8 ms·

I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things that

by lhnz 10y ago

I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things that they don't like, but overly charitable readings of anything that they like.)

NoGravitas 10y ago
I would expect that behaviour from any political news fact checker, humans being what they are.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 10y ago
Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help. [1] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
- pg314 10y ago
  Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?
  - basch 10y ago
    would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal
    - _dark_matter_ 10y ago
      A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.
      - basch 10y ago
        maybe Best In Show, that dog documentary, is a better example.
      - jwtadvice 10y ago
        Most news is (unfortunately) nothing more than opinion. Either the opinion of "an unnamed official", the opinion of a contributor, the opinion of a sponsor, or the opinion of an editor. Take the recent opinions of anonymous officials that Russia's objective in leaking DNC corruption was to get Trump elected. That's being reported on as news and fact, with the opinion aspect of it turned down to obscurity.
  - makomk 10y ago
    I wonder how this would affect, say, the claim that bulk marketing emails for Trump hotels were actually secret communications with Russia, as reported by Slate and repeated by a certain @HillaryClinton on Twitter. (And, for that matter, the associated belief that the FBI concluding they were a non-issue was proof that the FBI are backing Trump.)
- morgante 10y ago
  Maybe reality doesn't match your opinions.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    If one suspected this whole effort will be focused far more on politics than on truthiness (I know... amazing!), you've just confirmed that suspicion. Congratulations, I guess.
    - morgante 10y ago
      You're the one focused more on politics than truthfulness. What exactly do you disagree with in this code of principles? [0] Or is the problem that reporting reality accurately undermines your fantasy? [0] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        Haha yeah after one post I'm "focused". Meanwhile you have seven posts on this page, none of which obey the Principle of Charity. There's still time to edit! I see nothing wrong with the document you link.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Maybe it takes a little more to convince anyone of anything than merely to say "no, you're wrong" over and over and over again. Would that the world were so simple, perhaps. Evidence suggests that it is not.
    - morgante 10y ago
      I agree that saying "you're wrong" isn't an effective rhetorical technique, but trying to argue with alt-right trolls is a waste of effort. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do the research, with primary sources, to actually validate claims. Since conservatives can't actually invalidate those claims, they've decided to simply claim that any source which disagrees with them is biased. It's gaslighting.
- coldpie 10y ago
  > the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral The American right's association with reality is well known to be, uhh... tenuous. So it's not too surprising that they tend to disagree with people who verify facts. Edit for downvoters: The mainstream positions of the Republican party are, objectively, factually incorrect on the issues of climate change, evolution, and women's health. I'm not aware of any issue where the left's position completely disagrees with established scientific fact. Thus, anyone concerned with basing their understanding of reality on facts is going to be "left-leaning" by simple virtue of the right's disregard for fact.
  - dang 10y ago
    Please keep partisan politics off HN.
    - coldpie 10y ago
      I was explaining why fact checkers appear to be left-leaning, but OK.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Many on the right consider theirs to be the only political tendency compatible with reality, too. They're incorrect in so considering, too. I've vouched your prior comment because I believe its content should be visible. It would be a shame if anyone were to confuse that action with an endorsement.
SamBam 10y ago
How do you come to the conclusion that politifact is as sketchy as the sites that were churning out fake news during the election?
- lhnz 10y ago
  It's not but it is often very misleading. I don't think the fake news is actually what won the election anyway. If anything it was Wikileaks' extreme authenticity that won the election, and I'm struggling to understand how this is 'fake'. I'm assuming that they're trying to delegitimise it by association however. I also find it hard to believe that it was Russia that orchestrated the leaks with zero evidence shown. It's not so easy to trace cyberattacks, and it just seems like officials are looking for a scapegoat for why they didn't win. There seems to be just as much fake news coming out of the left as from the right, albeit smarter less off-the-wall/gutter stuff.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    I agree with this, but I suspect the bigger factor in the election result was that the "straight" news media had stopped going through the nonpartisan motions. They forgot that the tradition of the appearance of objectivity is more for the benefit of the news media than for the public. Once no one has a halo of open-mindedness, there's no reason to listen to Brian Williams over Ed Schultz or Sean Hannity. They could push a more conservative or independent public slightly to the left or to the center, but only slightly, and only when that's all they tried to do. This time they pushed too hard, and the whole edifice collapsed. Frankly the news media seems not to have learned this lesson. If anything the last few weeks have seen them even further off the reservation. When in a decade it's clear that the institution of journalism is completely dead, this episode will loom large in explanation. "Journalists" are seriously arguing that providing relevant information about political candidates is an "attack on the nation". They're mortgaging all their credibility for the latest unsourced meta-analysis of months-old public information spoon-fed to them by petulant spurned spooks. Every day they come up with something goofier, and yet they can't escape the impression that we've heard this all before. What stands out the most is the complete lack of objectivity. If a Republican candidate were crying about losing due to anonymous (even if vaguely Slavic...) revelations about her banal tawdriness, they'd be falling over themselves to laugh at her.
coldpie 10y ago
I thought Politifact was pretty well regarded, and actually tended to be a little too risk-averse in calling out bullshit.
- redthrowaway 10y ago
  Nope. Politifact will generally use the most generous possible reading of what a Democrat says, or the least generous reading of what a Republican says, when determining truth or falsehood. Take a look at these two stories: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/10/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-hillary-clinton-viciously-attack/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/07/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-none-her-emails-were-labeled-top-secr/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/... Now, the first story is simply true. Hillary Clinton did attack her husband's mistresses and accusers, and there's a long history of documentation of that. But Politifact labels it "mostly false" because it was never proven to have come directly from her. As if Sidney Blumenthal just took it upon himself to slander Lewinsky as a delusional nymphomaniac. In the second link, Clinton claims none of her emails were labelled Top Secret. Note the dodge, here. She didn't say, "I didn't send or receive classified information", she said "those emails didn't contain the correct headers". I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, given that we know she tried desperately to modify the records of the emails once they were discovered, if those headers were simply stripped either before or after the fact. Either way, she is simply not stupid enough to not know what she was doing. But she claims innocence through stupidity, and politifact labels it "mostly true". What do both of these examples show? That when Hillary walks the line and is careful not to explicitly say anything demonstrably false, while clearly lying in substance, politifact says she's honest. When Trump says something that's substantively true, while not paying attention to specifics, politifact says he's lying. This is not intellectually honest fact-checking. Letting one candidate play word games and lie while calling out the other for being less careful but telling the truth is not fact-checking, it's shilling.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Hillary Clinton did attack her husband's mistresses and accusers, and there's a long history of documentation of that > But Politifact labels it "mostly false" because it was never proven to have come directly from her. These statements are mutually incompatible. There can't be a long history of documentation for something which is proven. Start your own fact-checker. Your examples just affirm that Politifact is doing it's job correctly.

by lhnz 10y ago

NoGravitas 10y ago

I would expect that behaviour from any political news fact checker, humans being what they are.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

throwanem 10y ago

Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help. [1] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/

pg314 10y ago
Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?
- basch 10y ago
  would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal
  - _dark_matter_ 10y ago
    A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.
    - basch 10y ago
      maybe Best In Show, that dog documentary, is a better example.
    - jwtadvice 10y ago
      Most news is (unfortunately) nothing more than opinion. Either the opinion of "an unnamed official", the opinion of a contributor, the opinion of a sponsor, or the opinion of an editor. Take the recent opinions of anonymous officials that Russia's objective in leaking DNC corruption was to get Trump elected. That's being reported on as news and fact, with the opinion aspect of it turned down to obscurity.
- makomk 10y ago
  I wonder how this would affect, say, the claim that bulk marketing emails for Trump hotels were actually secret communications with Russia, as reported by Slate and repeated by a certain @HillaryClinton on Twitter. (And, for that matter, the associated belief that the FBI concluding they were a non-issue was proof that the FBI are backing Trump.)
morgante 10y ago
Maybe reality doesn't match your opinions.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  If one suspected this whole effort will be focused far more on politics than on truthiness (I know... amazing!), you've just confirmed that suspicion. Congratulations, I guess.
  - morgante 10y ago
    You're the one focused more on politics than truthfulness. What exactly do you disagree with in this code of principles? [0] Or is the problem that reporting reality accurately undermines your fantasy? [0] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Haha yeah after one post I'm "focused". Meanwhile you have seven posts on this page, none of which obey the Principle of Charity. There's still time to edit! I see nothing wrong with the document you link.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Maybe it takes a little more to convince anyone of anything than merely to say "no, you're wrong" over and over and over again. Would that the world were so simple, perhaps. Evidence suggests that it is not.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I agree that saying "you're wrong" isn't an effective rhetorical technique, but trying to argue with alt-right trolls is a waste of effort. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do the research, with primary sources, to actually validate claims. Since conservatives can't actually invalidate those claims, they've decided to simply claim that any source which disagrees with them is biased. It's gaslighting.
coldpie 10y ago
> the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral The American right's association with reality is well known to be, uhh... tenuous. So it's not too surprising that they tend to disagree with people who verify facts. Edit for downvoters: The mainstream positions of the Republican party are, objectively, factually incorrect on the issues of climate change, evolution, and women's health. I'm not aware of any issue where the left's position completely disagrees with established scientific fact. Thus, anyone concerned with basing their understanding of reality on facts is going to be "left-leaning" by simple virtue of the right's disregard for fact.
- dang 10y ago
  Please keep partisan politics off HN.
  - coldpie 10y ago
    I was explaining why fact checkers appear to be left-leaning, but OK.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Many on the right consider theirs to be the only political tendency compatible with reality, too. They're incorrect in so considering, too. I've vouched your prior comment because I believe its content should be visible. It would be a shame if anyone were to confuse that action with an endorsement.

SamBam 10y ago

How do you come to the conclusion that politifact is as sketchy as the sites that were churning out fake news during the election?

lhnz 10y ago
It's not but it is often very misleading. I don't think the fake news is actually what won the election anyway. If anything it was Wikileaks' extreme authenticity that won the election, and I'm struggling to understand how this is 'fake'. I'm assuming that they're trying to delegitimise it by association however. I also find it hard to believe that it was Russia that orchestrated the leaks with zero evidence shown. It's not so easy to trace cyberattacks, and it just seems like officials are looking for a scapegoat for why they didn't win. There seems to be just as much fake news coming out of the left as from the right, albeit smarter less off-the-wall/gutter stuff.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  I agree with this, but I suspect the bigger factor in the election result was that the "straight" news media had stopped going through the nonpartisan motions. They forgot that the tradition of the appearance of objectivity is more for the benefit of the news media than for the public. Once no one has a halo of open-mindedness, there's no reason to listen to Brian Williams over Ed Schultz or Sean Hannity. They could push a more conservative or independent public slightly to the left or to the center, but only slightly, and only when that's all they tried to do. This time they pushed too hard, and the whole edifice collapsed. Frankly the news media seems not to have learned this lesson. If anything the last few weeks have seen them even further off the reservation. When in a decade it's clear that the institution of journalism is completely dead, this episode will loom large in explanation. "Journalists" are seriously arguing that providing relevant information about political candidates is an "attack on the nation". They're mortgaging all their credibility for the latest unsourced meta-analysis of months-old public information spoon-fed to them by petulant spurned spooks. Every day they come up with something goofier, and yet they can't escape the impression that we've heard this all before. What stands out the most is the complete lack of objectivity. If a Republican candidate were crying about losing due to anonymous (even if vaguely Slavic...) revelations about her banal tawdriness, they'd be falling over themselves to laugh at her.

coldpie 10y ago

I thought Politifact was pretty well regarded, and actually tended to be a little too risk-averse in calling out bullshit.

redthrowaway 10y ago
Nope. Politifact will generally use the most generous possible reading of what a Democrat says, or the least generous reading of what a Republican says, when determining truth or falsehood. Take a look at these two stories: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/10/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-hillary-clinton-viciously-attack/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/... http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/07/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-none-her-emails-were-labeled-top-secr/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/... Now, the first story is simply true. Hillary Clinton did attack her husband's mistresses and accusers, and there's a long history of documentation of that. But Politifact labels it "mostly false" because it was never proven to have come directly from her. As if Sidney Blumenthal just took it upon himself to slander Lewinsky as a delusional nymphomaniac. In the second link, Clinton claims none of her emails were labelled Top Secret. Note the dodge, here. She didn't say, "I didn't send or receive classified information", she said "those emails didn't contain the correct headers". I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest, given that we know she tried desperately to modify the records of the emails once they were discovered, if those headers were simply stripped either before or after the fact. Either way, she is simply not stupid enough to not know what she was doing. But she claims innocence through stupidity, and politifact labels it "mostly true". What do both of these examples show? That when Hillary walks the line and is careful not to explicitly say anything demonstrably false, while clearly lying in substance, politifact says she's honest. When Trump says something that's substantively true, while not paying attention to specifics, politifact says he's lying. This is not intellectually honest fact-checking. Letting one candidate play word games and lie while calling out the other for being less careful but telling the truth is not fact-checking, it's shilling.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Hillary Clinton did attack her husband's mistresses and accusers, and there's a long history of documentation of that > But Politifact labels it "mostly false" because it was never proven to have come directly from her. These statements are mutually incompatible. There can't be a long history of documentation for something which is proven. Start your own fact-checker. Your examples just affirm that Politifact is doing it's job correctly.