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I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision?

pnako 7y ago
Voters decide what is good or bad political speech (at least in democracies). It's already bad enough with concentrated corporate media and giant web corporations, we don't need to have another unelected group of "fact checkers" mess with this any further. Let anyone, politician or not, make any political speech and, again, voters will ultimately decide.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Voters decide what is effective and ineffective speech. This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false. It is easy to produce effective political ads that are entirely false, such as was done in the Brexit campaign.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    > This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false. Very good point. It should also be noted that some things are a matter of fact (1+1=2), and some things (like whether Brexit is worth doing) are a matter of opinion, based on a complex array of facts, factoids, memes, rule-of-thumbs, gut-feels, lived experience, etc.
deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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polski-g 7y ago
Because truth is subjective. "Trump is racist" a statement of fact. But it's entirely subjective.
- bilekas 7y ago
  > Because truth is subjective. no... It's not.. Thats the point. Things are not marked (legitemately) as fake based on opinion..
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > Things are not marked (legitemately) as fake based on opinion. People are worried about things that are illegitimately marked as fake based on opinion.
    - bilekas 7y ago
      You do realise there is a standard to bear when fact checking ? https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ Its not a bunch of opinion based socialists with flower based triggers.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        I hate to bring you some devastating news here... but some people don’t follow journalistic best practices.
c72a7fd0 7y ago
People should be allowed to be wrong. It's that simple. If you disagree with this you're not a very good person (fact).
- bilekas 7y ago
  Well why fact check anything then ? If you're going to do it as a company, I don't know why you have two standards..
  - pnako 7y ago
    That's a good point. I think Facebook made a mistake by doing this. They should only vet ads for legality in the target jurisdiction (to some extent, false advertising is a crime, so they might need some minimum fact checking there). Generally I think those companies are making a huge mistake if they slightly deviate from absolute neutrality in the area of politics/geopolitics. Any deviation is seen as taking sides by both sides, and from that point onward everyone will basically judge those companies as taking part in partisan divides. Nothing to gain from that.
    - delusional 7y ago
      Doing nothing is an action. Inaction is not what neutrality means. It is not neutral to let foreign powers interfere with elections (in any country, whether it be the US in a Russian one or Russia in a US one).
      - thu2111 7y ago
        Doing nothing is an action. No it's not. Doing nothing is the opposite of action. Please don't twist the language like this - if doing nothing is an action then everyone is engaged in action all the time and the entire concept loses all meaning. Inaction is not what neutrality means Not intervening in a situation is practically the definition of neutrality. That's why Switzerland is described as neutral during World War 2 - they had a policy of no action taken.
- 7y ago
macspoofing 7y ago
>I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. What do you mean by 'permitted'? Facts within the political sphere need to be interpreted with the lens of your political ideology because politics are not a rational game. Political beliefs are emotional even if the proponents claim otherwise. For example, take the statement "Homelessness in San Francisco is due to rising inequality, cost of living, and gentrification." .. How does Facebook apply a truth value to that? What do you think the truth value of that statement is? What do you think your ideological opposite would claim? >Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision? It's obvious. Politics are toxic, divisive and emotional. ANY decision you make is guaranteed to piss off a large segment of your users.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Some things like "we've spent X over the last 5 years" are (sometimes) obviously false though.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    So you want Facebook and other social media companies to pick and choose which facts to fact-check?
    - nicoburns 7y ago
      I'd argue that paid political ads probably ought to be banned entirely on social media platforms. It's an unfair advantage to those who can afford to pay.
chrisseaton 7y ago
Because people say any idea they disagree with is false.
- bilekas 7y ago
  Not really. Have you ever heard of "Unsubstantiated claims" ? Let me ask you the classic; "When did you stop beating your wife?"
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > Not really. You don’t think people call things ‘fake news’ just because they disagree with it? Calling things fake news is a common type of fake news these days!
    - bilekas 7y ago
      Thats fine, but those people are not under the fact checking standard : https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ There are methods and proceedures in place to fact check. I'm really surprised people think facts are opinion based.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        > There are methods and proceedures in place to fact check. Not everyone follows methods and procedures to fact check properly... that’s... the... problem. When InfoWars calls things fake news, they ain’t carefully going through your policy.
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        I'm sure there's a neutral, disinterested fact checker somewhere in the world. But my experience with political fact checkers is mostly composed of people posting Snopes articles with similar keywords to what I said. I'm not sure I trust Facebook to hire the right kind.
brlewis 7y ago
Could you please be specific about which part of the reasoning given in the article you think is not solid? The company insists that it does not want to be in the position of judging what is true and false, with its head of communications, Nick Clegg, saying that it was not an “appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny”.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  This is, in my opinion, no solid reasoning. It's more like the weazeling out, which is so very typical for Facebook. The reasoning does not stand up for ads, which are very obvious, proofable lies and which they still refuse to withdraw.
  - brlewis 7y ago
    In the general case, judging obvious vs non-obvious isn't much easier than judging true vs false.
StreamBright 7y ago
Where would you draw the line? Mostly true? Some true? Mostly false? 100% false? What if there are facts surface later and this changes the truthiness?
- lurker458 7y ago
  Yes, a grey zone exists. That's not a reason for inaction in other cases. Where to draw the line between murder, manslaughter and unfortunate accident ? Where to draw the line between fair use and piracy ? If anything, start with policing obvious falsehoods ("Obama and FEMA will take all your guns").
SkyBelow 7y ago
Because truth and falsehood are not so clear cut. Many scientific studies are needed to even begin to understand an issue, and even if we can say things like 'climate change is happening' with the weight of massive studies backing up, saying things like 'policy X will fix climate change' will be lucky to have a single study backing it. Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the most non-controversial standards which we use to build laws from, and you will find many of those 'facts' are actual opinions and have edge cases that people aren't aware of. Try this one: Lowering the drinking age is harmful to minors. Is it? We know alcohol in general is harmful to the one consuming it. But would a lower drinking age result in less binge drinking and thus be more healthy on average? We see this a lot with prohibition, where if we ban something harmful but the ban itself causes more harm. How can you say, as a fact, that the ban will or won't make things better or worse? So while we can easily scoff at the idea that "Hillary is controlled by aliens." banning falsehoods is far more troublesome than just wiping out the obvious falsehoods. And in some cases, even the obvious falsehoods aren't false.
- mattigames 7y ago
  Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a better alternative.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    The core question, and one that has existed long before Facebook even did, was how do we protect a population against propaganda. As psychology and marketing improve their ability to manipulate the mind, we have to get answer this or else democracies will fall into the hands of those who have control over these tools. This is a hard problem and I'm hesitant of any solution on the level of 'ban lies'.
    - 7y ago

pnako 7y ago

Voters decide what is good or bad political speech (at least in democracies). It's already bad enough with concentrated corporate media and giant web corporations, we don't need to have another unelected group of "fact checkers" mess with this any further. Let anyone, politician or not, make any political speech and, again, voters will ultimately decide.

MereInterest 7y ago
Voters decide what is effective and ineffective speech. This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false. It is easy to produce effective political ads that are entirely false, such as was done in the Brexit campaign.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > This is entirely distinct from good/bad, or true/false. Very good point. It should also be noted that some things are a matter of fact (1+1=2), and some things (like whether Brexit is worth doing) are a matter of opinion, based on a complex array of facts, factoids, memes, rule-of-thumbs, gut-feels, lived experience, etc.

deleted 7y ago

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deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

polski-g 7y ago

Because truth is subjective. "Trump is racist" a statement of fact. But it's entirely subjective.

bilekas 7y ago
> Because truth is subjective. no... It's not.. Thats the point. Things are not marked (legitemately) as fake based on opinion..
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Things are not marked (legitemately) as fake based on opinion. People are worried about things that are illegitimately marked as fake based on opinion.
  - bilekas 7y ago
    You do realise there is a standard to bear when fact checking ? https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ Its not a bunch of opinion based socialists with flower based triggers.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      I hate to bring you some devastating news here... but some people don’t follow journalistic best practices.

c72a7fd0 7y ago

People should be allowed to be wrong. It's that simple. If you disagree with this you're not a very good person (fact).

bilekas 7y ago
Well why fact check anything then ? If you're going to do it as a company, I don't know why you have two standards..
- pnako 7y ago
  That's a good point. I think Facebook made a mistake by doing this. They should only vet ads for legality in the target jurisdiction (to some extent, false advertising is a crime, so they might need some minimum fact checking there). Generally I think those companies are making a huge mistake if they slightly deviate from absolute neutrality in the area of politics/geopolitics. Any deviation is seen as taking sides by both sides, and from that point onward everyone will basically judge those companies as taking part in partisan divides. Nothing to gain from that.
  - delusional 7y ago
    Doing nothing is an action. Inaction is not what neutrality means. It is not neutral to let foreign powers interfere with elections (in any country, whether it be the US in a Russian one or Russia in a US one).
    - thu2111 7y ago
      Doing nothing is an action. No it's not. Doing nothing is the opposite of action. Please don't twist the language like this - if doing nothing is an action then everyone is engaged in action all the time and the entire concept loses all meaning. Inaction is not what neutrality means Not intervening in a situation is practically the definition of neutrality. That's why Switzerland is described as neutral during World War 2 - they had a policy of no action taken.
7y ago

macspoofing 7y ago

>I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be false.. What do you mean by 'permitted'? Facts within the political sphere need to be interpreted with the lens of your political ideology because politics are not a rational game. Political beliefs are emotional even if the proponents claim otherwise. For example, take the statement "Homelessness in San Francisco is due to rising inequality, cost of living, and gentrification." .. How does Facebook apply a truth value to that? What do you think the truth value of that statement is? What do you think your ideological opposite would claim? >Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision? It's obvious. Politics are toxic, divisive and emotional. ANY decision you make is guaranteed to piss off a large segment of your users.

nicoburns 7y ago
Some things like "we've spent X over the last 5 years" are (sometimes) obviously false though.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  So you want Facebook and other social media companies to pick and choose which facts to fact-check?
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    I'd argue that paid political ads probably ought to be banned entirely on social media platforms. It's an unfair advantage to those who can afford to pay.

chrisseaton 7y ago

Because people say any idea they disagree with is false.

bilekas 7y ago
Not really. Have you ever heard of "Unsubstantiated claims" ? Let me ask you the classic; "When did you stop beating your wife?"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Not really. You don’t think people call things ‘fake news’ just because they disagree with it? Calling things fake news is a common type of fake news these days!
  - bilekas 7y ago
    Thats fine, but those people are not under the fact checking standard : https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ There are methods and proceedures in place to fact check. I'm really surprised people think facts are opinion based.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      > There are methods and proceedures in place to fact check. Not everyone follows methods and procedures to fact check properly... that’s... the... problem. When InfoWars calls things fake news, they ain’t carefully going through your policy.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I'm sure there's a neutral, disinterested fact checker somewhere in the world. But my experience with political fact checkers is mostly composed of people posting Snopes articles with similar keywords to what I said. I'm not sure I trust Facebook to hire the right kind.

brlewis 7y ago

Could you please be specific about which part of the reasoning given in the article you think is not solid? The company insists that it does not want to be in the position of judging what is true and false, with its head of communications, Nick Clegg, saying that it was not an “appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny”.

CaptainZapp 7y ago
This is, in my opinion, no solid reasoning. It's more like the weazeling out, which is so very typical for Facebook. The reasoning does not stand up for ads, which are very obvious, proofable lies and which they still refuse to withdraw.
- brlewis 7y ago
  In the general case, judging obvious vs non-obvious isn't much easier than judging true vs false.

StreamBright 7y ago

Where would you draw the line? Mostly true? Some true? Mostly false? 100% false? What if there are facts surface later and this changes the truthiness?

lurker458 7y ago
Yes, a grey zone exists. That's not a reason for inaction in other cases. Where to draw the line between murder, manslaughter and unfortunate accident ? Where to draw the line between fair use and piracy ? If anything, start with policing obvious falsehoods ("Obama and FEMA will take all your guns").

SkyBelow 7y ago

Because truth and falsehood are not so clear cut. Many scientific studies are needed to even begin to understand an issue, and even if we can say things like 'climate change is happening' with the weight of massive studies backing up, saying things like 'policy X will fix climate change' will be lucky to have a single study backing it. Take even something that you would think no one would disagree with, some of the most non-controversial standards which we use to build laws from, and you will find many of those 'facts' are actual opinions and have edge cases that people aren't aware of. Try this one: Lowering the drinking age is harmful to minors. Is it? We know alcohol in general is harmful to the one consuming it. But would a lower drinking age result in less binge drinking and thus be more healthy on average? We see this a lot with prohibition, where if we ban something harmful but the ban itself causes more harm. How can you say, as a fact, that the ban will or won't make things better or worse? So while we can easily scoff at the idea that "Hillary is controlled by aliens." banning falsehoods is far more troublesome than just wiping out the obvious falsehoods. And in some cases, even the obvious falsehoods aren't false.

mattigames 7y ago
Using this rationale we are condeming ourselves to letting the worse parts of societies to use the propaganda machine -known as facebook- to influatiate people in a scale never seen before, equaling freedom of speech with freedom of reach is taking this society off the rails by letting anyone with a big enough wallet influentiate a gigantic part of the population; even outright banning all political ads would be a better alternative.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  The core question, and one that has existed long before Facebook even did, was how do we protect a population against propaganda. As psychology and marketing improve their ability to manipulate the mind, we have to get answer this or else democracies will fall into the hands of those who have control over these tools. This is a hard problem and I'm hesitant of any solution on the level of 'ban lies'.
  - 7y ago