that promote hate and division on the platforms. No one decides what true or isn't. Facts are self evident.
just because you write a lot of text and share links doesn't make this post any less bullshit. This is all because the morons want to promote their hate and stupidity and not get called out for it. Period. Facts are immutable. Community notes are in control of the platform and its users.
Believing Musk and Zuck are doing these things outside of anything other than hate, greed, control, ignorance, and hate is downright wrong. Anyone who supports them or Trump supports division and hate. There is no excusing it no matter how much a person writes in a forum attempting to sound even handed. That even handedness is directed towards fascist ideology that erases people and enables inhumane behavior.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm.
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm.
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
People died because of the "truth" perpetuated by morons. Injecting bleach, not getting vaccinated. Darwinism at its best.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm. I
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
People died because of the "truth" perpetuated by morons. Injecting bleach, not getting vaccinated. Darwinism at its best.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
sure. Because morons (aka fact-checkers) were lying and telling the public that’s what the president said. But trump never told people to do that. Perpetuating such lies is perpetuating hate masquerading as knowledge.
And you seem to miss the point where the government exerted pressure on meta (who also is guilty). A massive community is going to be much better at discerning truth from lie that some ex fbi or cnn staffers.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm. I
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
People died because of the "truth" perpetuated by morons. Injecting bleach, not getting vaccinated. Darwinism at its best.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
sure. Because morons (aka fact-checkers) were lying and telling the public that’s what the president said. But trump never told people to do that. Perpetuating such lies is perpetuating hate masquerading as knowledge.
And you seem to miss the point where the government exerted pressure on meta (who also is guilty). A massive community is going to be much better at discerning truth from lie that some ex fbi or cnn staffers.
Ah yes. Reliable sources that bend over backwards so far to help sanewash Trump's bullshit that even Snopes can say "yeah, he said it, but he also walked it back" which somehow results in "he didn't really say it." Lmao.
just like when he said there were good people on both sides, realized he said his opinion out loud, then walked it back. But instead of relying on random web resources, I can just go watch the video where he says it and skip the middle man. Because the fact is he asked if bleach or disinfectants could be used through ingestion or injection, and when a reporter asked about it later, he realized how dumb that was and walked it back.
but how convenient it must be for you to leave out that he told people the virus was a hoax, not to get the vaccine even though he himself was vaccinated, and that he believed people should try hydroxychloroquine.
Trump's lies and inaction led to real deaths. And now he wants to use armed forces to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal. And he wants to use economic pressure to assimilate Canada as the 51st state. Or are you going to explain that away with a link to a random news source that agrees with your twisted sense of reality?
It is incredible how far people are willing to go to fool themselves just because they want to support a racist bigot rapist misogynistic braindead baby man that golfed more days than he spent in the White House in his first presidency.
The fact you or anyone believes what Zuck says about anything involving the Biden administration proves exactly how much attention we should pay to your "facts."
North Korea exists as it does because a decision was made during the Korean War, when the US interfered in another country’s affairs that it wanted to exclude itself from further interference. This seems entirely reasonable to me.
FYI: North Korea has troops fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
What I said was that North Korea excluded itself from the rest of the world to stop it being attacked by external forces, either the US or its allies. This does not mean it precludes itself from defending its position. If it builds relationships with other countries also opposed to its enemies, that would be part of its stated position.
On the subject of Ukraine, it was part of Russia and Russia defended its loss of a part of the country. The US would no doubt do the same if one of the States decided to extract itself from the rest of the States.
An extension to this whole argument is that the US has around 850 military bases around the world with no other country having any, except on their own land. It is entirely reasonable if those countries which are encircled by such bases object.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm.
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
Your argument is absurd. Based on what you are saying we shouldn't have things like food safety standards. Food manufactures should be allowed to sell and market cyanide, lead, mercury or uranium as health foods. How dare the government infringe on companies free speech by not letting do this! How dare the government say these things are harmful, by claiming they know the tru they are just trying to push an agenda! How dare they decide that there should be standards for how food is processed to avoid contamination! How dare they require food recalls! Because of this the truth has no meaning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, get off your soapbox and think about the implications of what you are saying for like two seconds. This may shock you, but there is more to speech than the narrow sliver of political speech you are focusing on.
Also, the article and discussion are about Meta and fact-checkers; no one here is talking about the government legislating political speech other than you, and you are arguing against things that aren't happening.
You are correct; freedom of speech is protected in the First Amendment. Specifically, the First Amendment protects against the government infringing on free speech.
Meta is not the government, and therefore the First Amendment is in no way relevant. Being banned from a platform owned by a non-governmental entity isn't a violation of the First Amendment nor does it infringe on free speech. The right to free speech does not give you a right to a platform from which to speak.
No one, not a single person, had their right to free speech violated by Meta having fact-checkers.
Your post is so poorly informed and so poorly thought out that I am embarrassed on your behalf. It's like the idea that there is knowledge fighters you.
Community notes are a joke. They don't work. Facebook and X both have policies that promote hate and division on the platforms. No one decides what true or isn't. Facts are self evident.
I agree with the first several statements but I’m not sure what you mean by the last sentence.
Often facts are not self evident. Uncovering facts (and truth) can be a difficult process. Scientists and journalists have processes for doing this. When implemented by smart people acting in good faith, those processes work well (but aren’t perfect). Once facts/truth are uncovered the challenge becomes sharing them with others. That also involves a process and things like reputation and trust.
Facebook and X are antithetical to everything in the above paragraph. There are a bunch of people who are either operating in bad faith or ignorant of processes for uncovering facts/truth. They undermine trust in people who are operating in good faith and following effective processes.
Facebook and X are very much like a cancer. Damaged cells replicating out of control that will eventually destroy all healthy tissue and then the cancer will eat itself.
These things need to be hit with heavy chemo and radiation before it’s too late
I’m responding to your post but cut out the copied text to reduce page size.
First of all, thank you for composing such a well formed and articulate post. It’s always a pleasure to read a person’s opinion when it is presented so clearly. Whether or not I agree or disagree with what you’re saying isn’t the point. You’ve provided food for thought and added another perspective to consider along with all of the other perspectives stated here.
I believe there is one common theme that permeates many of the contentious subjects we are dealing with in a highly connected world that we now live in. First of all, I don’t think people in general were quite prepared for the environment we live in when it comes to the massive amount of differing opinions that social media provides. When we got our information through personal contacts, newspapers, and magazines the volume and frequency of the information and opinions was limited and arrived at a much slower rate. This allowed more time to contemplate and absorb what was being presented. The amount of time we allowed ourselves to be immersed in discourse on any one issue was a small slice of our daily lives. With social media we can be engaged with an unlimited number of issues nearly 24x7.
In addition to the massive increase in volume and frequency of information and misinformation we now can engage with a certain amount of anonymity and degree of separation that shields us from personal responsibility, at least for people who are not public figures, influencers, or celebrities. There is little to no accountability for engaging in behavior that would be deemed unsuitable in person to person conversation. We are still learning how to deal with it, and like a new discovery we’ve learned that it can be a tremendously useful tool and a tremendously effective weapon. We can’t stop humans from being humans and humans are often incapable of self moderation, especially when it’s so easy to run nope loop.
One response I have to your post is concerning using AI to moderate social media content. I’m not so sure that would work because we’d have to all agree on which AI we would all agree to use and there would always be claims that the AI is itself biased. In the end I doubt that humans will ever defer to AI in policing their personal behavior, which includes a lack of self discipline, empathy, and self moderation.
But thanks for weighing in. I think your comments contributed to the conversation in a positive way and gave us another perspective to think about.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm. I
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
People died because of the "truth" perpetuated by morons. Injecting bleach, not getting vaccinated. Darwinism at its best.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
sure. Because morons (aka fact-checkers) were lying and telling the public that’s what the president said. But trump never told people to do that. Perpetuating such lies is perpetuating hate masquerading as knowledge.
And you seem to miss the point where the government exerted pressure on meta (who also is guilty). A massive community is going to be much better at discerning truth from lie that some ex fbi or cnn staffers.
I’m just going to note for the record here that you’ve turned to fact checkers to try to support your ongoing argument that there should be no fact checkers.
Once truth is legislated, there is no more truth. It’s whatever the parties in power say it is. Simple as that. Freedom of speech includes freedom to be right or wrong, to tell the truth or to lie. The facts aren’t difficult to uncover. Truth is not hard to know. But forced belief at the hands of the government ENSURES PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS QUESTION WHAT THE TRUTH IS. We’ve been through a microcosm of this with the Covid scenario. Effective treatments were blackballed, people who questioned a draconian establishment were banned from the platforms that claimed to give them a voice. Even questioning the lie masquerading as the truth brought harm. I
People are always fine with their view being force fed to others. But what happens when the opposing view is now called the only truth? You ok with that? Who establishes this? CNN? Fake news? Fox? A bunch of people who won popularity contests and now get to make laws? LOL
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
I think we the people will stick with the protections afforded by the long-standing constitution versus whatever the weirdo flavor of the day is. The truth has always come out this way. Anyone claiming to be the source of truth by which all others must be silenced is simply a wolf in sheep’s clothing seeking to only push an agenda, at the expense of actual truth.
People died because of the "truth" perpetuated by morons. Injecting bleach, not getting vaccinated. Darwinism at its best.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
sure. Because morons (aka fact-checkers) were lying and telling the public that’s what the president said. But trump never told people to do that. Perpetuating such lies is perpetuating hate masquerading as knowledge.
And you seem to miss the point where the government exerted pressure on meta (who also is guilty). A massive community is going to be much better at discerning truth from lie that some ex fbi or cnn staffers.
I’m just going to note for the record here that you’ve turned to fact checkers to try to support your ongoing argument that there should be no fact checkers.
To understand what you are saying would require self-awareness on their part they have none.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
The earth is flat.
The moon landings were faked.
Vaccines cause autism.
The earth is 6000 years old.
Fact checking arguments such as these, in your opinion, is like turning us into North Korea?
I don't get why y'all are harping on North Korea. They have the best economy of any country, the top-rated health care system, zero crime, solved poverty and hunger, have zero unemployment, have the least restrictive travel policies of any nation, and the residents are the happiest folks on the planet. And if you dare to fact-check me on any of that, you are just a self-appointed expert that thinks they have the power to arbitrarily decide what is true and what isn't. Oppressor!
There is a certain irony that leighr is arguing that we can't have fact checking because the truth is subjective based on the fact checker while also predicating their argument on the accepted truth that North Korea and China are oppressive. It is a heck of a contradiction that they have going on. Either we have the truth or we don't . The anti-truth people should just refrain from public discourse since, by their admission, what they are saying cannot be trusted.
Personally it’s not my place to tell the Korean people what to do. If they want to rise up against their regime, then so be it.
It’s not up to us to coerce them, threaten them or go full on “regime change” on them.
When it comes to China, all I can say is that today’s CCP is far removed from the days of Mao. They have injected a whole lot of “free market” into their economy the last 25 years or so. But again this does not matter to me and it’s up to the citizens of that country to change that regime or not.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
The earth is flat.
The moon landings were faked.
Vaccines cause autism.
The earth is 6000 years old.
Fact checking arguments such as these, in your opinion, is like turning us into North Korea?
I don't get why y'all are harping on North Korea. They have the best economy of any country, the top-rated health care system, zero crime, solved poverty and hunger, have zero unemployment, have the least restrictive travel policies of any nation, and the residents are the happiest folks on the planet. And if you dare to fact-check me on any of that, you are just a self-appointed expert that thinks they have the power to arbitrarily decide what is true and what isn't. Oppressor!
There is a certain irony that leighr is arguing that we can't have fact checking because the truth is subjective based on the fact checker while also predicating their argument on the accepted truth that North Korea and China are oppressive. It is a heck of a contradiction that they have going on. Either we have the truth or we don't . The anti-truth people should just refrain from public discourse since, by their admission, what they are saying cannot be trusted.
Personally it’s not my place to tell the Korean people what to do. If they want to rise up against their regime, then so be it.
It’s not up to us to coerce them, threaten them or go full on “regime change” on them.
When it comes to China, all I can say is that today’s CCP is far removed from the days of Mao. They have injected a whole lot of “free market” into their economy the last 25 years or so. But again this does not matter to me and it’s up to the citizens of that country to change that regime or not.
That first comment was sarcasm. I was pointing out the inherent contradiction in thedba saying that we can't have a person or group telling us what is true and then depending on a truth (North Korea is oppressive) that has been told by a group. I was not actually calling you for saying anything about North Korea and China, I was agreeing with your sentiment.
The end of so called “fact checkers” is a welcome relief for true free speech. When one person, or group, has the power to decide what is ‘true’ or not, we are all in trouble. See exhibit one: China, or even worse, North Korea. We all need to fight against this sort of abuse of money and power, and while I am not a huge Facebook fan, I’m glad that they are following X’s lead in allowing free speech.
I'm assuming this means that when a teacher graded your paper and marked an answer incorrect, it was a violation of your free speech? No one has the power to decide what is true or not. Reality is the only truth. But by making fact checking crowdsourced, you remove truth from fact, and I guess that's why they say we're in a post truth society. People only want to hear things they agree with, and everything else is deemed a lie, "fake news."
It is tragic how bad things have become. People mistrusting professionals, believing conspiracies, hating everything different from themselves.
It is tragic. I mourn the death of knowledge, of fact, of reality, of compassion. The only thing left is greed and hate in the people that follow him. It is pitiful.
‘I'm assuming this means that when a teacher graded your paper and marked an answer incorrect, it was a violation of your free speech?“
It is tragic how bad things have become. People mistrusting professionals, believing conspiracies, hating everything different from themselves.
It is tragic. I mourn the death of knowledge, of fact, of reality, of compassion. The only thing left is greed and hate in the people that follow him. It is pitiful.
I respectfully disagree with your perspective, but our disagreement extends beyond mere fact-checking or the principles of free speech. Discussing those things wouldn't really be productive.The crux of our disagreement lies in your perception of publicly traded companies and governments as interchangeable entities. You assert that Meta, along with the governments of North Korea and China, constitutes a singular type of organization.In contrast, I hold the view that publicly traded companies and governments are fundamentally distinct entities, serving vastly different purposes.
Fully support your view. The idea that a company is somehow comparable to a nation is often seen here. It makes no sense. Companies have no legislative power and can't use physical force (Weber). Nations can easily ban products as seen from Apple Watch 9 to TikTok.
Some don't get the difference and it causes some odd "Meta has the right to..." arguments. Companies only have the rights given to them by nations. Like UAE banning FaceTime, UK demanding 5 years of warranty, Indonesia demanding investments, and EU (not a nation...but still) demanding USB-C. Companies only exist if allowed by nations and they have to operate within the framework given to them.
The two replies above are very insigntful . Although I agree that companies can choose to fact check if they want, It is definitely the case that companies (and corporations) are very different than countries. I often I see people on here, in Reddit, and in slashdot talk as if they are interchangeable.
Comments
Community notes are a joke. They don't work. Facebook and X both have policies that promote hate and division on the platforms. No one decides what true or isn't. Facts are self evident.
just because you write a lot of text and share links doesn't make this post any less bullshit. This is all because the morons want to promote their hate and stupidity and not get called out for it. Period. Facts are immutable. Community notes are in control of the platform and its users.
Believing Musk and Zuck are doing these things outside of anything other than hate, greed, control, ignorance, and hate is downright wrong. Anyone who supports them or Trump supports division and hate. There is no excusing it no matter how much a person writes in a forum attempting to sound even handed. That even handedness is directed towards fascist ideology that erases people and enables inhumane behavior.
Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right. It is guaranteed by the constitution. The very first amendment. It’s not open to interpretation by the winds of prevailing ideology. It’s freedom of speech. Whether your view is unpopular, incorrect, or popular and exactly right.
Freedom of speech applies to government control over people's speech. Not private companies. Meta's decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech the same as X's. It has to do with fragile men seeking control. It has to do with stroking an ego. It has nothing to do with protecting speech, because these entities are not the government.
It's funny that all the morons that believe conspiracy theories are the ones worried about being fed "facts" from sources they don't agree with.
all any of this is is hate masquerading as justice.
just like when he said there were good people on both sides, realized he said his opinion out loud, then walked it back. But instead of relying on random web resources, I can just go watch the video where he says it and skip the middle man. Because the fact is he asked if bleach or disinfectants could be used through ingestion or injection, and when a reporter asked about it later, he realized how dumb that was and walked it back.
but how convenient it must be for you to leave out that he told people the virus was a hoax, not to get the vaccine even though he himself was vaccinated, and that he believed people should try hydroxychloroquine.
It is incredible how far people are willing to go to fool themselves just because they want to support a racist bigot rapist misogynistic braindead baby man that golfed more days than he spent in the White House in his first presidency.
The fact you or anyone believes what Zuck says about anything involving the Biden administration proves exactly how much attention we should pay to your "facts."
Would it be OK if Russia demanded Alaska back? If the UK declared 4th of July void and threatened to nuke the US? Russia did this to Ukraine. Madness.
Our favorite company once made a framework named SANE. We all need more of it.
Often facts are not self evident. Uncovering facts (and truth) can be a difficult process. Scientists and journalists have processes for doing this. When implemented by smart people acting in good faith, those processes work well (but aren’t perfect). Once facts/truth are uncovered the challenge becomes sharing them with others. That also involves a process and things like reputation and trust.
First of all, thank you for composing such a well formed and articulate post. It’s always a pleasure to read a person’s opinion when it is presented so clearly. Whether or not I agree or disagree with what you’re saying isn’t the point. You’ve provided food for thought and added another perspective to consider along with all of the other perspectives stated here.
I believe there is one common theme that permeates many of the contentious subjects we are dealing with in a highly connected world that we now live in. First of all, I don’t think people in general were quite prepared for the environment we live in when it comes to the massive amount of differing opinions that social media provides. When we got our information through personal contacts, newspapers, and magazines the volume and frequency of the information and opinions was limited and arrived at a much slower rate. This allowed more time to contemplate and absorb what was being presented. The amount of time we allowed ourselves to be immersed in discourse on any one issue was a small slice of our daily lives. With social media we can be engaged with an unlimited number of issues nearly 24x7.
In addition to the massive increase in volume and frequency of information and misinformation we now can engage with a certain amount of anonymity and degree of separation that shields us from personal responsibility, at least for people who are not public figures, influencers, or celebrities. There is little to no accountability for engaging in behavior that would be deemed unsuitable in person to person conversation. We are still learning how to deal with it, and like a new discovery we’ve learned that it can be a tremendously useful tool and a tremendously effective weapon. We can’t stop humans from being humans and humans are often incapable of self moderation, especially when it’s so easy to run nope loop.
One response I have to your post is concerning using AI to moderate social media content. I’m not so sure that would work because we’d have to all agree on which AI we would all agree to use and there would always be claims that the AI is itself biased. In the end I doubt that humans will ever defer to AI in policing their personal behavior, which includes a lack of self discipline, empathy, and self moderation.
But thanks for weighing in. I think your comments contributed to the conversation in a positive way and gave us another perspective to think about.