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Why should Facebook now be responsible for fact-checking political ads? Watching the testimony where a bunch of politicians basically berated Mark Zuckerberg ab

Why should Facebook now be responsible for fact-checking political ads? Watching the testimony where a bunch of politicians basically berated Mark Zuckerberg about how it’s now Facebook’s job to police politicians and keep them honest (because, you know, ALL politicians lie and cannot be trusted) is very telling about the state of our government and democracy. Our leaders cannot police themselves or their peers so they are looking to an outside entity to do it, and moreover casting blame for their own failures. Political attack ads have always been on cable TV, spouting bold-faced lies and half-truths for as long as I can remember. It now seems that politicians have found a new medium. And they want that service to bear the brunt of their operational status quo. Why not address the real problem in politics that leads to the symptoms of the disease at hand instead of shifting the work and burden of honesty to someone like Facebook? Has it even been proven they are equipped and capable of the task?

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
Forget about "equipped and capable". Who decides what is "true"? Is it the the US government's official version of "truth"? Is it "truth" that has the most objectively provable information? How are vague and/or ambiguous claims, about anything, supposed to be regarded in relation to their "truth"? Only someone who is incredibly stupid and/or trying to advance their own agenda would suggest that there is some sort of indisputable "truth" that can be discerned, let alone discerned by Facebook. The easy answer to this problem is, and has always been, to teach everyone how to think critically. Teach the Socratic Method to every child from birth, and reinforce that mode of thinking continually through their entire educational journey. But there lies the rub. The powers that be aren't interested in "truth" or people who are able to discern truth. They want to be able to disseminate their message, and have it uncritically absorbed by the masses. That isn't possible if the people are intelligent and equipped with the tools to think critically and recognize logical inconsistencies. For decades they had it both ways. The government had a population who largely lacked critical thinking skills and uncritically absorbed what they were told as "truth". The government also largely controlled the message disseminated by the corporate media outlets, which were very few before the explosion of the internet. They controlled the narrative, and had conditioned a population that uncritically accepted this narrative. Once the internet exploded on the scene, they lost control of the narrative. All of a sudden you had people who weren't equipped with critical thinking skills, who were extremely vulnerable to whatever narrative was being pushed, and you had a wide variety of people pushing a whole range of messages on the internet and over social media. Now the genie out of of the bottle. Information and (dis)information spreads like a virus across the internet and social media. How do you deal with this? There are two ways. Either make a concerted effort to teach people how to think, hash information and employ logical consistency in their thinking (which the powers that be don't want to do, because it means the permanent loss of control), or try to put the genie back in the bottle and silence all competing narratives. Its clear that the powers that be have chosen to attempt the latter, and it won't end well for anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of action or freedom of thought.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago

Forget about "equipped and capable". Who decides what is "true"? Is it the the US government's official version of "truth"? Is it "truth" that has the most objectively provable information? How are vague and/or ambiguous claims, about anything, supposed to be regarded in relation to their "truth"? Only someone who is incredibly stupid and/or trying to advance their own agenda would suggest that there is some sort of indisputable "truth" that can be discerned, let alone discerned by Facebook. The easy answer to this problem is, and has always been, to teach everyone how to think critically. Teach the Socratic Method to every child from birth, and reinforce that mode of thinking continually through their entire educational journey. But there lies the rub. The powers that be aren't interested in "truth" or people who are able to discern truth. They want to be able to disseminate their message, and have it uncritically absorbed by the masses. That isn't possible if the people are intelligent and equipped with the tools to think critically and recognize logical inconsistencies. For decades they had it both ways. The government had a population who largely lacked critical thinking skills and uncritically absorbed what they were told as "truth". The government also largely controlled the message disseminated by the corporate media outlets, which were very few before the explosion of the internet. They controlled the narrative, and had conditioned a population that uncritically accepted this narrative. Once the internet exploded on the scene, they lost control of the narrative. All of a sudden you had people who weren't equipped with critical thinking skills, who were extremely vulnerable to whatever narrative was being pushed, and you had a wide variety of people pushing a whole range of messages on the internet and over social media. Now the genie out of of the bottle. Information and (dis)information spreads like a virus across the internet and social media. How do you deal with this? There are two ways. Either make a concerted effort to teach people how to think, hash information and employ logical consistency in their thinking (which the powers that be don't want to do, because it means the permanent loss of control), or try to put the genie back in the bottle and silence all competing narratives. Its clear that the powers that be have chosen to attempt the latter, and it won't end well for anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of action or freedom of thought.