3 ms·

I think from a lot of peoples point of view, the fact checkers have a left-wing bias. Seen from that perspective, Facebook is just correcting for the bias. Peo

by im3w1l 6y ago

I think from a lot of peoples point of view, the fact checkers have a left-wing bias. Seen from that perspective, Facebook is just correcting for the bias. People on the right often don't even want the fact-check system to exist in the first place. It was pushed by left-wing people who hoped they could use it to kick out the right.

makomk 6y ago
Perhaps even including from the point of view of people who notice that what the fact checkers declare to be true depends on which partisan side it supports. For example, it's amazing how fast the official unemployment figure switched from being the One True Measure of unemployment and any claim that differed from it a lie when Trump was running against a Democrat incumbent, to suddenly not being so once Trump was the incumbent. There also seems to be a noticable bias in the overall rating given on a lot of sites, with conservative claims shifted a step or two towards "false" compared to liberal or left-wing claims with an equivalent level of actual accuracy as described in the text. The thing is, on some level I think a lot of the cheerleaders of fact checking as a weapon against right-wing information must know this and want it. There's been quite a bit of outrage over organisations fact-checking left-wing claims as false, especially when it's a fact checker affiliated with a decidedly non-left wing and non-Democrat supporting site that does it, including claims that it's destroying democracy, dubious arguments about false equivalence, and using the possibility of Facebook penalties to imply it's suppressing left-wing speech. (There was also a really revealing incident where, after a state Democrat party got caught really blatently violating Facebook's rules against voter suppression ads in a tight election, nearly all publications just didn't cover it despite thorougly covering the announcement of those rules. I don't think they got penalized beyond having the offending ads pulled, so the victim narrative would probably have been hard to pull off.)
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Which fact checkers are labeling current unemployment figures a lie?
CathedralBorrow 6y ago
This sounds a lot like tribalism. The left-wing people coordinating an attack on the right-wing people to win some battle. Isn't human communication on a global scale slightly more nuanced than that?
- im3w1l 6y ago
  The fake-news battle is mainly shaped around the American left-vs-right battle. You are right that there are many other groups in the global sphere, but they are not influential in this battle. What happens to them is mostly a side-effect of the battle. Talking about people like Bolsonaro, Modi, Duterte or for that matter Boris Johnson.

by im3w1l 6y ago

makomk 6y ago

Perhaps even including from the point of view of people who notice that what the fact checkers declare to be true depends on which partisan side it supports. For example, it's amazing how fast the official unemployment figure switched from being the One True Measure of unemployment and any claim that differed from it a lie when Trump was running against a Democrat incumbent, to suddenly not being so once Trump was the incumbent. There also seems to be a noticable bias in the overall rating given on a lot of sites, with conservative claims shifted a step or two towards "false" compared to liberal or left-wing claims with an equivalent level of actual accuracy as described in the text. The thing is, on some level I think a lot of the cheerleaders of fact checking as a weapon against right-wing information must know this and want it. There's been quite a bit of outrage over organisations fact-checking left-wing claims as false, especially when it's a fact checker affiliated with a decidedly non-left wing and non-Democrat supporting site that does it, including claims that it's destroying democracy, dubious arguments about false equivalence, and using the possibility of Facebook penalties to imply it's suppressing left-wing speech. (There was also a really revealing incident where, after a state Democrat party got caught really blatently violating Facebook's rules against voter suppression ads in a tight election, nearly all publications just didn't cover it despite thorougly covering the announcement of those rules. I don't think they got penalized beyond having the offending ads pulled, so the victim narrative would probably have been hard to pull off.)

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Which fact checkers are labeling current unemployment figures a lie?

CathedralBorrow 6y ago

This sounds a lot like tribalism. The left-wing people coordinating an attack on the right-wing people to win some battle. Isn't human communication on a global scale slightly more nuanced than that?

im3w1l 6y ago
The fake-news battle is mainly shaped around the American left-vs-right battle. You are right that there are many other groups in the global sphere, but they are not influential in this battle. What happens to them is mostly a side-effect of the battle. Talking about people like Bolsonaro, Modi, Duterte or for that matter Boris Johnson.