AppleMicroAndLinux

Wesley Hilliard said:

CMABooty said:

Wesley Hilliard said:

leighr said:

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.

Two things here:

1.  Being a 'professional' doesn't make one immune from scrutiny as professionals are often wrong.  These people have very real motivations to say what they say, vs. what you think you're hearing.  I.e. walking into a doctor's office and they're pushing the flu shot, regardless of your personal risk.  What they don't disclose, is if they get X% of people a flu shot, they get a financial bonus.  If the internet had existed in the 40's, saying "smoking causes cancer" would have been flagged as misinformation by "professionals".

2.  These "professional fact checkers" were taking down legitimate information.  In February 2021, I was among the first to get vaccinated.  A friend, who is a nurse, worked at a hospital administering vaccines to seniors and once they opened a pack, they had to use it within a certain time, so when there were no-shows she'd call friends/family as to not waste them.  In any case, my entire body broke out in welts (spontaneous chronic urticaria).  In posting trying to find information online to see if anyone else was experiencing this, multiple platforms took my posts down and flagged them as "misinformation" that the vaccines could cause this, despite my doctor telling me she saw it with the Moderna shot (but not Pfizer or J&J).  To this day, I still have the welts if I don't take an antihistamine.  It started as daily, but now I'm good if I take it every 2-3 days.  Since then, it's  been recognized as a possible side effect, but it was just as much a fact then as it is now and definitely was not misinformation.

It's certainly complicated, especially since science isn't set in stone and is in constant flux. However, it is still important to trust science and its institutions because they are not a monolith. If something is currently scientific fact, it had to get there through mountains of texting and peer reviews to even be considered something more than a simple theory. And many scientific principles are still theory, which means they could one day be proven wrong when the right information is presented.

However, that doesn't mean that random people on the internet should be allowed to spread misinformation based on hunches or things they heard from a guy on social media. Doctors can disagree on the best way to handle a medical issue, sure, but random users on an internet forum have no ability to discuss whether or not a vaccine is safe or useful. People can "do their own research" but it will never be enough to counter a proper education. Yes, professionals can be wrong, but that doesn't mean a random person online is right.

Fact checking exists to ensure that information is spread with context and nuance and removes outright misinformation from the algorithms -- at least when it is working correctly. It doesn't stop users from having discussions or debates, but it does stop people from making grand proclamations without any evidence. And how a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. Meta may have had fact checkers, but it didn't stop the flood of misinformation on the platform entirely. It slowed it for sure, but there is so much that some always got through. Now there's no effort to stop it.

To your points:

1. I'm not sure if you're referring to the rumors about Blue Cross Blue Shield, but they are not true. Private doctors not dealing with providing medications or services through federal programs might try to have some kind of kickback, but there are a lot of laws that prevent kickbacks so it isn't the norm. With vaccines, it just doesn't happen. Also, yes, it was normal for vaccine administrators to contact anyone and everyone to ensure they used up their stock of vaccines or else they would go bad.

The incentive to get as many vaccines into as many people as possible is to save lives. Wasting vaccines caused unnecessary sickness and death during the pandemic.

2. As I said, science changes. I'm not sure how you phrased your posts or where you posted, but it was likely moderators, not fact checkers, that took down your post for fear of contributing to misinformation. For example, people claiming vaccines made them magnetic or more sick caused some to not get vaccinated at all.

How a platform chooses to handle fact checking is up to them. That said, I'm sorry to hear you had this reaction, and it seems to be a known effect under investigation some minuscule portion of the population has reported. I hope they find a way to undo that effect in the future, and at least it seems it's not causing long term harm.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8525834/

Still, none of this means we shouldn't have fact checking on the internet or that we shouldn't trust institutions. That's the fun part, we can question them and seek more information, but we should trust when people who know what they are talking about tell you something important. Like getting a vaccine, evacuating from a natural disaster, or that abortion is healthcare that prevents tragic maternal deaths.

Misinformation got some guy elected president twice! It's a powerful tool and needs to be defeated or else we'll continue to devolve into a hateful, angry, ignorant society. (more than we are)