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And this is why Facebook has no business being part of fact checking. While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting int

And this is why Facebook has no business being part of fact checking. While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT and being told they are incorrect on their assumptions about topic X. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such.

aeturnum 5y ago
The problem is that one of the main differentiating factors of these platforms is selecting which post to present to the user at a particular moment. It's a valuable service - there are lots of posts - but it means the platforms are always somewhat going to be in the business of choosing one post over another. > While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT and being told they are incorrect on their assumptions about topic X. There are many ways in which this is different, most of which relate to the differences between audio and visual communication mediums.
scotuswroteus 5y ago
>"treated as such" -Facebook isn't legally required to fact check. -The CDC position is sufficiently controversial that this is well within the margin of error we'd expect of a fact checker. -AT&T isn't amplifying your phone call to millions by selective algorithms that enhance the most controversial and hateful messages -Carriers are heavily regulated, in part because they enjoy natural monopolies (in AT&T's case, only so many companies should be digging trenches and connecting physical wirelines into homes and businesses)
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  This argument I see everywhere "Facebook amplified your voice, a phone line does not" misses a key point: Facebook chooses to amplify voices. All any of us wanted really was for our friends to see what we say, if they choose to see it. So really, Facebook and similar entities at creating the problem deliberately and then claiming they're entitled to solve it by placing scarlet letters around their site.
pier25 5y ago
> Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such. It's more nuanced than that because ATT doesn't repeat a phone call it has deemed interesting to millions of other people.
- HunOL 5y ago
  Would be good if social media stop promote some posts and order them in my feed. Make them all chronological. Too many posts? Unsubscribe.
  - mfer 5y ago
    This starts to get to the issue here. FB is not a carrier (like a telephone company). Their business model isn't built around carrying information or broadcasting it. FB is a content platform who is about making ad revenue. They are crafted around that and how to make that the most profitable possible.
- saurik 5y ago
  We need to differentiate the recommendation algorithm parts of these products from the communication parts. If Facebook is recommending something, that's on them, and if they want to not recommend my content to anyone, so be it; but I should be able to post something seen only by the people who opted in to following me without them getting in the way.
  - the-pigeon 5y ago
    I would take this a step further and say that all social media recommendation algorithms should be publicly reviewable. The claim is that this algorithms are neutral. But we know many contain ways for the owner to artificially boost preferred content. And algorithms tend to have the biases of their creators in them. Controlling what people see is an important power and one that should be regulated.
    - whakim 5y ago
jerkstate 5y ago
There really isn’t any such thing as fact checking, only narrative pushing.
- 13years 5y ago
  The classic conundrum, who checks the fact checkers.
- slg 5y ago
  Can you fact check the flat Earth theories? Sometimes there is objective truth and sometimes there isn't.
  - 13years 5y ago
    The problem is who decides. Once you create a fact checking entity, it will decide for itself what are object truths. Within a fact checking entity you essentially have the same issue as regulatory capture.
    - teeray 5y ago
      Exactly. It should be the user who decides which filters are applied for them. Right now, there is no choice.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        Users do have a choice. They have the choice not to trust Facebook as an authoritative source of information.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Being the fact checker could be a very profitable position.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      > The problem is who decides. The problem is the poorly-considered but extremely widespread epistemology that goes something like "whether a claim is true depends on how convinced certain people are of that claim." > Once you create a fact checking entity, it will decide for itself what are object truths. No, it will just make claims, which may be true or false. There's nothing mysterious or troubling about this. They're not "deciding" what's true.
Spooky23 5y ago
Oh please. My 8 year old pulled a similar tactic to get out of doing dishes.
conscion 5y ago
Except as soon as the started curating their content (algorithmic feeds; like/comment sharing) they started become publishers. If they solely made connections and forwarded messages, then they'd be carriers.
- nradov 5y ago
  Even if Facebook solely made connections and forwarded messages they still wouldn't be classified as a carrier under US law.
seriousquestion 5y ago
Frankly, does anyone have business in fact checking at this point? Who checks the fact checkers? I can't think of any source that hasn't repeatedly bungled information over the past year. What we have is consensus checking, at best.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  > Who checks the fact checkers? Well… I’d answer, but how many downvotes do you want me to get? If fact checkers are operating with political bias, the people that call it out will be the ones who feel they’re targeted for their beliefs. They aren’t going to police themselves. Top of my factchecker wtf is Hunter Biden’s laptop which was agreed to be Russian fakenews before the election, and after the election we have… https://en-volve.com/2021/07/26/watch-hunter-biden-accidentally-records-himself-smoking-crack-on-video-while-crying-to-his-dead-brothers-wife-about-rehab/ https://en-volve.com/2021/07/26/watch-hunter-biden-accidenta...
dumbmachine 5y ago
By adding content to user's newsfeed, they ( facebook's algorithm ) have made a explicit decision to share the piece of content and implicit decision that they deem the post safe for sharing. In that case shouldn't a speaker operator be responsible for the voices they amplify?
- jensensbutton 5y ago
  You only see things in your newsfeed from people you've explicitly added to your network (i.e. explicitly opted in to receiving content from). Is facebook wrong for showing you the things you said you want it to show you?
  - koolba 5y ago
    It’s moderation through omission. No different than traditional TV news choosing to only produce stories painting their politically allies positively or foes negatively. Any form of selection can be a means for bias.
  - aeturnum 5y ago
    > Is facebook wrong I think this is an unhelpful framing of the situation, because as you imply Facebook is of course not wrong. If you have one friend and your feed is entirely full of their posts, Facebook is off the hook. But, for most users, the situation is far more complex. People have many friends, they may also be in groups. They probably will not be on facebook long enough for them to see all of the posts and, if they are, their attention levels will differ over the entire corpus. In this situation facebook begins to have agency - which is different from being wrong. They didn't make the content, they didn't create the link that brought the content to you, but of all the content they could show they did show you this and not that. It's a relatively new kind of agency, one that we didn't have a lot of practical experience with before very recently, so they can be forgiven somewhat for their difficulty grappling with it. However, they're an important part of the chain of information organization and it would be foolish to pretend they have no responsibility.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > You only see things in your newsfeed from people you've explicitly added to your network (i.e. explicitly opted in to receiving content from). Eh, I'm pretty sure see random posts from political Facebook groups that were commented on by a Facebook friend I added in like 2006 when that sort of "content proliferation" didn't exist yet (or at least wasn't anywhere near as prominent). I explicitly added that friend, yes, but I definitely didn't explicitly consent to receiving every single piece of Internet content that that friend ever interacts with.
omgwtfbbq 5y ago
>While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT and being told they are incorrect on their assumptions about topic X. That's absurd
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
Yes, one easily-corrected mistake proves the futility of the entire idea, and this is worse than just letting false information overtake Facebook. It's why you probably deactivated your spam filters the first time some signup email accidentally got caught in it.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Well, it proves the problems and downsides of the entire idea. It doesn't necessarily prove it's futile, and it doesn't even necessarily prove it's a bad idea, but those of us who pointed out the problems are proven right that they are in fact problems...
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
> Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such. They are not "carriers" nor are they "publishers" because those concepts aren't legal terms, outside a very narrow field of law and the imagination of the tech community. Besides, "carriers" aren't as free from intervention as you make it out to be. AT&T can and does, and sometimes is required to, block spam or fraudulent calls, for example/
908B64B197 5y ago
I bet there are a minority of accounts that are responsible for a lot of spam/fake news. Time for Facebook to start shadow banning?
- new_guy 5y ago
  They already do.
toss1 5y ago
Nonsense Carriers do not have any staff monitoring the content being posted, nevermind the largest such staff in the world Carriers do not have algorithms seeking out what content on what phone call creates the most 'engagement' (which is probably inversely correlated with truth value) and then actively interrupting your other calls to pushing that content into your stream. Again, nevermind that FB has the largest such feed-selecting algorithm on the planet. Carriers do not select and push one news source over another, based on the level of times it gets mentioned on the calls. These are all editorial functions, far more selective and influential than any newsroom editor. The idea that they should be treated as carriers may have been originally true when the feeds were absolute literal timelines of items posted by 'friends' you selected, in strict chronological order. But once they (FB, Twitter, etc.) started tracking "likes" and activity, and favoring one bit of content over another to surface and emphasize/de-emphazise in your feed, they became editors. That point was decades ago, and it is time to stop treating them with that old trope. The fact that they fail at their fact checking is no reason to say that they shouldn't do it (and yes, if they would go back to strict chronological feeds fully selected by us, with no algorithmic prioritizing, I'd agree that we should again treat them as carriers). They should not be able to have it both ways -- being the largest editors in the world = all the power, but treated as innocent carriers = none of the responsibility.
- timdev2 5y ago
  Doesn't that basically round to "outlaw social media"?
  - toss1 5y ago
    I don't see how (although I might not object to some values of your quote). It seems a straightforward choice: 1) Go forward as a Carrier and delete ALL features with a hint of editing, promotion, or recommendation, i.e., a simple straight chronological feed of other members' posts/feed specifically selected by each user, and maybe a search function. 2) Go forward as a Publisher and select, edit, recommend, promote, annotate etc. as much as they want. With Option-1 they can avoid all responsibility for content, merely doing takedowns on items for which they get notices. With Option-2, they have the same responsibility of any publisher for their content (e.g., newspapers are still responsible for the 'Letters to The Editor' that they choose to publish, and I'm sure edit out profanities, etc.) I expect that users would actually strongly prefer Option-1, although actual "engagement" numbers could decline, it might actually be a better advert platform. It also seems that viral content would still exist, but be more 'natural', i.e., not enhanced by algorithms, since you Alan could see something from Bob and repost it, which would be seen by Chris, who is subscribed to Alan but not Bob, and Chris could repost it to be seen by Debbie, who subscribes to neither Alan nor Bob... So, I'm curious how you see that this would this kill/outlaw social media?
zepmck 5y ago
This not completely correct because while a carrier transport anything indescrminately, social networks manipulate and control information exchange, for instance giving more priority to a content wrt to another.
xorcist 5y ago
> this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT Those entities aren't comparable. Internet and telecom operators, much like the post, is a carrier in a legal sense. Not sure about your jurisdiction, but in many countries this is an actual law, secrecy of correspondence. Facebook however, is operating a publishing service on the web, much like Nature or NY Times. Nature isn't obliged to publish your article just because you upload it, and they certainly do a fair amount of fact checking. To continue the parable you started, while AT&T isn't allowed to snoop the article you upload to NY Times, the latter is allowed to refrain from publishing it on their web. Stretching the definition of carrier to encompass Facebook and Twitter would have wide reaching consequences and risk making it much more difficult to operate a web page.
specialist 5y ago
If all my phone calls were on party lines, and the carrier made me listen to the most outrageous trolls, carefully selected to instigate fights, then ya your analogy holds.
tshaddox 5y ago
Facebook actively distributes content though. I'm pretty sure they don't show fact checks on private messages.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  IDK about a warning on private messages. But I do know there are political links and websites you can not send over PM/DM on the big players. So, IDK, is that worse?
- wellthisishn 5y ago
  If your profile is set to private, then what's the difference?
i1856511 5y ago
Excellent troll.
whiddershins 5y ago
The problem everyone is dancing around by trying to say Google, Twitter, or Facebook is a common carrier is that they filter and weight what you see anyway It’s literally the service Google provides. If they could decouple the information store from the display, and allow third parties to algorithmically filter and sort, then we could designate them as common carries for the first half. Maybe.
- caddemon 5y ago
  This depends how you interact with the site though. "fake news" warnings will appear on links even if you navigate directly to the page of the person who posted it. Even worse, Twitter has blocked certain stories from being sent via direct message in the past. The algorithmic feeds may make up a much larger portion of the practical problem, but I think regardless of where you stand on that issue some of these sites have already overreached with how they moderate personal pages and private messages.
  - whiddershins 5y ago
    I agree 100%.
sonograph 5y ago
Same with Google. I searched a covid-related question, and Google's preferred answer at the top was "There is no evidence of this", while the next two links were medical journals that did show evidence that directly contradicted Google's statement. It amazes me.
bamboozled 5y ago
They're not just a carrier, they're created their own version of the Internet which they now have to police. The Internet was fine without Facebook, it was largely self-governing and people could choose to browse others self-hosted content. Their decision to create the platform and use algorithms to direct peoples attention was totally self made, clearly problematic and now they have to workout how to cope with the fallout.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Sure. But what would be your position, if, as a neutral carrier and a profit making business, FB sets up a system of taking money & promoting content (whatever the content) ? Would you be ok with FB promoting glorification of white supremacy? Because, as a neutral carrier, it is not supposed to look at the content. Would you support it promoting a content piece that is a fluff of falsehoods resting on a thin layer or truth (They are making all the frogs gay !) ? FB could always argue that it is not responsible for content on its servers and can always argue that the counter point is also allowed. What if corporations, with their infinite marketing budgets start using FB to start promoting that climate change is actually good for the world?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I'd rather them try than do nothing. If you aren't on facebook regularly you simply don't understand how much crap they do find and cut. Also the sheer number of groups they have to remove to prevent complete misinformation and terrorist groups like qanon is insane.

aeturnum 5y ago

The problem is that one of the main differentiating factors of these platforms is selecting which post to present to the user at a particular moment. It's a valuable service - there are lots of posts - but it means the platforms are always somewhat going to be in the business of choosing one post over another. > While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT and being told they are incorrect on their assumptions about topic X. There are many ways in which this is different, most of which relate to the differences between audio and visual communication mediums.

scotuswroteus 5y ago

>"treated as such" -Facebook isn't legally required to fact check. -The CDC position is sufficiently controversial that this is well within the margin of error we'd expect of a fact checker. -AT&T isn't amplifying your phone call to millions by selective algorithms that enhance the most controversial and hateful messages -Carriers are heavily regulated, in part because they enjoy natural monopolies (in AT&T's case, only so many companies should be digging trenches and connecting physical wirelines into homes and businesses)

betwixthewires 5y ago
This argument I see everywhere "Facebook amplified your voice, a phone line does not" misses a key point: Facebook chooses to amplify voices. All any of us wanted really was for our friends to see what we say, if they choose to see it. So really, Facebook and similar entities at creating the problem deliberately and then claiming they're entitled to solve it by placing scarlet letters around their site.

pier25 5y ago

> Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such. It's more nuanced than that because ATT doesn't repeat a phone call it has deemed interesting to millions of other people.

HunOL 5y ago
Would be good if social media stop promote some posts and order them in my feed. Make them all chronological. Too many posts? Unsubscribe.
- mfer 5y ago
  This starts to get to the issue here. FB is not a carrier (like a telephone company). Their business model isn't built around carrying information or broadcasting it. FB is a content platform who is about making ad revenue. They are crafted around that and how to make that the most profitable possible.
saurik 5y ago
We need to differentiate the recommendation algorithm parts of these products from the communication parts. If Facebook is recommending something, that's on them, and if they want to not recommend my content to anyone, so be it; but I should be able to post something seen only by the people who opted in to following me without them getting in the way.
- the-pigeon 5y ago
  I would take this a step further and say that all social media recommendation algorithms should be publicly reviewable. The claim is that this algorithms are neutral. But we know many contain ways for the owner to artificially boost preferred content. And algorithms tend to have the biases of their creators in them. Controlling what people see is an important power and one that should be regulated.
  - whakim 5y ago

jerkstate 5y ago

There really isn’t any such thing as fact checking, only narrative pushing.

13years 5y ago
The classic conundrum, who checks the fact checkers.
slg 5y ago
Can you fact check the flat Earth theories? Sometimes there is objective truth and sometimes there isn't.
- 13years 5y ago
  The problem is who decides. Once you create a fact checking entity, it will decide for itself what are object truths. Within a fact checking entity you essentially have the same issue as regulatory capture.
  - teeray 5y ago
    Exactly. It should be the user who decides which filters are applied for them. Right now, there is no choice.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      Users do have a choice. They have the choice not to trust Facebook as an authoritative source of information.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Being the fact checker could be a very profitable position.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    > The problem is who decides. The problem is the poorly-considered but extremely widespread epistemology that goes something like "whether a claim is true depends on how convinced certain people are of that claim." > Once you create a fact checking entity, it will decide for itself what are object truths. No, it will just make claims, which may be true or false. There's nothing mysterious or troubling about this. They're not "deciding" what's true.

Spooky23 5y ago

Oh please. My 8 year old pulled a similar tactic to get out of doing dishes.

conscion 5y ago

Except as soon as the started curating their content (algorithmic feeds; like/comment sharing) they started become publishers. If they solely made connections and forwarded messages, then they'd be carriers.

nradov 5y ago
Even if Facebook solely made connections and forwarded messages they still wouldn't be classified as a carrier under US law.

seriousquestion 5y ago

Frankly, does anyone have business in fact checking at this point? Who checks the fact checkers? I can't think of any source that hasn't repeatedly bungled information over the past year. What we have is consensus checking, at best.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
> Who checks the fact checkers? Well… I’d answer, but how many downvotes do you want me to get? If fact checkers are operating with political bias, the people that call it out will be the ones who feel they’re targeted for their beliefs. They aren’t going to police themselves. Top of my factchecker wtf is Hunter Biden’s laptop which was agreed to be Russian fakenews before the election, and after the election we have… https://en-volve.com/2021/07/26/watch-hunter-biden-accidentally-records-himself-smoking-crack-on-video-while-crying-to-his-dead-brothers-wife-about-rehab/ https://en-volve.com/2021/07/26/watch-hunter-biden-accidenta...

dumbmachine 5y ago

By adding content to user's newsfeed, they ( facebook's algorithm ) have made a explicit decision to share the piece of content and implicit decision that they deem the post safe for sharing. In that case shouldn't a speaker operator be responsible for the voices they amplify?

jensensbutton 5y ago
You only see things in your newsfeed from people you've explicitly added to your network (i.e. explicitly opted in to receiving content from). Is facebook wrong for showing you the things you said you want it to show you?
- koolba 5y ago
  It’s moderation through omission. No different than traditional TV news choosing to only produce stories painting their politically allies positively or foes negatively. Any form of selection can be a means for bias.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  > Is facebook wrong I think this is an unhelpful framing of the situation, because as you imply Facebook is of course not wrong. If you have one friend and your feed is entirely full of their posts, Facebook is off the hook. But, for most users, the situation is far more complex. People have many friends, they may also be in groups. They probably will not be on facebook long enough for them to see all of the posts and, if they are, their attention levels will differ over the entire corpus. In this situation facebook begins to have agency - which is different from being wrong. They didn't make the content, they didn't create the link that brought the content to you, but of all the content they could show they did show you this and not that. It's a relatively new kind of agency, one that we didn't have a lot of practical experience with before very recently, so they can be forgiven somewhat for their difficulty grappling with it. However, they're an important part of the chain of information organization and it would be foolish to pretend they have no responsibility.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > You only see things in your newsfeed from people you've explicitly added to your network (i.e. explicitly opted in to receiving content from). Eh, I'm pretty sure see random posts from political Facebook groups that were commented on by a Facebook friend I added in like 2006 when that sort of "content proliferation" didn't exist yet (or at least wasn't anywhere near as prominent). I explicitly added that friend, yes, but I definitely didn't explicitly consent to receiving every single piece of Internet content that that friend ever interacts with.

omgwtfbbq 5y ago

>While it may look different, this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT and being told they are incorrect on their assumptions about topic X. That's absurd

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

Yes, one easily-corrected mistake proves the futility of the entire idea, and this is worse than just letting false information overtake Facebook. It's why you probably deactivated your spam filters the first time some signup email accidentally got caught in it.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Well, it proves the problems and downsides of the entire idea. It doesn't necessarily prove it's futile, and it doesn't even necessarily prove it's a bad idea, but those of us who pointed out the problems are proven right that they are in fact problems...

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

> Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the carrier, and should be treated as such. They are not "carriers" nor are they "publishers" because those concepts aren't legal terms, outside a very narrow field of law and the imagination of the tech community. Besides, "carriers" aren't as free from intervention as you make it out to be. AT&T can and does, and sometimes is required to, block spam or fraudulent calls, for example/

908B64B197 5y ago

I bet there are a minority of accounts that are responsible for a lot of spam/fake news. Time for Facebook to start shadow banning?

new_guy 5y ago
They already do.

toss1 5y ago

Nonsense Carriers do not have any staff monitoring the content being posted, nevermind the largest such staff in the world Carriers do not have algorithms seeking out what content on what phone call creates the most 'engagement' (which is probably inversely correlated with truth value) and then actively interrupting your other calls to pushing that content into your stream. Again, nevermind that FB has the largest such feed-selecting algorithm on the planet. Carriers do not select and push one news source over another, based on the level of times it gets mentioned on the calls. These are all editorial functions, far more selective and influential than any newsroom editor. The idea that they should be treated as carriers may have been originally true when the feeds were absolute literal timelines of items posted by 'friends' you selected, in strict chronological order. But once they (FB, Twitter, etc.) started tracking "likes" and activity, and favoring one bit of content over another to surface and emphasize/de-emphazise in your feed, they became editors. That point was decades ago, and it is time to stop treating them with that old trope. The fact that they fail at their fact checking is no reason to say that they shouldn't do it (and yes, if they would go back to strict chronological feeds fully selected by us, with no algorithmic prioritizing, I'd agree that we should again treat them as carriers). They should not be able to have it both ways -- being the largest editors in the world = all the power, but treated as innocent carriers = none of the responsibility.

timdev2 5y ago
Doesn't that basically round to "outlaw social media"?
- toss1 5y ago
  I don't see how (although I might not object to some values of your quote). It seems a straightforward choice: 1) Go forward as a Carrier and delete ALL features with a hint of editing, promotion, or recommendation, i.e., a simple straight chronological feed of other members' posts/feed specifically selected by each user, and maybe a search function. 2) Go forward as a Publisher and select, edit, recommend, promote, annotate etc. as much as they want. With Option-1 they can avoid all responsibility for content, merely doing takedowns on items for which they get notices. With Option-2, they have the same responsibility of any publisher for their content (e.g., newspapers are still responsible for the 'Letters to The Editor' that they choose to publish, and I'm sure edit out profanities, etc.) I expect that users would actually strongly prefer Option-1, although actual "engagement" numbers could decline, it might actually be a better advert platform. It also seems that viral content would still exist, but be more 'natural', i.e., not enhanced by algorithms, since you Alan could see something from Bob and repost it, which would be seen by Chris, who is subscribed to Alan but not Bob, and Chris could repost it to be seen by Debbie, who subscribes to neither Alan nor Bob... So, I'm curious how you see that this would this kill/outlaw social media?

zepmck 5y ago

This not completely correct because while a carrier transport anything indescrminately, social networks manipulate and control information exchange, for instance giving more priority to a content wrt to another.

xorcist 5y ago

> this is no different than two folks on the phone getting interrupted by ATT Those entities aren't comparable. Internet and telecom operators, much like the post, is a carrier in a legal sense. Not sure about your jurisdiction, but in many countries this is an actual law, secrecy of correspondence. Facebook however, is operating a publishing service on the web, much like Nature or NY Times. Nature isn't obliged to publish your article just because you upload it, and they certainly do a fair amount of fact checking. To continue the parable you started, while AT&T isn't allowed to snoop the article you upload to NY Times, the latter is allowed to refrain from publishing it on their web. Stretching the definition of carrier to encompass Facebook and Twitter would have wide reaching consequences and risk making it much more difficult to operate a web page.

specialist 5y ago

If all my phone calls were on party lines, and the carrier made me listen to the most outrageous trolls, carefully selected to instigate fights, then ya your analogy holds.

tshaddox 5y ago

Facebook actively distributes content though. I'm pretty sure they don't show fact checks on private messages.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
IDK about a warning on private messages. But I do know there are political links and websites you can not send over PM/DM on the big players. So, IDK, is that worse?
wellthisishn 5y ago
If your profile is set to private, then what's the difference?

i1856511 5y ago

Excellent troll.

whiddershins 5y ago

The problem everyone is dancing around by trying to say Google, Twitter, or Facebook is a common carrier is that they filter and weight what you see anyway It’s literally the service Google provides. If they could decouple the information store from the display, and allow third parties to algorithmically filter and sort, then we could designate them as common carries for the first half. Maybe.

caddemon 5y ago
This depends how you interact with the site though. "fake news" warnings will appear on links even if you navigate directly to the page of the person who posted it. Even worse, Twitter has blocked certain stories from being sent via direct message in the past. The algorithmic feeds may make up a much larger portion of the practical problem, but I think regardless of where you stand on that issue some of these sites have already overreached with how they moderate personal pages and private messages.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  I agree 100%.

sonograph 5y ago

Same with Google. I searched a covid-related question, and Google's preferred answer at the top was "There is no evidence of this", while the next two links were medical journals that did show evidence that directly contradicted Google's statement. It amazes me.

bamboozled 5y ago

They're not just a carrier, they're created their own version of the Internet which they now have to police. The Internet was fine without Facebook, it was largely self-governing and people could choose to browse others self-hosted content. Their decision to create the platform and use algorithms to direct peoples attention was totally self made, clearly problematic and now they have to workout how to cope with the fallout.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Sure. But what would be your position, if, as a neutral carrier and a profit making business, FB sets up a system of taking money & promoting content (whatever the content) ? Would you be ok with FB promoting glorification of white supremacy? Because, as a neutral carrier, it is not supposed to look at the content. Would you support it promoting a content piece that is a fluff of falsehoods resting on a thin layer or truth (They are making all the frogs gay !) ? FB could always argue that it is not responsible for content on its servers and can always argue that the counter point is also allowed. What if corporations, with their infinite marketing budgets start using FB to start promoting that climate change is actually good for the world?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I'd rather them try than do nothing. If you aren't on facebook regularly you simply don't understand how much crap they do find and cut. Also the sheer number of groups they have to remove to prevent complete misinformation and terrorist groups like qanon is insane.