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Realtime Political Fact-Checking Becomes A Reality With WaPo’s ‘Truth Teller’

21 points by mikeevans 14y ago

drKarl 14y ago
It's an interesting project, but since it depends on the data it is being fed, its reliability is questionable. All media corporations have a large amount of media at their disposal (tv, radio, newspapers, etc) which is used to support the desired view on every piece of news, depending on the bias of the media. All of the media are either way biased, and are both used to influence and manipulate the consumers of these media to their line of thought, and as a product to be consumed by the niche that is aligned with that line of thought. If that project was fed with crowdsourced, objective, verified data, then it would really be useful, but if it is fed with the databases of particular media, it can only be trusted as much as that media can be trusted. And I'm not for or against The Washington Post, since I'm not from USA, and thus I don't really know the political stance or line of thought of The Washington Post. I'm just talking in a general case.
danso 14y ago
Uh, where's the skepticism here? Converting audio of variable clarity to accurate text is still a challenge even for companies who specialize in it. As Siri has shown, it's even harder to judge actual intent. And then there is at least one other problem: producing the content for each permutation of each political claim...it's not as if politicians phrase their assertions in exactly one way...and properly mapping them to the true/false evaluations. And there's also the problem of the whole true/false content production, which even the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact has problems with. Given these very difficult technical hurdles, either the WaPo has a massive skunkworks budget. Or whoever came up with this has a poor, Jetsons-fueled understanding of computing.
talmand 14y ago
Considering that most "fact checkers" that I've seen seem to write more editorials than objective reports, I'm quite dubious about this kind of thing. I've seen too many "he's technically correct but..." to believe anything these checkers say. How do we know the "facts" that the system is checking the statements against are in fact themselves true? Does the system take into account the actual definition of lying? As in that a lie is knowingly making a false statement in an attempt to deceive. If the person speaking believes what they state is true then it is not a matter of lying or telling the truth, it's simply being mistaken or correct. Painting "Liar, Liar" on the forehead of a politician simply because he's mistaken is stupid and a bad thing for an election process. If the system gets it wrong, will they publish a correction in an equally visible manner and explain what the problem was? How can you trust such a system if they don't? These "fact checkers" have turned out to be an incredibly bad idea, especially during an election. The idea of fact checking faster only makes it exponentially worse.
micahmcfarland 14y ago
Does anyone else think it's sad that "journalism" has degenerated so far that now "fact checkers" are a thing? Isn't it the job of journalists to be fact checkers?
- danso 14y ago
  No. That is a part of journalism, but not the only "job" of journalists. The best journalism, for example, derives new facts from existing ones (or from debunking lies)...this is an extrapolation beyond just reading through a list of assertions and checking true/false. And a lot of journalism is the conveyance of information for the record, factual or not. Edit: To use a software dev analogy, non-devs are bemused at the idea that some developer jobs are focused almost exclusively on testing. "Isn't it the job of a software developer to write software that doesn't crash?" they might ask. Well, yes. That is a part of writing good software, and yet the best software dev places have extensive testing practices. Making sure something is broken is a skill all in itself.
- mdc 14y ago
  This system externalizes the risk of telling the truth. Too many people excoriate journalists who say things they don't want to hear, so too many journalists pander to their audience. This will let the journalists continue to say what their audience wants to hear and blame the algorithm for any uncomfortable truths.
mseebach 14y ago
Facts are fickle. That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. Like all other good conspiracy theories, it's based on an irrefutable possible situation. You can't "fact check" that. Second example on the page, "House Speaker John Boehner claims that raising taxes on the top 2% would kill 700,000 jobs", the link lists three bullet points to refute this: one is completely unrelated to the statement made, the second assumes that Boehner misrepresents rather than misbelieves Obama's intention to only use the revenue to plug the deficit and editorializes that the job loss would happen over a long period of time has an impact on the truthfulness of the statement. The third claims that "relatively small" effects on the economy is not enough to say that proposal will "would slow our economy". That's not a fact check, that's a counter argument.
- cleverjake 14y ago
  >> That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. fact /fakt/ Noun - A thing that is indisputably the case. Being separated from reality does not mean you get your own facts. facts are facts. While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim, which is really the crux of the statement. The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument.
  - mseebach 14y ago
    > While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim That is contradictory? How do you, in fact, prove that? It is not indisputably the case that Obama is a christian, because people are actively disputing it. > The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument. I made a general reference to the fact-checking trend which factcheck.org is very much a part of.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  You're making a point for ignorance and masquerading it as a legitimate disagreement on "fact", which has no variation. People who disagree with fact are literally mentally ill; delusional, not crazy like a fox. To your second point, it's a work in progress.
MisterBastahrd 14y ago
I have to wonder what research says about confirming 'facts' so close to hearing a statement from someone. This seems to me like it is worth more as a propaganda tool than anything else, especially since statements can be taken out of context before someone finishes their narrative.

21 points by mikeevans 14y ago

It's an interesting project, but since it depends on the data it is being fed, its reliability is questionable. All media corporations have a large amount of media at their disposal (tv, radio, newspapers, etc) which is used to support the desired view on every piece of news, depending on the bias of the media. All of the media are either way biased, and are both used to influence and manipulate the consumers of these media to their line of thought, and as a product to be consumed by the niche that is aligned with that line of thought. If that project was fed with crowdsourced, objective, verified data, then it would really be useful, but if it is fed with the databases of particular media, it can only be trusted as much as that media can be trusted. And I'm not for or against The Washington Post, since I'm not from USA, and thus I don't really know the political stance or line of thought of The Washington Post. I'm just talking in a general case.

danso 14y ago

Uh, where's the skepticism here? Converting audio of variable clarity to accurate text is still a challenge even for companies who specialize in it. As Siri has shown, it's even harder to judge actual intent. And then there is at least one other problem: producing the content for each permutation of each political claim...it's not as if politicians phrase their assertions in exactly one way...and properly mapping them to the true/false evaluations. And there's also the problem of the whole true/false content production, which even the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact has problems with. Given these very difficult technical hurdles, either the WaPo has a massive skunkworks budget. Or whoever came up with this has a poor, Jetsons-fueled understanding of computing.

talmand 14y ago

Considering that most "fact checkers" that I've seen seem to write more editorials than objective reports, I'm quite dubious about this kind of thing. I've seen too many "he's technically correct but..." to believe anything these checkers say. How do we know the "facts" that the system is checking the statements against are in fact themselves true? Does the system take into account the actual definition of lying? As in that a lie is knowingly making a false statement in an attempt to deceive. If the person speaking believes what they state is true then it is not a matter of lying or telling the truth, it's simply being mistaken or correct. Painting "Liar, Liar" on the forehead of a politician simply because he's mistaken is stupid and a bad thing for an election process. If the system gets it wrong, will they publish a correction in an equally visible manner and explain what the problem was? How can you trust such a system if they don't? These "fact checkers" have turned out to be an incredibly bad idea, especially during an election. The idea of fact checking faster only makes it exponentially worse.

micahmcfarland 14y ago

Does anyone else think it's sad that "journalism" has degenerated so far that now "fact checkers" are a thing? Isn't it the job of journalists to be fact checkers?

danso 14y ago
No. That is a part of journalism, but not the only "job" of journalists. The best journalism, for example, derives new facts from existing ones (or from debunking lies)...this is an extrapolation beyond just reading through a list of assertions and checking true/false. And a lot of journalism is the conveyance of information for the record, factual or not. Edit: To use a software dev analogy, non-devs are bemused at the idea that some developer jobs are focused almost exclusively on testing. "Isn't it the job of a software developer to write software that doesn't crash?" they might ask. Well, yes. That is a part of writing good software, and yet the best software dev places have extensive testing practices. Making sure something is broken is a skill all in itself.
mdc 14y ago
This system externalizes the risk of telling the truth. Too many people excoriate journalists who say things they don't want to hear, so too many journalists pander to their audience. This will let the journalists continue to say what their audience wants to hear and blame the algorithm for any uncomfortable truths.

mseebach 14y ago

Facts are fickle. That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. Like all other good conspiracy theories, it's based on an irrefutable possible situation. You can't "fact check" that. Second example on the page, "House Speaker John Boehner claims that raising taxes on the top 2% would kill 700,000 jobs", the link lists three bullet points to refute this: one is completely unrelated to the statement made, the second assumes that Boehner misrepresents rather than misbelieves Obama's intention to only use the revenue to plug the deficit and editorializes that the job loss would happen over a long period of time has an impact on the truthfulness of the statement. The third claims that "relatively small" effects on the economy is not enough to say that proposal will "would slow our economy". That's not a fact check, that's a counter argument.

cleverjake 14y ago
>> That Obama is christian is not a "fact" to people who believe that he's secretly a muslim. fact /fakt/ Noun - A thing that is indisputably the case. Being separated from reality does not mean you get your own facts. facts are facts. While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim, which is really the crux of the statement. The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument.
- mseebach 14y ago
  > While I will agree that you can't prove a negative, you can prove that he is not a muslim That is contradictory? How do you, in fact, prove that? It is not indisputably the case that Obama is a christian, because people are actively disputing it. > The second point is from factcheck.org, not from truth teller. It actually is a counter argument. I made a general reference to the fact-checking trend which factcheck.org is very much a part of.
dclowd9901 14y ago
You're making a point for ignorance and masquerading it as a legitimate disagreement on "fact", which has no variation. People who disagree with fact are literally mentally ill; delusional, not crazy like a fox. To your second point, it's a work in progress.

MisterBastahrd 14y ago

I have to wonder what research says about confirming 'facts' so close to hearing a statement from someone. This seems to me like it is worth more as a propaganda tool than anything else, especially since statements can be taken out of context before someone finishes their narrative.