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Mark Zuckerberg: Fact-checking on Meta is too "politically biased"
- astrange 2y agoSame thing as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627
- Dalewyn 2y agoFact Checker is merely a politically correct name for a Ministry of Truth, and there are as many truths as there are people with opinions. I wholeheartedly agree and support any and all movements and actions removing them; people should critically think for themselves instead of begging someone to program them. Incidentally: A "fact" is an immutable facet of the world itself, whether we can even acknowledge it properly or not. Facts don't need checkers.
- Vampiero 2y agoA fact can be verified. Someone with the necessary knowledge to verify a fact is a fact checker in that particular domain of facts. They are not infallible though, let alone unbiased; even though the facts themselves are immutable and, well, factual. That said I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment on critical thought. It should be everyone's duty to verify facts for themselves but... consider how many people are functionally illiterate in the world. They wouldn't be able to verify even simple facts, because they lack the mental framework to do so (i.e. reading comprehension). And also consider how much of a burden it is to individually verify every single claim that is made, and compare it to how easy it is to make wild claims. It would be impossible to navigate the modern world without a group of dedicated fact checkers that you trust. You can't be an expert on everything -- and if you think you are, that means precisely that you are NOT.
- coding123 2y agoI think a more simple solution is to expose every person to let's say Matt Walsh, Tim Pool or Charlie Kirks explanation/opinion as well as Don Lemon, Destiny and Cenk Uyger and see where they land.
- nathanaldensr 2y agoSadly, everyone is having to relearn from first principles why diversity is often not a strength. Social cohesion has value, and that value often eclipses an ideological need for diversity (read: we are all the same or equal).
- niemandhier 2y agoSocial cohesion is probably stronger influenced by wealth disparity than diversity. The top 10% of the us population own more than 60% of the countries wealth. In the US about a third of this disparity is due to inheritance. https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/74/3/643/6414507 https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/74/3/643/6414507
- yhg56fgniyfv 2y ago> Social cohesion is probably stronger influenced by wealth disparity than diversity. That's not what I've seen, anecdotally. In school, university, and work places, the friend groups I've observed and been a part of have primarily aligned around racial groups.
- niemandhier 2y agoAmerican schools, unis and workplaces probably already select for equal socio economic status to a degree. Just some food for thought: How is the ratio of blue collar / white collar kids in your peer group? How close are you / were you in percentile distance? No one caress for race in my environment, but even as a student somehow everybody I hang out with had the same amount of money.
- charlieyu1 2y agoA fact can be verified. They don’t verify facts for censorship though. They act netural that suddenly pulls the “Cooperates can do whatever they want” card when things don’t align with their interests.
- tzs 2y ago> Incidentally: A "fact" is an immutable facet of the world itself, whether we can even acknowledge it properly or not. Facts don't need checkers. The term "fact checker" does not mean someone who checks that facts are true. It means someone who checks that what someone claims is a fact is in fact a fact.
- RandomTisk 2y ago[flagged]
- coding123 2y ago[flagged]
- fzeroracer 2y ago> “We’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,” Nothing says American Freedom than interfering in how other governments conduct policy so you can push your own platform full of fake users and perpetual lies. What an embarrassment. Maybe it's time said governments start just banning or outlawing these platforms if they're just going to flagrantly admit to doing what they can to bypass the law. Fuck em. As much as I hate tiktok the whole 'rules for thee but not for me' shtick is old.
- Yeul 2y agoAmericans take it as an article of faith that everyone wants to live like they do. It must be utterly demoralising for anyone working at the US State department right now.
- Dalewyn 2y ago>Maybe it's time said governments start just banning or outlawing these platforms They should and it's long overdue. America, China, Russia and to a far lesser extent Japan and South Korea all have outsized political interference power upon other countries through the various social networks that operate out of them. Any country with a desire to safeguard domestic politics against foreign interference and influence should be banning them without question and it should not be controversial.
- catlikesshrimp 2y agoDepends. My country doesn't moderate social networks in any way. Instead, it profiles people. Nationals who are not behaving get called, foreigners are turned in the border. As expected, our posts are complying, you would think we live in Switzerland
- coldpepper 2y agoFully agree. It's high time each own country had sovereign platforms.
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- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI realize this discussion will probably go down the political rabbit hole, but I think what's more interesting is that we really have entered a world in the past 10-15 years where there is no longer a broad, societally-wide accepted definition of facts. This is a major change for humanity, one I'm not quite sure how we'll cope with. Daniel Patrick Moynahan once famously said "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." I'm not sure that's the case anymore.
- bamboozled 2y agoI’m wondering if it’s because so many people seem to be living more than 50% of their lives online. Facts seem less important in the virtual world. Go play with some live electrical wiring and see how quickly facts about electricity become important.
- Dalewyn 2y agoI think a significant problem is that people are confusing facts with truths. There is only ever one fact, which is immutable as far as the world is concerned. Our ability to perceive facts can change as our ability to do so changes/improves, but the facts themselves will never change. Getting electrocuted is one such very obvious example. Truths, however, are as numerous as there are people and can even change on a whim. Someone could get electrocuted and that's a fact, but whether he agrees is a different question and his answer is his truth regardless of the fact. "Fact"-checkers thus are about truth-checking and specifically programming certain truths upon the commons. A Ministry of Truth. The NPC meme isn't far from the mark. Truths are not facts and facts are not truths. Forcing people to believe, speak, and act in certain ways violates the very basics of human rights. One of the costs of a free society is that everyone has a right to their own opinion, their own truth. Personally, I believe that cost is more than worth the many benefits of a free society; but that's just my truth and you probably have a different idea.
- bamboozled 2y agoReading your comment, could we use another word here, beliefs? If so then I'm not really against people having their own beliefs, except beliefs aren't facts and they can become extremely harmful, especially at scale, even to those holding onto the beliefs. I guess you've heard about the Jonestown massacre, for example? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
- paxys 2y agoNo shit sherlock. Now the question is, are you going to be actually neutral or "Musk neutral" and just cater to the new guy in power?
- righthand 2y agoCater to the new guy in power. Zuckerberg has already been doing this for decades.
- bhouston 2y ago> Cater to the new guy in power. Yeah, Zuckerberg is bending the knee so he can stay out of negative news and keep his fortune. > Zuckerberg has already been doing this for decades. Not really. He didn't bend the knee to Trump as much in the first term, and Trump remembered that: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-election-book-00176639 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...
- anthony_d 2y agoIt’s already well documented that he “bent the knee” to Biden, so you can argue about the extent but the pattern is pretty well established.
- charlieyu1 2y agoHe is very well known for bending for Xi though
- Veen 2y agoI've seen it suggested that Zuckerberg was forced into kicking against Trump 1.0 because of activist employees and a difficult recruitment market. After the layoffs and the reduced competition for decent tech professionals, he can return to the more neutral position he favors.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoI think that question is going to be very easy to answer.
- _fat_santa 2y ago> The social media mogul said Tuesday that Facebook and Instagram will shift to a community notes model I'm curious, what are HN's opinions around community notes on X/Twitter? I find them to be pretty good (and sometimes quite funny) but I wonder what others think.
- Neil44 2y agoYes same I think they're generally quite good and add important missing context to posts.
- AlanYx 2y agoThe best thing about community notes IMHO is that you get notified if something you liked previously has been community noted. Gives you a chance to reassess.
- bhouston 2y ago> I'm curious, what are HN's opinions around community notes on X/Twitter? I notice that there are influence groups who are trying to play them, but so far I haven't seen them be successful. I see tons of proposed notes from certain groups but rarely do I see them actually be shown on X, so I guess it is robust in a way. The main place it doesn't work is on popular polarizing accounts. For example, generally the followers of Elon Musk like him so if you try to correct him there, a bunch of his followers will just say the note is wrong even if it isn't, they vote out of loyalty to Elon. So polarizing large popular accounts generally cannot be community noted. Same applies to most political leaders. So community notes is for correcting plebeians, not for the patricians.
- bhouston 2y agoZuckerberg knows which way the winds are blowing in the US Capital and is ensuring he is aligned with them so to avoid political blowback on his company. I suspect the changes to the fact checking / free speech will align with Trump's political whims. Thus fact checking will be gone on topics like vaccines, trans people, threats from immigrants, etc. While the well documented political censorship at Meta affecting Palestine will remain because it does align with Trump's political whims... - https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorship-palestine-content https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorship... - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/29/meta-censorship-palestine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/29/m... - https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/ https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...
- bamboozled 2y agoIt’s at times like this we realise how much better our situation would be if the internet remained decentralised and not consolidated into a few “social networks”. We messed up.
- cpitman 2y agoHow would decentralization make a difference here? Fact checking only makes sense when a platform has people with multiple different beliefs about what is true. If people can self-select into their own bubble, then it doesn't do anything, does it?
- bamboozled 2y agoIt would make a difference because there would be no political influence over broad public opinion. Right now, the rich leadership of these social media networks are kissing the right wing ring, so get ready to be right winged for at least 4 years. It's not healthy. If we didn't have single owners of these platforms, then none of this would be happening.
- dustedcodes 2y ago[flagged]
- aweiland 2y agoIs this satire?
- walls 2y agoThis is chud world, and we’re in it now.
- Gavin222 2y ago[flagged]
- dustedcodes 2y agoI am European and I live in the UK, so I don't think I have voted my way out of anything unfortunately. Also I don't care about white, my own children are not white. I care about the core values and principles of the Western world and to preserve them. It doesn't matter what people look like as long as we all believe and share the same values and principles that have made Western countries the great nations they have been. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, no blasphemy laws, equality of opportunity, not being afraid of having difficult debates and conversations and to say uncomfortable things if we believe them to be true, etc. etc. Those are the foundations of a progressive society. What we have seen in recent years is the opposite of it.
- Gavin222 2y ago[flagged]
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- MrMcCall 2y ago[flagged]
- johnecheck 2y agoZuckerberg has a point but not a solution. We do need to be able to discuss divisive topics on social media, and any single organization determining truth faces an impossible challenge. We shouldn't rely on the goodwill of Meta or the government as the basis for our trust on social media. Community notes-style systems are... similar. Instead of a single group of people, we rely on a single algorithm/system to determine truth. At a minimum, such a system NEEDS to be open source. But even if it is, I seriously doubt any one algorithm will ever give us the low-effort high-accuracy truth heuristic we desperately need. We need better models of trust/truth that support a rich ecosystem of personalized approximations of whether to trust or believe something.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoHonestly, I think the real solution is far, far simpler: just have social media operate more 'privately'. My Bluesky feed shows me content from people I follow, that's it. I don't get extreme opinions forced upon me and, if I did, I would simply unfollow that person. It doesn't need any censorship in the same way email doesn't.
- ramblerman 2y agocommunity notes often (at least on x) provide a link, some commentary and then it's up to you to make up your own mind. Personally I find that 10x better than someone just deciding I shouldn't be seeing this.
- charlieyu1 2y agoCommunity notes do not claim to be the source of truthfulness at least by its name
- mncolinlee 2y ago[flagged]
- slater 2y agoThey really will do ANYTHING to save money, eh?
- miltonlost 2y agoIn this case, they get the benefit of saving money AND increasing the rise of misinformation and fascism. It's a double bonus for Zuck and UFC president/Meta Board member/Trump booster. https://apnews.com/article/meta-facebook-zuckerberg-board-members-dana-white-199436c62c934ebb751b564f874ad2f6 https://apnews.com/article/meta-facebook-zuckerberg-board-me... Once comparatively nothing happened after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Zuck realized he has a better chance of continuing to reign if he sides with the right-wing.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoTranslation: Oh shi! Billionaires opinions don’t matter like they used to! Fact-checking happens when one side makes shit up and rhe other side actually looks it up.
- f_allwein 2y agoWhat is political about facts?
- drewcoo 2y agoEverything is political. Now what's factual about politics?
- UtopiaPunk 2y agoHave seen people who disagree over issues like climate change or the Israel/Palestine conflict? The disagreements are not just over policy, but over what is even real. Or, if you have 15 minutes, this video clip examines how major media outlets cover (or do not cover) two different atrocities: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mP2jN6bJI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s8mP2jN6bJI
- charlieyu1 2y agoVery funny response because if you were doubtful of the fact checkers a few years ago you will be called a conspiracist
- drewcoo 2y ago"Conspiracist" is a political label today, too.
- rickydroll 2y agono fact-checking? how about giving a 3d party access to the facebook feed and using AI to find hate speech. https://www.psypost.org/new-machine-learning-model-finds-hate-tweeting-mainly-originates-from-right-leaning-figures/ https://www.psypost.org/new-machine-learning-model-finds-hat...