4 ms·

I don't know what the relevance of the Maher clip is. I stopped watching after a couple minutes, but all I saw was about how Democrats have false beliefs about

I don't know what the relevance of the Maher clip is. I stopped watching after a couple minutes, but all I saw was about how Democrats have false beliefs about COVID. I don't see what this has to do with fact checking. If you're referring to this Snopes (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/), the "mixed" ruling seems perfectly reasonable. Saying someone is a "convicted terrorist" is a fuzzy claim, because there is no such charge one can be convicted of. It's not like "convicted murderer".

Jiro 5y ago
Claiming that it's mixed because there's no such charge is avoiding the question, which is "if a normal person reads this, would he get an accurate impression of what happened?" If someone is convicted of a crime which an ordinary person would look at and say 'that's terrorism', then it's true or mostly true. The fact that there isn't literally a definition of "convicted of terrorism" should at most change "true" into "mostly true". That's how fact checking sites usually introduce bias--they don't actually lie about literal facts, they just have shifting standards about when things need to be absolutely literally true, when they can give false impressions, and what counts as "mostly" when something is mostly true or false or mixed.
Natsu 5y ago
> I don't see what this has to do with fact checking. It's weird that the group that is getting the most dangerous misinformation about Covid has a better idea of the risks of it. And this is one area in which fact checking has been prominent and possibly over-zealous. It can shut down conversations too quickly instead of letting people come to understanding. I think it's at least partially because it's hard to advocate for a middle-of-the-road position, each side thinks you're an undercover partisan for the other. So it's hard to advocate for something like quit complaining about masks, they're not that great but they are helping, vaccines work and you should get them unless you have medical issues, but they're not 100%, some lockdowns probably cause more harm than help, some of the rules are either nonsense or enforced in silly ways that have nothing to do with Covid risk, and the virus is dangerous but the risk isn't evenly distributed across all populations, and even if it's not a big risk to you personally, you're being a real jerk if you go out a lot and help unknowingly spread it. For the latter point, bombing government buildings is a central example of terrorism and nobody thinks there's a crime of "terrorism" when they hear "convicted terrorist." By the same standard, Snopes would have to say that the 9-11 hijackers were not terrorists. The slipperiness of the word is entirely a matter of people who want it to be about the goodness or badness of the person instead of achieving political goals by initiating violence.
- allturtles 5y ago
  I'd agree that the fact-checking infrastructure is not well-adapted for COVID, or any kind of rapidly developing situation where the facts are not entirely clear. As for Rosenberg, you're focusing on the terrorism and ignoring the convicted. She was not convicted of terrorism, or even of bombing buildings, but of explosives possession. The word "convicted" has to mean something. I believe that O.J. Simpson is a murderer, but calling him a "convicted murderer" would be false. If the claim was "convicted of felonies due to her involvement with a terrorist organization", there would be a much better case for "true."
  - Natsu 5y ago
    Snopes is the one choosing which version of the claim to fact-check, though, so choosing that version to downplay the whole "helped bomb a government building" thing is not very reasonable here, just like the choice of saying that "convicted terrorist" can only mean "convicted of a crime called terrorism that does not exist" instead of the meaning most people would use which is being "convicted of a crime that involved bombing government buildings, which is a central example of 'terrorism'".
    - allturtles 5y ago
      They are fact checking the particular claim that went viral on twitter. Nuance doesn't go viral. If you care about the veracity of the claim, presumably you will read the extensive explanation of the 'mixed' rating and form your own conclusions. That's why it's 'mixed' and not 'false.' You can't just go to Snopes and say "oh snopes says it's false" in this case. p.s. the crimes she was convicted of did not include bombing government buildings, that part of the tweet is strictly false.
      - Natsu 5y ago
        See, a normal person would look at this and say the bombing was the important thing, not the minutea. They could very well have picked a different tweet, it's not like they're forced to pick this and only this tweet. Both weakman and motte and baileys are old rhetorical tricks, they're not very convincing.

Jiro 5y ago

Claiming that it's mixed because there's no such charge is avoiding the question, which is "if a normal person reads this, would he get an accurate impression of what happened?" If someone is convicted of a crime which an ordinary person would look at and say 'that's terrorism', then it's true or mostly true. The fact that there isn't literally a definition of "convicted of terrorism" should at most change "true" into "mostly true". That's how fact checking sites usually introduce bias--they don't actually lie about literal facts, they just have shifting standards about when things need to be absolutely literally true, when they can give false impressions, and what counts as "mostly" when something is mostly true or false or mixed.

Natsu 5y ago

> I don't see what this has to do with fact checking. It's weird that the group that is getting the most dangerous misinformation about Covid has a better idea of the risks of it. And this is one area in which fact checking has been prominent and possibly over-zealous. It can shut down conversations too quickly instead of letting people come to understanding. I think it's at least partially because it's hard to advocate for a middle-of-the-road position, each side thinks you're an undercover partisan for the other. So it's hard to advocate for something like quit complaining about masks, they're not that great but they are helping, vaccines work and you should get them unless you have medical issues, but they're not 100%, some lockdowns probably cause more harm than help, some of the rules are either nonsense or enforced in silly ways that have nothing to do with Covid risk, and the virus is dangerous but the risk isn't evenly distributed across all populations, and even if it's not a big risk to you personally, you're being a real jerk if you go out a lot and help unknowingly spread it. For the latter point, bombing government buildings is a central example of terrorism and nobody thinks there's a crime of "terrorism" when they hear "convicted terrorist." By the same standard, Snopes would have to say that the 9-11 hijackers were not terrorists. The slipperiness of the word is entirely a matter of people who want it to be about the goodness or badness of the person instead of achieving political goals by initiating violence.

allturtles 5y ago
I'd agree that the fact-checking infrastructure is not well-adapted for COVID, or any kind of rapidly developing situation where the facts are not entirely clear. As for Rosenberg, you're focusing on the terrorism and ignoring the convicted. She was not convicted of terrorism, or even of bombing buildings, but of explosives possession. The word "convicted" has to mean something. I believe that O.J. Simpson is a murderer, but calling him a "convicted murderer" would be false. If the claim was "convicted of felonies due to her involvement with a terrorist organization", there would be a much better case for "true."
- Natsu 5y ago
  Snopes is the one choosing which version of the claim to fact-check, though, so choosing that version to downplay the whole "helped bomb a government building" thing is not very reasonable here, just like the choice of saying that "convicted terrorist" can only mean "convicted of a crime called terrorism that does not exist" instead of the meaning most people would use which is being "convicted of a crime that involved bombing government buildings, which is a central example of 'terrorism'".
  - allturtles 5y ago
    They are fact checking the particular claim that went viral on twitter. Nuance doesn't go viral. If you care about the veracity of the claim, presumably you will read the extensive explanation of the 'mixed' rating and form your own conclusions. That's why it's 'mixed' and not 'false.' You can't just go to Snopes and say "oh snopes says it's false" in this case. p.s. the crimes she was convicted of did not include bombing government buildings, that part of the tweet is strictly false.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      See, a normal person would look at this and say the bombing was the important thing, not the minutea. They could very well have picked a different tweet, it's not like they're forced to pick this and only this tweet. Both weakman and motte and baileys are old rhetorical tricks, they're not very convincing.