6 ms·

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people wou

by smt88 5y ago

The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. The first thing you learn in journalism is that you can't be 100% objective, even if you're 100% truthful. Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you write 20 pages of a deep dive into where he was born and all the evidence for it. You are complete and thorough, and you end up concluding that he couldn't have been born in Kenya. Just the fact that you wrote that much to debunk a nonsensical, evidence-free lie is actually going to make it seem like they had evidence! You can also neglect to report on things. You can report on 150 burglaries a day and give people the impression that burglaries are skyrocketing when they aren't. So of course there will be subjectivity that leaks out, but that's not something we should fear to the point of giving up.

drewcoo 5y ago
The whole point of judges is that they are humans who exercise their judgement. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's intended to counter a cold, dry, robotic application of the letter of the law.
- jdthedisciple 5y ago
  Exactly. Add to that that in legal trials there is also a proper defense, which is crucial. You don't have that online most of the times. (Social) media fact-checking also often becomes a form of silent censorship.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
> Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. This is what Facebook fact checkers are?? They have hearings that go on public record and can be appealed up to a federal level? Judges interpret the law, not current events. This comparison seems pretty meaningless.
jdthedisciple 5y ago
> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. That is because most of the time, fact-control becomes opinion-control and we see exactly this happening just before our eyes. Thus people on either side of the political spectrum will support the suppressing of the opinion of their political opposition. At the moment this is happening with the evidently unholy coalition between the left and big tech as well as big media. Another unholy coalition is big pharma + governance and big media where anything slightly critical of certain vaccines will get insta-banned on Youtube for example. May I suggest that you only support this behaviour as it currently happens to align with your views?
- slg 5y ago
  >Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of journalism. The primary job of journalists is to filter through the events and facts of the day and tell you what is important. Judgement of information is inherent to the job. The top story on the front page of the newspaper is chosen by editors not by random draw. They put it there because they think it is the most important bit of news in the entire paper. There is no way to make that kind of qualitative judgements on the relative importance of different pieces of news without inserting potential bias.
- Hermitian909 5y ago
  > Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves People may say they want this, but manifestly do not. There is too much information. To illustrate: many people I know cared a great deal about whether the country was lied to about WMDs when we went to Iraq. As far as I know, zero of them have read the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee[0] but all were very glad to have the report summarized for them by the news media. That act of summarizing, of picking out which information is and is not important, is itself an act of journalism. It is the curation of the set of shared facts, shared reality, in the public discourse. [0]https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/109331.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publ...
lmm 5y ago
We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.
- adrianN 5y ago
  The problem fact checkers are trying to solve is that most people don't have the resources to do the fact checking themselves, so that malicious actors can sway public opinion with wrong or misleading information. That is extremely dangerous in democracies.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Right, but fact checkers can't help with that problem unless there's some countermeasure that prevents the fact checkers themselves from being malicious actors. (I don't think many fact checkers are malicious in the sense of being cacklingly evil, but they are usually highly partisan, which ends up having much the same effect). And if you do have such a measure, it would probably be more effective to apply it directly to the news sources themselves rather than to the fact checkers.
  - jdthedisciple 5y ago
    You don't solve the problem, you just defer it to the fact-checkers. Who fact-checks the fact-checkers and ensures they are not themselves used to sway public opinion?
    - was8309 5y ago
      what's stopping anyone from fact-checking the fact-checkers? Also, it would be great if fact checking was presented in an argdown form, or someway to distill the bases of disagreement
  - MrPatan 5y ago
    Wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to democracy if malicious actors were to take over fact-checkers? How would you know they already haven't?
lenkite 5y ago
As long as fact-checkers can be sued for incorrect and malicious fact checking and fact-checking isn't grounds for censorship and information suppression, I would be on-board with you. The most that fact-checkers do when they are egregiously and utterly incorrect is a correction to an eye-rolling "needs context" label. The standards of objectivity of fact-checkers (who are all left-leaning partisans) are ridiculously slanted. One set of strict standards for my opposition, another set of lax, wink-wink standards for myself - modern day "fact-checking". Any criticism of the same that becomes popular results in being banned.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > The standards of objectivity of fact-checkers (who are all left-leaning partisans) are ridiculously slanted. To anyone for whom facts that don't agree with their worldview are signs of a conspiracy, fact checking is pointless anyway. All fact checks that show they're wrong are just "proof" of the conspiracy.
  - concordDance 5y ago
    Do you disagree that the vast majority of famous fact checkers lean left, are partisan or have slanted coverage? There's little need for a conspiracy here, just the Red Tribe distrust of institutions making them less likely to support fact checkers. And fact checkers get their money either from donations or from ads/clicks, so the incentive structure will push them left as that's the only way to survive in a competitive environment.
- was8309 5y ago
  Please provide an example of where Brooke Binkowski is egregiously and utterly incorrect. She's a hero to me and I'm leery of having hero's.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    The comment you are responding to has nothing to do with whomever this person is. It's about fact checking as a general endeavor.
netcan 5y ago
>>The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. The limitations of objective fact-checking means we need to understand where we can/should apply it, and its efficacy are limited. Judges or a legal system are a good example. These are also truth finding institutions. They are very expensive institutions, and produce a very limited stream of narrow truths. That's because truth finding is, as you say, difficult. Law is an extremely limited system. We (in theory) apply it as little as possible, when other solutions have failed. The system is set up to verify or falsify claims as narrowly as possible to find this solution. Law has specifically defined truth categories like "reasonable doubt," and other rules about how to lean in cases of ambiguity. The evidence for "person X killed person Y" may be sufficient to acquit person Z of a murder, but not to convict person X. Fact checking can be used as a tool that newspaper editors use to maintain quality. It doesn't do the same thing in a different context. Fact checking at a newspaper, in wikipedia or for social media is a totally different thing with different limitations and applicability. > Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you write 20 pages of a deep dive into where he was born and all the evidence for it. You are complete and thorough, and you end up concluding that he couldn't have been born in Kenya. Works perfectly fine for personal fact checking. You can do it like this. If it's being done in court, an editors's office, a wikipedia discussion page or FB's version of mechanical turk for moderators.... you will need a different method.
colordrops 5y ago
> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. I don't see how that conclusion is drawn at all. The legal system is run by highly trained individuals in as public a way as possible, bounded by its own set of standard laws and procedures, to very specific sets of issues, often times throwing out cases because they are not "resolvable" by the narrow capabilities of the system. To compare a random anonymous person behind closed doors spitting out a "fact check" on their laptop to judges is an insult to judges and the legal system.

by smt88 5y ago

drewcoo 5y ago

The whole point of judges is that they are humans who exercise their judgement. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's intended to counter a cold, dry, robotic application of the letter of the law.

jdthedisciple 5y ago
Exactly. Add to that that in legal trials there is also a proper defense, which is crucial. You don't have that online most of the times. (Social) media fact-checking also often becomes a form of silent censorship.

LMYahooTFY 5y ago

> Most people would agree an imperfect attempt with lots of transparency is better than no attempt at all. This is what Facebook fact checkers are?? They have hearings that go on public record and can be appealed up to a federal level? Judges interpret the law, not current events. This comparison seems pretty meaningless.

jdthedisciple 5y ago

> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. That is because most of the time, fact-control becomes opinion-control and we see exactly this happening just before our eyes. Thus people on either side of the political spectrum will support the suppressing of the opinion of their political opposition. At the moment this is happening with the evidently unholy coalition between the left and big tech as well as big media. Another unholy coalition is big pharma + governance and big media where anything slightly critical of certain vaccines will get insta-banned on Youtube for example. May I suggest that you only support this behaviour as it currently happens to align with your views?

slg 5y ago
>Nobody wants or needs the media - even less social media - as proxy-judges of the information. Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves. This seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the basics of journalism. The primary job of journalists is to filter through the events and facts of the day and tell you what is important. Judgement of information is inherent to the job. The top story on the front page of the newspaper is chosen by editors not by random draw. They put it there because they think it is the most important bit of news in the entire paper. There is no way to make that kind of qualitative judgements on the relative importance of different pieces of news without inserting potential bias.
Hermitian909 5y ago
> Everbody just wants the information and judge it for themselves People may say they want this, but manifestly do not. There is too much information. To illustrate: many people I know cared a great deal about whether the country was lied to about WMDs when we went to Iraq. As far as I know, zero of them have read the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee[0] but all were very glad to have the report summarized for them by the news media. That act of summarizing, of picking out which information is and is not important, is itself an act of journalism. It is the curation of the set of shared facts, shared reality, in the public discourse. [0]https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/109331.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publ...

lmm 5y ago

We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

adrianN 5y ago
The problem fact checkers are trying to solve is that most people don't have the resources to do the fact checking themselves, so that malicious actors can sway public opinion with wrong or misleading information. That is extremely dangerous in democracies.
- lmm 5y ago
  Right, but fact checkers can't help with that problem unless there's some countermeasure that prevents the fact checkers themselves from being malicious actors. (I don't think many fact checkers are malicious in the sense of being cacklingly evil, but they are usually highly partisan, which ends up having much the same effect). And if you do have such a measure, it would probably be more effective to apply it directly to the news sources themselves rather than to the fact checkers.
- jdthedisciple 5y ago
  You don't solve the problem, you just defer it to the fact-checkers. Who fact-checks the fact-checkers and ensures they are not themselves used to sway public opinion?
  - was8309 5y ago
    what's stopping anyone from fact-checking the fact-checkers? Also, it would be great if fact checking was presented in an argdown form, or someway to distill the bases of disagreement
- MrPatan 5y ago
  Wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to democracy if malicious actors were to take over fact-checkers? How would you know they already haven't?

lenkite 5y ago

As long as fact-checkers can be sued for incorrect and malicious fact checking and fact-checking isn't grounds for censorship and information suppression, I would be on-board with you. The most that fact-checkers do when they are egregiously and utterly incorrect is a correction to an eye-rolling "needs context" label. The standards of objectivity of fact-checkers (who are all left-leaning partisans) are ridiculously slanted. One set of strict standards for my opposition, another set of lax, wink-wink standards for myself - modern day "fact-checking". Any criticism of the same that becomes popular results in being banned.

CharlesW 5y ago
> The standards of objectivity of fact-checkers (who are all left-leaning partisans) are ridiculously slanted. To anyone for whom facts that don't agree with their worldview are signs of a conspiracy, fact checking is pointless anyway. All fact checks that show they're wrong are just "proof" of the conspiracy.
- concordDance 5y ago
  Do you disagree that the vast majority of famous fact checkers lean left, are partisan or have slanted coverage? There's little need for a conspiracy here, just the Red Tribe distrust of institutions making them less likely to support fact checkers. And fact checkers get their money either from donations or from ads/clicks, so the incentive structure will push them left as that's the only way to survive in a competitive environment.
was8309 5y ago
Please provide an example of where Brooke Binkowski is egregiously and utterly incorrect. She's a hero to me and I'm leery of having hero's.
- colordrops 5y ago
  The comment you are responding to has nothing to do with whomever this person is. It's about fact checking as a general endeavor.

netcan 5y ago

>>The difficulty of objective fact-checking doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. The limitations of objective fact-checking means we need to understand where we can/should apply it, and its efficacy are limited. Judges or a legal system are a good example. These are also truth finding institutions. They are very expensive institutions, and produce a very limited stream of narrow truths. That's because truth finding is, as you say, difficult. Law is an extremely limited system. We (in theory) apply it as little as possible, when other solutions have failed. The system is set up to verify or falsify claims as narrowly as possible to find this solution. Law has specifically defined truth categories like "reasonable doubt," and other rules about how to lean in cases of ambiguity. The evidence for "person X killed person Y" may be sufficient to acquit person Z of a murder, but not to convict person X. Fact checking can be used as a tool that newspaper editors use to maintain quality. It doesn't do the same thing in a different context. Fact checking at a newspaper, in wikipedia or for social media is a totally different thing with different limitations and applicability. > Let's say you're reporting on Obama's birth certificate, and you write 20 pages of a deep dive into where he was born and all the evidence for it. You are complete and thorough, and you end up concluding that he couldn't have been born in Kenya. Works perfectly fine for personal fact checking. You can do it like this. If it's being done in court, an editors's office, a wikipedia discussion page or FB's version of mechanical turk for moderators.... you will need a different method.

colordrops 5y ago

> To use that logic, we should also not have judges or a legal system. I don't see how that conclusion is drawn at all. The legal system is run by highly trained individuals in as public a way as possible, bounded by its own set of standard laws and procedures, to very specific sets of issues, often times throwing out cases because they are not "resolvable" by the narrow capabilities of the system. To compare a random anonymous person behind closed doors spitting out a "fact check" on their laptop to judges is an insult to judges and the legal system.