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This wouldn't work, at least not outside of places like HN with a strong technical bent and a strong assumed knowledge base of the people. I've done fact-check

by Mezzie 5y ago

This wouldn't work, at least not outside of places like HN with a strong technical bent and a strong assumed knowledge base of the people. I've done fact-checking work professionally; it's not that fact-checking itself is difficult, it's that fact-checking can only work as intended in certain information environments, and mass media is NOT one. I've also studied filter bubbles, algorithmic influences on political POVs, etc. Your proposed system might work in a vacuum, but unfortunately, our modern landscape is NOT such a vacuum. Issues with your proposed system: 2.) What counts as a claim? Is 'the sky is blue' a claim, or is that common knowledge? We clearly wouldn't flag common knowledge because using the flag when it's not necessary deprecates the usefulness of the flag, but then who decides what counts as common knowledge, particularly across different cultures and countries? 3.) A common metadata way of judging someone online is through their sources. Think of many subreddits which don't allow certain 'left-wing' or 'right-wing' sources. The supporting text will be upvoted and downvoted based on the readers' idea of the source: In the politics subreddit, a NYT 'claim support' would be upvoted while a WSJ one would be downvoted. Instead of using headlines as proxys, the URL would be: "Oh, it's X. They just always lie. Don't even need to check; downvote, nobody listening to THEM could be correct." 4.) Once the whitelisting and blacklisting go into effect and people are aware of it, the voting becomes even more distorted as certain people with grudges can both climb community hierarchy (and therefore put themselves in positions of influence and say things like 'we don't read X here, they're all liars') and encourage voting en masse to blacklist certain sites they disagree with. 5.) This is terrible for search and archiving as well as for tracking bad actors. And that's just off the top of my head.

endisneigh 5y ago
> 2.) What counts as a claim? Is 'the sky is blue' a claim, or is that common knowledge? We clearly wouldn't flag common knowledge because using the flag when it's not necessary deprecates the usefulness of the flag, but then who decides what counts as common knowledge, particularly across different cultures and countries? Everything, including your example. The entire point is to discourage people from making claims. > 3.) A common metadata way of judging someone online is through their sources. Think of many subreddits which don't allow certain 'left-wing' or 'right-wing' sources. The supporting text will be upvoted and downvoted based on the readers' idea of the source: In the politics subreddit, a NYT 'claim support' would be upvoted while a WSJ one would be downvoted. Instead of using headlines as proxys, the URL would be: "Oh, it's X. They just always lie. Don't even need to check; downvote, nobody listening to THEM could be correct." This is a good critique, but if one were actually implementing this, you'd also need to implement some way to verify that people are actually reading the sources (which in itself is already a big annoying problem). Your other points are also good, but ultimately this thing I'm claiming would be niche due to the friction involved. If it were to not be niche you'd want to put in effort to "validate", or in other words have "trusted" (another problem) members randomly select controversial claims and verify them manually. I don't believe a fully algorithmic approach, even with "the crowd" can work.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  > Everything, including your example. The entire point is to discourage people from making claims. Then you wouldn't have discussion, at least not of this type. It would resemble more a slightly faster version of academic papers as everybody has to read everything and becomes more invested in preventing themselves from being blasted for making an unsupported claim on accident than in contributing. > This is a good critique, but if one were actually implementing this, you'd also need to implement some way to verify that people are actually reading the sources (which in itself is already a big annoying problem). Right, but when you say 'we should do thing X' and when somebody says 'we can't do thing X without solving Y' you can't just reply with 'also solve thing Y'. For example, we should go to Alpha Centauri, but I think figuring out FTL travel is sort of necessary first. > Your other points are also good, but ultimately this thing I'm claiming would be niche due to the friction involved. If it were to not be niche you'd want to put in effort to "validate", or in other words have "trusted" (another problem) members randomly select controversial claims and verify them manually. I don't believe a fully algorithmic approach, even with "the crowd" can work. Yeah, it might work in that particular usecase. Perhaps as an adjunct to academic listservs.
Closi 5y ago
> 2.) What counts as a claim? Is 'the sky is blue' a claim, or is that common knowledge? We clearly wouldn't flag common knowledge because using the flag when it's not necessary deprecates the usefulness of the flag, but then who decides what counts as common knowledge, particularly across different cultures and countries? As a further point, what if a blog says "not a single cloud was in the sky" and subsequent facts show there was in fact one cloud in the sky - does that count as fake news?
- endisneigh 5y ago
  > As a further point, what if a blog says "not a single cloud was in the sky" and subsequent facts show there was in fact one cloud in the sky - does that count as fake news? I wouldn't say it's "fake news", but it would be a claim that would be deleted, yes.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    That's also a common fictional phrase. What if it's part of a blog post that's a combination of fiction and non-fiction. Or it's quoting somebody, and that person in the blog post is wrong, but since it's a direct quote, it would also be untrue to change it? Or if it was true that there were no clouds in the sky when it was written at 9 AM but there were clouds at 2 PM and you don't know when the blog post was written? And how do you account for metaphors, common fictional phrases and uses, in-jokes, and claims that cannot be verified but a person still has the right to make? For example, I have a lot of Web memories that pre-date the Internet Archive and Wayback. I'm not pulling my claims from nowhere, but it's not my fault they're hard to back up either.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Wouldn't work here either. Just look at how the lab leak theory was handled on Hacker News. The community and dang both failed spectacularly in that instance. How many other instances have we gotten it wrong but just don't know because views here are as subject to ideological mania as anywhere else?
- johncena33 5y ago
  I've noticed the quality of conversations on HN have deteriorated drastically after dang took over. There're simply too many threads where the whole conversation is complaining, whining, dunking, outrage etc. Anytime there's a thread on Netflix, there'd be a group of users who would start complaining about Netflix recommendations. Even when the article has nothing to do with recommendations. I am using Netflix as an example, this pattern you'll notice in many other HN threads.

by Mezzie 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago

> 2.) What counts as a claim? Is 'the sky is blue' a claim, or is that common knowledge? We clearly wouldn't flag common knowledge because using the flag when it's not necessary deprecates the usefulness of the flag, but then who decides what counts as common knowledge, particularly across different cultures and countries? Everything, including your example. The entire point is to discourage people from making claims. > 3.) A common metadata way of judging someone online is through their sources. Think of many subreddits which don't allow certain 'left-wing' or 'right-wing' sources. The supporting text will be upvoted and downvoted based on the readers' idea of the source: In the politics subreddit, a NYT 'claim support' would be upvoted while a WSJ one would be downvoted. Instead of using headlines as proxys, the URL would be: "Oh, it's X. They just always lie. Don't even need to check; downvote, nobody listening to THEM could be correct." This is a good critique, but if one were actually implementing this, you'd also need to implement some way to verify that people are actually reading the sources (which in itself is already a big annoying problem). Your other points are also good, but ultimately this thing I'm claiming would be niche due to the friction involved. If it were to not be niche you'd want to put in effort to "validate", or in other words have "trusted" (another problem) members randomly select controversial claims and verify them manually. I don't believe a fully algorithmic approach, even with "the crowd" can work.

Mezzie 5y ago
> Everything, including your example. The entire point is to discourage people from making claims. Then you wouldn't have discussion, at least not of this type. It would resemble more a slightly faster version of academic papers as everybody has to read everything and becomes more invested in preventing themselves from being blasted for making an unsupported claim on accident than in contributing. > This is a good critique, but if one were actually implementing this, you'd also need to implement some way to verify that people are actually reading the sources (which in itself is already a big annoying problem). Right, but when you say 'we should do thing X' and when somebody says 'we can't do thing X without solving Y' you can't just reply with 'also solve thing Y'. For example, we should go to Alpha Centauri, but I think figuring out FTL travel is sort of necessary first. > Your other points are also good, but ultimately this thing I'm claiming would be niche due to the friction involved. If it were to not be niche you'd want to put in effort to "validate", or in other words have "trusted" (another problem) members randomly select controversial claims and verify them manually. I don't believe a fully algorithmic approach, even with "the crowd" can work. Yeah, it might work in that particular usecase. Perhaps as an adjunct to academic listservs.

Closi 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago
> As a further point, what if a blog says "not a single cloud was in the sky" and subsequent facts show there was in fact one cloud in the sky - does that count as fake news? I wouldn't say it's "fake news", but it would be a claim that would be deleted, yes.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  That's also a common fictional phrase. What if it's part of a blog post that's a combination of fiction and non-fiction. Or it's quoting somebody, and that person in the blog post is wrong, but since it's a direct quote, it would also be untrue to change it? Or if it was true that there were no clouds in the sky when it was written at 9 AM but there were clouds at 2 PM and you don't know when the blog post was written? And how do you account for metaphors, common fictional phrases and uses, in-jokes, and claims that cannot be verified but a person still has the right to make? For example, I have a lot of Web memories that pre-date the Internet Archive and Wayback. I'm not pulling my claims from nowhere, but it's not my fault they're hard to back up either.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

Wouldn't work here either. Just look at how the lab leak theory was handled on Hacker News. The community and dang both failed spectacularly in that instance. How many other instances have we gotten it wrong but just don't know because views here are as subject to ideological mania as anywhere else?

johncena33 5y ago
I've noticed the quality of conversations on HN have deteriorated drastically after dang took over. There're simply too many threads where the whole conversation is complaining, whining, dunking, outrage etc. Anytime there's a thread on Netflix, there'd be a group of users who would start complaining about Netflix recommendations. Even when the article has nothing to do with recommendations. I am using Netflix as an example, this pattern you'll notice in many other HN threads.