5 ms·

`nutrition labels` are already kind of subjective as we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels.

`nutrition labels` are already kind of subjective as we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. Having a "truth vs fiction" rating next to news sites isn't as easy as you think. Sure, some things are easy to qualify - but when it comes to wars, motivations, scandals - many common stories will always be left with two equally disputed sides of the story. This means the site that supports the governments verdict will when the vote.

sova 9y ago
This is not an easy task, but it seems like one the Tech Giants would be able to tackle with their brainpower, resource, intelligence, outreach, and general sense of impending doom (read as "morality"). Or would it be best to focus more on emoji.
- fleitz 9y ago
  I assure you that outside, people are still mostly normal. I have visited this land, and spoken to its inhabitants, most everyone is pretty chill and friendly.
r00fus 9y ago
Nutrion labels - would you consider them harmful? I see them as a net positive.
kbenson 9y ago
> we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. As long as we can, and do, revise the labels, that's exactly what we want. Not only would trying to determine the absolute best things to put on the label be time consuming and take forever to accomplish, we would still find more stuff to change later. Perfect is definitely the enemy of good in this case.
cwkoss 9y ago
Some of the fact checking websites are just blatant partisan punditry disguised as 'fact-checking'. (Verrit is worst offender: labeling something as 'True' if someone said something verbatim, even if it is not a factual assertion). Even the ones with decent records often display bias, ex. when someone they like says something where the thesis is correct but a supporting fact is incorrect, they'll mark it as "mostly true". But when someone they don't like does the same, they'll mark it as "mostly false".
- sova 9y ago
  That's the same as the lion telling the tamer how safe it is in the cage. Needs to be independent firm or NGO or company internal team. Ideas and solutions please!
- goialoq 9y ago
  Verrit verifies quotations, not content. They don't say whether you should trust the source; that's up to you.
comex 9y ago
I haven’t watched the testimony, but I don’t think the suggestion is for the government to make the judgements for the labels - at least, that sounds like an epically terrible idea, especially (but not only) given the current president’s predilection for calling any news he doesn’t like “fake”. Rather, I think social media platforms would be expected to do that themselves, maybe by contracting with external fact checking sites, like Facebook is already doing in order to label specific articles (as opposed to entire sites) “disputed”. But yes, creating any centralized pseudo-authority on what counts as truth - even a private one committed to neutrality and limited to a specific social media platform - carries significant risks. I think some existing sites, such as Politifact, currently do a pretty good job of distinguishing “this is false” from “this is political spin I disagree with”. But they’re not perfect - they clearly have a bias, like everyone else - and other fact checkers tend to be somewhat worse, from what I’ve seen, ranging from Snopes to fact-checking articles in WaPo, NYT, etc.
- sova 9y ago
  Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info
  - jfindley 9y ago
    Many of the most important issues (e.g. current crisis in Rohingya) are in environments where there is no such thing as absolute truth. To pick one example, in a conflict, it's very rare that any two independent sources can even agree on the number of casualties (much less on whose side they were, what the cause of death was, etc), and what the western world tends to treat as some of the most reputable sources explicitly ignore any reports not written in English. Which is obviously not useful when many of these conflicts occur in regions where English is not a primary language. We can define the boundary between fact and opinion all we want, but in the real world it's very rarely so black and white. Sure, pieces that are merely commentary/opinion should be labelled as such, but in all reputable news outlets already do this. I've yet to see a single useful solution to this issue that stands up when there's simply no practical way of accurately establishing what the truth really is.

sova 9y ago

This is not an easy task, but it seems like one the Tech Giants would be able to tackle with their brainpower, resource, intelligence, outreach, and general sense of impending doom (read as "morality"). Or would it be best to focus more on emoji.

fleitz 9y ago
I assure you that outside, people are still mostly normal. I have visited this land, and spoken to its inhabitants, most everyone is pretty chill and friendly.

r00fus 9y ago

Nutrion labels - would you consider them harmful? I see them as a net positive.

kbenson 9y ago

> we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. As long as we can, and do, revise the labels, that's exactly what we want. Not only would trying to determine the absolute best things to put on the label be time consuming and take forever to accomplish, we would still find more stuff to change later. Perfect is definitely the enemy of good in this case.

cwkoss 9y ago

Some of the fact checking websites are just blatant partisan punditry disguised as 'fact-checking'. (Verrit is worst offender: labeling something as 'True' if someone said something verbatim, even if it is not a factual assertion). Even the ones with decent records often display bias, ex. when someone they like says something where the thesis is correct but a supporting fact is incorrect, they'll mark it as "mostly true". But when someone they don't like does the same, they'll mark it as "mostly false".

sova 9y ago
That's the same as the lion telling the tamer how safe it is in the cage. Needs to be independent firm or NGO or company internal team. Ideas and solutions please!
goialoq 9y ago
Verrit verifies quotations, not content. They don't say whether you should trust the source; that's up to you.

comex 9y ago

I haven’t watched the testimony, but I don’t think the suggestion is for the government to make the judgements for the labels - at least, that sounds like an epically terrible idea, especially (but not only) given the current president’s predilection for calling any news he doesn’t like “fake”. Rather, I think social media platforms would be expected to do that themselves, maybe by contracting with external fact checking sites, like Facebook is already doing in order to label specific articles (as opposed to entire sites) “disputed”. But yes, creating any centralized pseudo-authority on what counts as truth - even a private one committed to neutrality and limited to a specific social media platform - carries significant risks. I think some existing sites, such as Politifact, currently do a pretty good job of distinguishing “this is false” from “this is political spin I disagree with”. But they’re not perfect - they clearly have a bias, like everyone else - and other fact checkers tend to be somewhat worse, from what I’ve seen, ranging from Snopes to fact-checking articles in WaPo, NYT, etc.

sova 9y ago
Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info
- jfindley 9y ago
  Many of the most important issues (e.g. current crisis in Rohingya) are in environments where there is no such thing as absolute truth. To pick one example, in a conflict, it's very rare that any two independent sources can even agree on the number of casualties (much less on whose side they were, what the cause of death was, etc), and what the western world tends to treat as some of the most reputable sources explicitly ignore any reports not written in English. Which is obviously not useful when many of these conflicts occur in regions where English is not a primary language. We can define the boundary between fact and opinion all we want, but in the real world it's very rarely so black and white. Sure, pieces that are merely commentary/opinion should be labelled as such, but in all reputable news outlets already do this. I've yet to see a single useful solution to this issue that stands up when there's simply no practical way of accurately establishing what the truth really is.