[HN Gopher] Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are ...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are "False
Information"
Author : URfejk
Score : 364 points
Date : 2021-07-29 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (i.postimg.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (i.postimg.cc)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| The CDC has already lied multiple times to the American people in
| egregiously obvious ways, so I don't see this as unexpected.
| CivBase wrote:
| Relevant article/thread from a day ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27984908
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this! The comments are also an interesting
| read.
| svaha1728 wrote:
| Text classification with Transformers is hard. Humans are
| expensive.
|
| My guess is also that the link got flagged because of who shared
| it, but that's just a guess.
| specialist wrote:
| Surely government sites in their host countries can be
| whitelisted?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Information can be accurate or fake based on who said it?
| svaha1728 wrote:
| I'm guessing the heuristics behind their text classification
| model, not if that's a valid assumption outside of the
| Facebook metaverse.
|
| My guess would be that you could also figure out word salad
| to throw at their False Information model that would create
| false positives.
| Roboprog wrote:
| Sure.
|
| Orange man rushed out a shot. It must be bad.
|
| Gray man said get the shot. It's good.
|
| I'm not saying that kind of "thinking" is valid, but it's
| apparently widely accepted.
|
| (I got the shot, but I can see why some people would have
| considerations)
| beezischillin wrote:
| I might be wrong on this but I think their fact checking
| partners just go all around on Facebook and fact check specific
| links and claims, I don't think it's flagged automatically and
| paired with a fact check, or at least the few I looked at were
| directly referencing the source for the content that was
| shared.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The CDC was spreading misinformation, and we shouldn't expect the
| government to be immune from misinformation (through incompetence
| usually).
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| CDC was spreading...immune...
|
| If this pun was intentional, well done.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Startup idea: fact check for the fact check. Call it
| MetaFactCheck.
| base698 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
| ravenstine wrote:
| I actually verified this yesterday on my own FB acount.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/5tgkbFL
|
| Not sure if it's still happening, but you can test it if you make
| the post visible to only you and you wait ~5 minutes for that
| misinformation message to show up.
|
| Even _if_ the fact checker had some kind of point, I don 't know
| how labeling an authoritative source as "false information" helps
| anyone understand anything just because part of the information
| might be outdated.
|
| Nevertheless, the level of carelessness upon which this mechanism
| seems to have been built upon is an embarrassment.
| mrfusion wrote:
| More than an embarrassment, it's chilling.
| a9h74j wrote:
| I don't know how bad it would be for the magnetic poles to
| flip. But I don't want it happening every six months.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I don't get why they can't add a regex to ok *.gov$ websites.
|
| > Nevertheless, the level of carelessness upon which this
| mechanism seems to have been built upon is an embarrassment.
|
| Same mechanism would flag and ban folks who argued that the lab
| leak hypothesis was a possibility and was worth
| investigating... Interesting how the media changed their
| narrative on this one.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| MySpamSite.com?queryParm=.gov
| orheep wrote:
| On the domain only.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I'm sure the check (if implemented) wouldn't be a naive
| regex that would fail that easily
| afavour wrote:
| If you were going to check for this and didn't immediately
| reach for location.host rather than location.href then it
| might be time to read some API docs.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Are we sure government websites won't contain misinformation?
| For example, senior government leadership was advising the
| consumption of bleach as a COVID-19 cure.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Iirc, he was asking a CDC official whether the application
| of a disinfectant to infected lungs had been investigated.
| A stupid idea on its face, but at no point did he recommend
| the consumption of bleach as a cure or a treatment for
| covid.
| jussij wrote:
| While he did recommend taking hydroxychloroquine as a
| cure, recommended the end of lock downs and actively
| rejected the use of masks.
| basementcat wrote:
| GOP.gov
| betwixthewires wrote:
| It helps people understand a lot; it helps people see this fact
| checking charade for what it really is.
| tomp wrote:
| Or that CDC advice is a charade...
| davidw wrote:
| These discussions lack a lot of nuance. I think all of these
| things are worth considering:
|
| * FB is a company, not a government, so they can more or less do
| what they want.
|
| * It's concerning that one company has so much influence. "Just
| go somewhere else" is tough with the network effects that a
| system like theirs has.
|
| * FB is responsible for tons of misinformation spreading and is
| very toxic in a lot of ways.
|
| I'm not really sure what, if anything we should do, but it'd be
| nice to read a bit more elevated discussions about the problems
| with social media.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The government is leaning on FB to do what the government
| wants. It's a slight of hand. FB is a government agent.
| davidw wrote:
| I do not think FB is a "government agent" from everything
| I've read. They operate within government rules and
| regulations, and they're certainly going to listen to the
| government, but listening is normal for any company. They can
| still do what they want.
| adolph wrote:
| > They can still do what they want.
|
| Sure FB, you can do what you want. It'd just be a shame if
| it were determined you were a monopoly, sure would be a
| shame.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
| releases/2020/12/ftc-s...
| davidw wrote:
| You know they lost, don't you?
| btbuildem wrote:
| I imagine they flagged it as false not because of the link, but
| because of who shared/posted it.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| And that's way worse than erroneously flagging the link itself.
| noxer wrote:
| "This claim about fact-checking was disputed."
| vfclists wrote:
| Facebook could be right ;)
|
| Just because some info appears on a the CDC page doesn't mean it
| can't be erroneous.
|
| It is not as though health authorities have always been correct
| on every thing, have they?
| vfclists wrote:
| Unrelated question: What happens when your HN karma drops to
| zero?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Then when you log in, you see a (0) after your user name. Not
| much else. You can still post.
|
| If you've been posting abusive comments or otherwise breaking
| the site rules, you may get banned, but that's not triggered
| by your karma (so far as I know).
| unanswered wrote:
| Dang bans you for wrongthink long before then.
| noxer wrote:
| Either way they play arbiter with no transparency as to how
| they do it. They mostly outsource the "truth finding" but then
| pay them so its all a huge mess and simply not what people want
| them to do. I dont use FB but I would not want HN to decide
| whats true and what not. If wrong stuff is postedon here we
| (the user) figure it out just fine.
| iammisc wrote:
| Facebook is a pseudo government with sovereinty over a type of
| resource that we have fully yet to understand as a species.
| forz877 wrote:
| Facebook isn't the only source of information, and in fact, I'd
| argue, more misinformation exists because of facebook, not more
| control.
| iammisc wrote:
| That doesn't matter though, because most people 'live' in
| this new space via Facebook, in the same way that a plurality
| of people 'live' in the physical world we inhabit via the
| nation of China (PRC being the most populous nation). Simply
| because of that, we cannot discount the over-influence of
| Facebook.
|
| Even more poignant, Facebook's dominance in this regard is
| much more disproportionate than China's dominance of the
| world population. (Facebook having a little under half the
| world's population).
|
| Even though I don't live on planet Facebook anymore, the
| truth is Facebook heavily affects my life. I don't see how
| anyone can reasonably argue against this.
| forz877 wrote:
| Influence is a lot different than psuedo-governance.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| The Revolution devours its children
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| An outcome that absolutely no one could have anticipated. No Sir.
| samirillian wrote:
| Wow, two wrongs sometimes do make a right!
| loycombinate wrote:
| Maybe it's a fake link
| gfalcao wrote:
| TLS issues accessing this page
| [deleted]
| infamouscow wrote:
| I look forward to Facebook losing their Section 230 protection
| because of this, and their platform(s) dying a slow death.
| forz877 wrote:
| We attribute way too much to random happenstance than real
| trends, and that is ultimately why our societies crumble over
| time.
| tomrod wrote:
| Facebook needs down votes. That would help resolve the issue by
| the community flagging things, rather than this hodge podge of
| approaches.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Perhaps Facebook needs to be charged for practicing medicine
| without a license.
| 40four wrote:
| People still use Facebook?! :p
| nixpulvis wrote:
| OK, random thought experiment. As someone without a facebook it's
| hard for me to evaluate, but how much damage would really be
| caused if facebook just disappeared one day?
| underseacables wrote:
| Absolutely zero. People would find another way to communicate,
| socialize, or whatever. The loss of Facebook would be a loss of
| jobs and income for people, but that's it. Facebook serves no
| positive purpose in society, and it seems the best thing a
| person can do, is to delete their Facebook account.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| 1. Lots of information will disappear. Vast majority of it
| will be garbage, but occasional jewels in the mud will get
| thrown away as well.
|
| 2. S&P 500 will go down 2.5% the very instant FB disappears.
| Further consequences for financial markets are hard to
| predict.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I was more thinking about the facebook groups. Where would
| they go? Discord? Meetup? Some new aggregator?
|
| Would anything actually improve?
| bmarquez wrote:
| I'm seeing more of my Facebook groups move to Telegram
| chat rooms or channels.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Zero damage? No way. Millions of people would lose contact
| with friends and family that they have no other connections
| with. Companies that depend on Facebook advertising would
| disappear. People would be locked out of OAuth accounts on
| thousands of websites.
|
| It would be catastrophic.
| williamscales wrote:
| > Millions of people would lose contact with friends and
| family that they have no other connections with.
|
| Not at all.
|
| > Companies that depend on Facebook advertising would
| disappear.
|
| Good.
|
| > People would be locked out of OAuth accounts on thousands
| of websites.
|
| OK? If you were federating your auth via Facebook it was
| only a matter of time until you were locked out for one
| arbitrary reason or another. This just seems like an
| acceleration of a good thing.
|
| > It would be catastrophic.
|
| From your perspective, I can see that. But there are other
| perspectives out that that are not completely beholden to
| Facebook.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| That is such a Hacker News answer.
|
| Some people rely on their relationships with other
| people. They build support systems, form groups, and take
| comfort in the company of others. Being cut off suddenly
| and with no means to reconnect would isolate many people.
| This would be extremely damaging from a mental health
| perspective alone.
|
| In addition, so many people have reconnected with old
| friends, family, teachers. One friend of mine used
| Facebook to find her birth parents. That avenue
| disappears completely.
|
| I don't know why you would say it's "good" for these
| companies to disappear. These aren't megacorps. It's
| small, local companies that rely on FB advertising. Bed
| and breakfasts, wineries, anything that depends on
| tourism. They're always hit the hardest. Walmart isn't
| going to care if they can't advertise on FB anymore.
|
| Your comment shows a lack-of-understanding and compassion
| for your fellow human.
| telxos wrote:
| Actual research shows the opposite effect on mental
| health from what you are saying.
|
| When you don't have Facebook your friends and family just
| txt or email. I mean Facebook book hasn't even been
| around that long. To pretend it is something like water
| or electricity is just preposterous.
| BeetleB wrote:
| While I agree that FB disappearing wouldn't be that big a
| deal, the idea that email is an "obvious" alternative is
| quite problematic for the younger folk.
|
| Data point: In 2009, the admin assistant in my department
| at university told me she's been getting quite a few
| upset incoming freshmen because of the requirement to
| have an email address for university classes - many of
| them had never used email before, and had communicated
| only via text, and IM apps. This was over 10 years ago.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Many do not text or email, they use Facebook's messaging
| system. They would not even have the information required
| to connect elsewhere.
|
| There is also a huge difference between people making the
| decision to stop using social networking, and being
| suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from a support network.
| The former can have positive effects on mental health,
| the latter will certainly not.
|
| I say this as somebody who deleted their Facebook account
| over a decade ago.
| tuankiet65 wrote:
| Facebook going down means losing contact with my friends
| overseas. I myself am studying as an international student, and
| many of my former classmates are studying in another countries
| as well. Messenger (and consequently Facebook) is pretty much
| the place that people in my home country hang out at.
| specialist wrote:
| Is Messenger a vector for misinformation? (I've never seen or
| used it.)
| tuankiet65 wrote:
| Maybe? Messenger is just an instant messaging platform like
| iMessage or Whatsapp. Technically speaking you can stumble
| upon group chats that disseminate misinformation, but
| Messenger doesn't show you group chat recommendations like
| Facebook.
| ddvvff wrote:
| A lot of small businesses thrive on Facebook pages, restaurants
| too, at least in my country. Those would go under fast
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Facebook has taken up much of the local classifieds business
| that Craigslist took from local newspapers 15-20 years ago.
|
| For me, the most effective directory of contractors is
| through Facebook. I hate it, because Facebook does a bad job
| of building and presenting that directory, but it's the
| largest and most relevant one.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Would they? If I'm looking for a restaurant, and Facebook
| suddenly disappeared, I'd still be looking for a restaurant.
| I just would have to use Google Maps or something to find
| one.
| specialist wrote:
| I find it absolutely crazy that neither google maps or yelp
| can use location (geofencing) as part of their "relevant
| results" algos.
|
| (This might have improved since my last road trip, late
| 2019. YMMV)
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Facebook seems to be censoring so much because Facebook believes
| that most people will actually believe whatever bits of
| misinformation are floating around out there.
|
| But is everyone that easily manipulated? More importantly, does
| everyone actually believe that they can be easily manipulated, or
| do they just think that everyone _else_ is so easily manipulated,
| but somehow they 're above the fray?
|
| And at what point does the censorship to protect me from
| manipulation become manipulation itself?
|
| Facebook is fighting a losing battle if they think they will
| survive a battle with their own users. This is way past censoring
| Alex Jones. You can't possibly censor every crackpot conspiracy
| theorist. Actually, we're probably _all_ crackpot conspiracy
| theorists in some way. We probably all believe some conspiracy
| about 9 /11 or the NSA or elections or vaccines or masks or
| aliens or royal families or whatever.
|
| The rate of censoring is almost certainly accelerating faster
| than facebook's growth, and once you've been censored once,
| you're likely to radically curb your use of that platform. I
| can't imagine that FB doesn't have stats on how many people keep
| using FB after they've been censored just once.
|
| FB only works when you and 99% of your social group are on there.
| The network effect works in reverse, too.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| You are absolute right.
|
| Censorship is...
|
| A STRANGE GAME.
|
| THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS
|
| NOT TO PLAY.
| bitL wrote:
| The issue is an increasing infantilization world-wide where
| some group thinks it needs to "protect the others", assuming
| they are the single source of truth and that it's obvious they
| are. It's a well known bias which for some reason aligns with
| the current zeitgeist. As everything before, it shall too pass
| at some point.
| afavour wrote:
| > do they just think that everyone else is so easily
| manipulated, but somehow they're above the fray?
|
| Based on my own anecdotal evidence, it's exactly this. The
| people that went down the rabbit hole of QAnon on YouTube are,
| in their mind, the informed ones. They're the ones that went
| out of their way to _do the research_ and the rest of us are
| just lemmings. Thus, spending hours staring at an
| algorithmically generated video feed is actually a positive
| attribute rather than the obviously negative one the rest of us
| see.
| codeecan wrote:
| If you believe "the vaccine turned people into the Hulk",
| thats a mental health problem.
|
| But when inconvenient claims, like "vaccines can cause blood
| clots in rare cases", often flagged as misinformation, you
| don't instil much confidence with the public.
|
| And so they go out and get information from other sources.
| wffurr wrote:
| The problem is FB "recommending" content and groups and
| prioritizing the feed. They could just not do that and the
| problem solves itself.
|
| Just show me a time descending list of posts filtered by
| whatever set of friends I am viewing.
|
| Don't recommend groups or friends or content from people or
| groups I haven't subscribed to. Let me search for groups or
| friends instead.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| The discussion about the algorithmic feed seems to be out of
| context for this thread (i.e., Facebook is now claiming
| official CDC.gov links are "False Information")
|
| I don't believe the problem is facebook recommending anything
| -- the problem is facebook trying to ban certain content
| entirely (at least in the context of this thread --
| algorithmic feeds are a separate problem.)
| Terretta wrote:
| > I'm not making the connection between an algorithmic feed
| and anything I wrote.
|
| > The title of this thread is 'Facebook is now claiming
| official CDC.gov links are "False Information"'.
|
| > I don't believe the problem is facebook recommending
| anything -- the problem is facebook trying to ban certain
| content entirely
|
| You say you don't believe (a), and you state that the
| problem is (b). I'm seeing "belief" without substantiation
| in both of those sentences. I'm also actively not taking
| username "gunapologist" as related to the merits of beliefs
| or statements in any way.
|
| Finally, it's not clear to me that Facebook is a censor. I
| hold they have a right to promote or not promote whatever
| they want. Give someone a megaphone, suddenly anyone not
| handed a megaphone cries censor. No, just not amplified.
| Commercially, choosing not to promote a thing is much like
| a TV channel choosing not to run an ad or sponsor an event,
| something they choose to not do all the time.
|
| I'd rather FB promote nothing, go back to a timeline of
| posts from my connections, and seems like "a problem" (one
| of many) is solved.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > I'm also actively not taking username "gunapologist" as
| related in any way.
|
| rotfl touche
|
| > I'm seeing "belief" without substantiation in both of
| those sentences.
|
| that's why I said "believe". my opinions about what
| facebook should and shouldn't be doing are simply that..
| opinions.
|
| if I were to say any of this on facebook, it's possible
| that I could immediately be banned, and where's the fun
| in that. (that's a serious question.. isn't facebook
| supposed to be a fun place to communicate? if we have to
| worry about the ban hammer, how is it either?)
|
| Moderation should be like HN: light, but still there. If
| it gets too heavy, civil discourse dies. If it
| disappears, then the place might turn into lord of the
| flies. (although, I hope a place like that always exists,
| too.)
| Terretta wrote:
| I agree with everything here, FWIW. :-)
| wffurr wrote:
| No promoting content, no need to flag misinformation.
| foepys wrote:
| > FB only works when you and 99% of your social group are on
| there.
|
| You can choose whatever social group you want on social media.
| The days of physical presence and limited supply of peers are
| over.
|
| Your IRL friends don't believe that the government is made up
| of lizard people? Go find yourself a Facebook, Telegram,
| Discord, etc. group, you will find plenty of like-minded people
| and "proof" there. People can and do survive on online contacts
| alone, so being shunned is not a problem for them. At least not
| in the medium term.
| mikem170 wrote:
| The submitted postimg.cc screenshot had the following cdc.gov
| link [0], which appears to be flagged as false information. The
| following text was on that cdc page:
|
| > After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the
| U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use
| Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
| Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in
| February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC is providing
| this advance notice for clinical laboratories to have adequate
| time to select and implement one of the many FDA-authorized
| alternatives.
|
| > Visit the FDA website for a list of authorized COVID-19
| diagnostic methods. For a summary of the performance of FDA-
| authorized molecular methods with an FDA reference panel, visit
| this page.
|
| > In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical
| laboratories and testing sites that have been using the CDC
| 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay select and begin their transition to
| another FDA-authorized COVID-19 test. CDC encourages laboratories
| to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate
| detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza
| viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both
| influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as
| we head into influenza season. Laboratories and testing sites
| should validate and verify their selected assay within their
| facility before beginning clinical testing.
|
| I'm personally not sure what to make of all this, the cdc link
| doesn't seem controversial, and perhaps flagging this as false
| information was done in error? But screen shots are lame so I
| figured I'd repost as a link and the text for convenience.
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-
| alert...
| jtbayly wrote:
| I assume it has been claimed on FB that this is proof that the
| flu didn't disappear but just got misdiagnosed as Covid, and/or
| that the Covid tests results couldn't be trusted at all, hence
| they have been withdrawn.
| manofmanysmiles wrote:
| How should this be interpreted? Isn't implying that the test
| can't tell the difference between flu and covid?
|
| If that's true, then, how can we be sure that flu hasn't been
| misdiagnosed?
|
| What percentage of Covid cases were classified using PCR
| tests?
| 13years wrote:
| Yes, it does state that. However, there is the word 'and'
| between detection and differentiation.
|
| The original could not detect, so therefore differentiation
| is a moot point.
|
| Also, the test for flu was a separate test. So it would
| have had no effect on the lower flu incidence assuming we
| didn't test for flu at a lesser rate.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >assuming we didn't test for flu at a lesser rate.
|
| Do we have any numbers on this? I would imagine a lot of
| people who went to the doctor or whoever complaining of
| flu like symptoms would have been tested for covid.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Yes. We have figures for it. In 2017-18, there were 1.21M
| flu tests over the course of 33 weeks.
|
| In 2020-21 there were 1.11M flu tests over 33 weeks.
|
| Results: Essentially a 0% positive test rate vs a peak of
| over 25%. A peak of about 125 cases vs 20,000 cases.
|
| 1: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/54973 2: https://www.c
| dc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2020-2021/data/...
| torstenvl wrote:
| It does not imply that. It would be effectively impossible
| for that to happen. PCR testing is a crude form of genetic
| test. Influenza viruses and coronaviruses are not closely
| related. It's more likely that a genetic test would confuse
| influenza for _ebola_ (another negative sense single strand
| RNA virus) than for a coronavirus infection.
| unanswered wrote:
| > If that's true, then, how can we be sure that flu hasn't
| been misdiagnosed?
|
| Because I haven't seen anything on Facebook, or self-
| censoring HN for that matter, validating those claims. So
| they must be but only false but really out-there wacky
| conspiracy theories.
| belltaco wrote:
| That's exactly what happened in right wing circles, I saw it
| on Twitter and Reddit too.
| kahirsch wrote:
| People were spreading misinformation about the link. Just to be
| clear, there is no recall. The test is not defective. The test
| can be used through the end of the year. The CDC recommends
| using tests that can detect flu as well as COVID.
|
| The current PCR test from the CDC does not detect flu at all,
| or other coronaviruses. The test is very specific. See pages 40
| on in the Instructions for Use[1] if you are interested. The
| test sequences were compared (by computer) to hundreds of
| thousands of genomes of flu, the human genome, and other
| organisms, as well as tested on physical specimens.
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download#page=41
|
| Here is a sample of messages that were shared on Reddit:
|
| > The FDA announced today that the CDC PCR test for COVID-19
| has failed its full review. Emergency Use Authorization has
| been REVOKED. The FRAUDULENT PCR Test has finally been ruled a
| Class I Recall. This is the most serious type of recall. All
| measurements based on PCR Testing should come to an end ASAP:
|
| > CDC retracts PCR test as it can't differentiate between COVID
| and the flu. It was all a Lie.
|
| > CDC pulls PCR tests because they can't distinguish Covid from
| the flu. We finally caught the SOBs who have lied to us about
| the coronavirus numbers the last year.
|
| > The Pandemic narrative is unravelling... The FDA announced
| today that the CDC PCR test for COVID-19 has failed its full
| review. Emergency Use Authorization has been REVOKED. It is a
| Class I recall. The most serious type of recall. Too many false
| POSITIVES. This is the test that started the pandemic!
|
| > CDC to Withdraw Emergency Use Authorization for PCR Test
| Because It Cannot Distinguish Between SARS-CoV-2 and the Flu.
|
| > Watch the panicked minority bombard the comments with
| establishment talking points to try and refute this tweet.. PCR
| is being rescinded as a test, vaccinated people are filling
| hospitals, and our government officials are still urging us to
| get tested using PCR and get jabbed with the Covid vaccines.
| Alrighty then.
| Terretta wrote:
| This was beautiful, reading the actual text _first_ , and
| only then the hot takes.
|
| Thanks for that collection.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Context is king. I can easily imagine this content being used
| to present false narratives. This is the underlying problem
| we're dealing with.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| So you can easily imagine something being used to create a
| false narrative?
|
| Is that the standard to determine whether to censor the
| speech?
| 13years wrote:
| And yet, the original source is what is required to refute
| any misinterpretation.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| > This is the underlying problem we're dealing with.
|
| What's the underlying problem? How are we dealing with it? As
| someone who does not and has never had a facebook account, I
| have very little context to understand what you are talking
| about.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| someone on facebook: "SEE! THE CDC/FDA/CIA/IRS HAS BEEN
| LYING TO US ALL ALONG! THEIR TEST FOR THE VIRUS WAS RIGGED!
| NOW THEY'RE TRYING TO HIDE THAT BY TELLING EVERYONE TO USE
| A DIFFERENT TEST! DON'T BE A SHEEP, KNOW TEH TURTH AND SET
| YOURSELF FREE!"
|
| and then cites this link from the CDC as "context"
| acdha wrote:
| Anyone flagging this because they think it's an
| exaggeration, well, I envy you not having direct
| counterexamples in your immediate family. Paul is almost
| pitch-perfect explaining posts which real people make in
| all seriousness.
| jackweirdy wrote:
| I have seen this sentence of the link:
|
| > CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a
| multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and
| differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses
|
| Used to claim that many positive test results were not
| covid cases, but were flu cases.
|
| This _isn't_ the case -- the CDC is now recommending tests
| that can check for multiple infections rather than just
| one.
|
| But the wording does leave it open to being a possibility,
| on first reading that may even be a sensible assumption.
|
| So the problem is complicated --
|
| 1) this is an official and authoritative source posting
| wording that's explaining what's changing with ambiguity
| about what the status quo is.
|
| 2) Amid that ambiguity, people are posting information that
| is not true, using this as a source.
|
| 3) Facebook's response is the "Fake News" label, when while
| the source has its faults it is not Fake or News, it's just
| having meaning attributed to it that's not there
| timr wrote:
| I see a picture of a link with a "false information"
| notice. What are you seeing that I am not that causes you
| to interpret all of this ostensibly harmful missing
| context?
|
| Sure, you can use this fact to make a misleading claim.
| But literally any piece of information can be used in a
| harmful manner. I guess we need someone to round off the
| points on all of our scissors so we can't hurt ourselves?
| jackweirdy wrote:
| This is the post I was referring to - it was this image
| (no text) and a link to the above article
|
| https://i.imgur.com/8TEAXQW.png
|
| I think another commenter's idea is reasonable - people
| are flagging false claims like this, and the link is
| being punished by association
| timr wrote:
| Yes, I know what you're talking about, but it has nothing
| to do with the post. Someone posted a link to a CDC page
| on Facebook, and Facebook flagged it as misinformation.
|
| Maybe someone, somewhere used this link to argue
| something misleading, but as I said before, you can do
| that with any fact.
| acdha wrote:
| > 3) Facebook's response is the "Fake News" label, when
| while the source has its faults it is not Fake or News,
| it's just having meaning attributed to it that's not
| there
|
| I would also be unsurprised to learn that this is
| something like an original conspiracy post being
| correctly flagged as fake news and subsequent posts with
| the same URLs either being auto-tagged or suggested as
| the same to a reviewer who is almost certainly overworked
| and underpaid.
|
| All of the big tech companies like to rely on automation
| to avoid hiring more people and it's really easy to
| imagine this repurposing infrastructure which was
| originally built to quickly block things like spam or
| malware links being shared where the presence of a
| particular URL does in fact mean the post is highly
| similar.
| hartator wrote:
| I am for one didn't knew until this week that current
| COVID PCR tests will test also positive for the flu.
| detaro wrote:
| ... they won't, that desinformation is exactly the point
| of the comment you are replying to.
| nafix wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Can you explain to me what the
| wording from the CDC announcement means?
| lpat wrote:
| If I understand correctly it means that the old tests
| tested only for covid and the new ones test for covid and
| influenza at the same time. This makes them more
| efficient because you won't have to test twice to detect
| each virus separately.
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| > What's the underlying problem?
|
| Huge chunks of the American public are refusing to take a
| vaccine that could end the pandemic and save tens-to-
| hundreds of thousands of lives because people are lying to
| them on forums like Facebook (also right here on HN) and
| telling them it's dangerous.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| I think the phrase is "cash is king," lol
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is it? I don't think "people sometimes make wrong arguments"
| is a problem Facebook should attempt to solve, or could solve
| if they did attempt it. The problem of fake news is
| fabricated nonsense, not arguments which end up being flawed
| upon further thought.
| slumdev wrote:
| Better not let the peasants have any more of this dangerous
| information without a fact checker to provide them the right
| context.
| notatoad wrote:
| i think the problem is that facebook doesn't actually fact-
| check anything. they abdicate that responsibility to third
| parties that they designate as "fact checkers", and designated
| fact checkers include some organizations who may not have an
| entirely firm grasp on what's true.
| rubatuga wrote:
| Claim: Facebook is now claiming official CDC.gov links are "False
| Information"
|
| My rating: True
| [deleted]
| hartator wrote:
| Link to the CDC guidance in question:
| https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...
| Finger_Fudge wrote:
| Fact checking is just so Orwellian, how is it even possible that
| intelligent-seeming people have fallen for this trick? And what
| happens when the media lies, such as when they told us a year and
| a half ago that "masks actually spread COVID?"
|
| This is all so unbelievably ridiculous. I no longer trust the
| authorities and fact checking is just making it worse.
| padastra wrote:
| There was a point in which the possibility of lab origin was
| "misinformation" or where accelerating the vaccine timeline to
| one year was "misinformation" or where face masks being helpful
| was "misinformation". And at each stage people look at the
| current "all smart people agree on these truths" and feel so
| goddamn certain about banning other beliefs.
| crummybowley wrote:
| 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.
| i1856511 wrote:
| Excellent troll.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| >"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 wrote:
| 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.
| whiddershins wrote:
| 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.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _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.
| Overton-Window wrote:
| That's not argument for censorship, rather an argument for
| eschewing (or outlawing) algorithmic timelines.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| That said, SMS carriers filter and block TONS of messages and
| have been doing it for years. Our startup works in that space
| so we have to deal with this problem all the time and I can
| tell you last November if you tried to send a text message
| with the word "election" in it in an automated fashion, it
| was most likely getting blocked.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Yes, and now the U.S. mobile telcos are applying a
| completely subjective "reputation" "brand trust score",
| which sounds a lot like the Chinese social credit score.
| Oh, and they're charging a ton more for the privilege of
| sending a small number of texts, too.
|
| I guess when you engage in price-fixing in the open and
| call it "setting a standard", then anti-trust rules don't
| apply..
| travoc wrote:
| Rate limiting is not the same as content filtering.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I promise you there is tons of actual keyword based
| content filtering going on. We had to build an AI just to
| detect which keywords different carriers block. Anything
| socially contentious, like "BLM", "election", "covid"
| increases the chances your message will get a 30008 error
| aka carrier-level content blocking. More distributing
| plenty of carriers will also block messages but report
| them back to Twilio as delivered.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _ATT doesn 't repeat a phone call it has deemed interesting
| to millions of other people_
|
| True, it doesn't. Instead, AT&T repeats millions of phone
| calls it carries to a party deemed interested.
| HunOL wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I agree that the algorithms should be publicly
| reviewable. But I'm not sure that solves the central
| issue which is that there's a tension between what's
| financially good for social networks (algorithms that
| increase engagement - which disproportionately favors
| echo chambers, controversial and shallow content, etc.)
| and what's good for the general public.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > what's good for the general public.
|
| I personally don't really care what facebook (or anyone
| else) believes is _good for me_.
|
| I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much.
|
| And if I want to eat chocolate all day, I'll do that,
| too.
| whakim wrote:
| Social networks aren't in the business of showing you
| what's "good for you." They're in the business of showing
| you what's good for them (e.g. things that will increase
| your engagement).
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > things that will increase your engagement
|
| Isn't that fine? What's wrong with that?
| lallysingh wrote:
| I don't see how this will help. FB et. al. work by
| shoehorning complex nuances into intentionally crude
| metrics like "engagement.". If they show the engagement-
| focused algorithm, that shows they're "just trying to
| engage users."
|
| What would the algorithm show that isn't already
| apparent?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Controlling what people see is an important power and
| one that should be regulated._
|
| This will give the power of what people see to the
| regulators.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > millions of other people
|
| Another nuance is that due to Facebook post privacy settings,
| an individual post can be restricted to a limited friend
| list, and not viewable by the general public. However the
| "fact checking" appears to apply to both private and public
| posts.
| Overton-Window wrote:
| And private DMs in certain cases as well. The argument
| doesn't hold water.
| Falling3 wrote:
| Messenger is being fact checked as well? I haven't seen
| or heard this.
| fragmede wrote:
| The fact checking aspect of it is new twist, but
| Facebook's servers already checks the contents of
| messages and will disappear messages if the content is
| deemed bad. It started off as protection against
| spreading viruses/malware which are unequivocally bad and
| has evolved from there to include urls to sites with
| extreme political views and other controversial content.
| chmod600 wrote:
| If everyone involved in the conversation wants to be
| involved, and no laws are broken, and the platform
| interferes, then it's censorship.
|
| If there's some kind of algorithm putting the content in
| front of people who didn't ask for it (e.g. not
| followers/friends/subscribers/whatever), then you have a
| point.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Facebook is a private company that allows you to sign up to
| use its wholly-owned platform, and it's allowed to censor
| for whatever clever/asinine reasons it comes up with. Your
| only recourse is to disengage.
| justanotherguy0 wrote:
| At&t is a private company, and it isn't allowed to censor
| your calls for whatever clever or asinine reasons it
| comes up with.
| Retric wrote:
| AT&T is highly regulated, what they can and can't do has
| little to do with the average company.
|
| That said they are allowed to do quite a bit such as
| blocking calls between individuals.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| and facebook could perhaps become highly regulated in the
| same way depending on how politics goes
| stale2002 wrote:
| There are other recourses actually.
|
| The other recourses are that our lawmakers threaten them
| with law changes until these platforms start acting like
| platforms.
|
| I am sure that we can come up with some laws that are
| constitutional, if we are creative enough, that will
| damage these companies.
|
| Lots of people hate these platforms these days. We'll
| pass some law, eventually.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The reason the private-company argument is really tired
| is that it's simply not something that we take to its
| logical end in society; the returns of company freedoms
| are diminished and even counter-productive when a company
| reaches ultimate freedom to do whatever it wants. A
| diverse society isn't sustainable if people from
| different backgrounds don't have the same opportunities
| to participate in society. This is exactly why, no, you
| _can 't_ only allow whites into your business and you
| _can 't_ ignore the needs of the disabled, among any
| number of things. It would work excellent under a
| _feudalist_ system, however.
|
| Likewise, if companies like Facebook get so large and
| influential that they (and a small number of other NGOs)
| provide the only meaningful channels of communication
| between groups, we are dooming freedom of expression if
| Facebook, Google, or whomever are free to silence you in
| order to pander to politics and advertisers. Especially
| not when Facebook works for the federal government and
| gets tax breaks and subsidies. Your individual rights
| mean more than the right of a giant corporation to make
| lots of money and have undue amounts of power.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Whole heartily agree! From this medium post [0]:
|
| > In the United States the statement is often heard, that
| "corporations are private businesses, so they can do
| whatever they want." This assertion is particularly false
| when referring to entities like Facebook, Amazon, Exxon,
| and Pfizer, because...
|
| > - the phrase goes directly against a basic knowledge of
| the history of incorporation -- corporations were
| originally designed and granted special legal privileges
| by government, only because they were expected to serve a
| pubic good.
|
| > - the phrase goes directly against the dictionary
| definition, and investment industry terminology -- a
| public company is defined as a company whose shares are
| traded freely on a stock exchange, hence the term IPO
| (initial public offering).
|
| > - the phrase ignores real-world government involvement
| --many large corporations are state and federally
| sponsored (e.g. subsidized, bailed out, and given perks),
| by money which ultimately comes from the tax-paying
| public.
|
| > In reality, all big corporations are some combination
| of state-chartered, publicly-traded, and government-
| sponsored. By definition many are public companies, while
| others have complicated hybrid characteristics.
|
| [0] https://ptolemy3.medium.com/but-corporations-are-
| private-com...
| ben_w wrote:
| Unless I put her account on snooze, I regularly see posts
| that my (literally) abolish-money/anarcho-communist ex
| shares, even those from groups which I have repeatedly
| marked as "block all content from this group".
| decremental wrote:
| So just unfollow her. It sounds like you have some major
| issues with her personally anyway so how is this a
| failure by the platform and not just you subjecting
| yourself to a negative situation?
| ben_w wrote:
| The stuff she writes directly (rather than liking memes
| from groups she's in) is as interesting as any other
| friend's posts. Reason I mention her politics is because
| they're about as extreme as you can get.
|
| The problem is that Facebook is convinced that I, a
| British citizen living in Berlin, want to see "Bernie
| Sanders Dank Memes" (or whatever it was, there are many)
| even though I've clicked on the button labeled "don't
| show me 'Bernie Sanders Dank Memes'".
|
| The "even though I've clicked on the button" is
| especially egregious, in this context.
| droidist2 wrote:
| Yes, I hate how Facebook (and especially Twitter!) have
| now chosen to not just show me my friends' posts, but
| posts they like and respond to. A like has basically
| become a retweet.
| decremental wrote:
| I can certainly understand and sympathize with not
| wanting to see Bernie Sanders dank memes.
| underseacables wrote:
| Why are you still friends with your ex ?
| ben_w wrote:
| Because she's a good person and we split on good terms.
| [deleted]
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Technology changes - magnifies, accelerates, projects,
| distorts - many social effects. One of those is removing
| the previously invisible, small cost of spreading an idea.
|
| If two people want to have a conversation or exchange a
| letter, or one person wants to speak to everyone within
| earshot or post a sign for people walking by to read,
| that's one thing. Maybe you say something dumb, and it gets
| shot down, or maybe it gets propagated, but it needs to
| have an R0 greater than 1 to endure. If you need some level
| of capital and agreement to have a publisher run a thousand
| pamphlets with your idea, that's another, you can leverage
| previous efforts to amplify weak ideas, but more people are
| involved and able to provide some sort of sanity filter. On
| the Internet, the cost to promote an idea is near zero, and
| algorithms can amplify something dumb but catchy to
| millions of people in a heartbeat.
|
| It used to require a few seconds of talking per person you
| wanted to reach, now it costs a few seconds to post a
| message that might be seen by millions. The difference is
| minuscule in absolute value (perhaps a monetary value of a
| few cents) but huge in relative terms (how many percent
| less than a few cents is zero cents?).
|
| Maintaining policy on censorship while ignoring this
| massive change in the landscape is shortsighted. Yes, a
| physical public venue ought not censor someone who wants to
| talk to other people there, but a digital platform with an
| audience of millions should think carefully about the
| effects of messages that their technology amplifies.
| 13years wrote:
| You only have two choices, let all information be
| available regardless of whatever downside there may be,
| given that at least you still have some control over how
| to deal with that, or live in a truly Orwellian society
| in which you have no control over what you know.
| burnished wrote:
| Can you substantiate this? It seems pretty loaded, and
| I'm reminded of that fallacy where you state there are
| only two extremes possible as outcomes, you doing that on
| purpose or what?
| 13years wrote:
| How to propose there is a middle ground? What everyone
| imagines is that if we only censor what is reasonable to
| censor it will be fine.
|
| The fallacy is that we always view this from our personal
| perspective, yet we will not be the ones who make those
| choices. We give up that role to someone else.
|
| Who has this role over society has immense power. Some
| would argue greater than governments themselves. It is
| only a matter of time before that vector will be
| exploited. It is in principle the same idea as regulatory
| capture, yet the incentives for capturing speech are far
| greater than a typical regulatory body.
| munk-a wrote:
| The world isn't a black and white place and there are a
| variety of more nuanced stances between those two
| extremes. Any amount of censorship doesn't necessarily
| and immediately devolve into 1984.
| 13years wrote:
| And yet you are witnessing exactly what I describe today
| in realtime.
|
| Censorship went from censoring crazy conspiracy theorist
| Alex Jones in 2017, to affecting everyone in the public
| as well as heads of state.
|
| I said this was going to happen the very day he was
| deplatformed. With great power comes great temptation and
| abuse nearly a certainty to follow.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I'd prefer it if facebook didn't do this either.
| zepmck wrote:
| 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They already do.
| conscion wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Even if Facebook solely made connections and forwarded
| messages they still wouldn't be classified as a carrier under
| US law.
| sonograph wrote:
| 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.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Doesn't that basically round to "outlaw social media"?
| dumbmachine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| tshaddox wrote:
| > 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.
| koolba wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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.
| dumbmachine wrote:
| I don't follow enough users to have a flourishing newsfeed,
| so facebook gives me _suggestions_ to follow pages and
| shows posts from those pages. These suggestions are purely
| based on what facebook thinks I may like.
|
| With people having enough sources to feed their newsfeed,
| facebook decides the order and cherry picks what posts are
| shown.
|
| > Is facebook wrong for showing you the things you said you
| want it to show you?
|
| I do agree with this. Coming to a solution to this would be
| hard problem. Users will have to give finer information
| about types of posts people like from a creator. I doubt
| there are any real work incentives for a big company to
| build a system like this.
| xorcist wrote:
| > 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.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| specialist wrote:
| 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.
| bamboozled wrote:
| 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.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| > 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/
| jerkstate wrote:
| There really isn't any such thing as fact checking, only
| narrative pushing.
| 13years wrote:
| The classic conundrum, who checks the fact checkers.
| slg wrote:
| Can you fact check the flat Earth theories?
|
| Sometimes there is objective truth and sometimes there isn't.
| contravariant wrote:
| If there's anything that flat Earth theories prove then it
| would be that there is no objective truth that can be
| universally agreed upon.
|
| So sure we can suppose that there is an objective truth
| (ironically this point is also debated), but who do you
| trust to be its arbiter?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There is objective truth. The earth is objectively not
| flat. There are people who don't agree with that (or at
| least who say they don't), but the earth is objectively
| not flat, whether or not some people don't agree. Not
| only that, it's _provably_ not flat. So those who don 't
| agree, well... they prove the contrariness of human
| nature, I guess -\\_(tsu)_/-
| [deleted]
| VLM wrote:
| The Earth is objectively and unironically flat from the
| point of view of some, in fact many, narratives.
|
| Certainly the architectural drawings of my house do not
| include a "bulge" in the basement due to heretical
| sphericalness.
|
| All discussion of my basement floor being flat within
| about 1/2 inch need to be censored by big brother to save
| us all from free and independent thought.
|
| The purpose of arguing about what should be censored is
| to distract from the argument of should there be
| censorship at all. Classic divide and conqueror strategy.
| Nobody ever gets asked if they should have concentration
| camps or not, they only argue about competing paint
| schemes and honorary mottos.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I never said flat-earthers should be censored. I said
| they are objectively wrong, no matter what they claim.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The earth feels flat, and feelings are objective
| (especially in this post-truth society) ;)
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Facts don't care about feelings. Feelings do care about
| facts.
|
| Fact: the Earth is an oblate spheroid (roughly round)
| undergoing human-caused climate change.
|
| Example contrary feeling: I live in the arctic circle,
| it's cold and all I can see is a flat ice-scape. How can
| the Earth be warming and round when this is all I
| experience?
|
| There are at least two facts that are creating cognitive
| dissonance here:
|
| 1) I feel cold.
|
| 2) I can't see the whole Earth from the surface.
|
| What we feel guides us to question the world (which is
| healthy) but we shouldn't cling to what we feel is right
| when we can prove our feelings are wrong. Turns out that
| being cold on one point of the Earth is an experience
| that has nothing to do with the global average
| temperature rising. Also, we are living on a giant rock
| whose size is so much larger that it locally feels flat.
| We can also only see so far before our vision is impeded
| by the atmosphere.
|
| Flat-Earthers are wasting all of our time IMO because
| there is a lot of well established evidence to prove the
| Earth is round (ish) and much bigger than us. It's even
| easy to visually verify if you spend time/money to go
| high enough to see it for yourself.
|
| The real issue here is that the facts are more complex
| than just repeating what "feels" true. Humans (much as
| all animals) are lazy and often don't pursue rigor.
| adolph wrote:
| > Fact: the Earth is an oblate spheroid
|
| Is that really a Fact? Or is the sphere-ness of Earth a
| mental artifact, a simple model used to work around
| humans' limited perception of spacetime?
| jerkstate wrote:
| Please go find an example of a fact-checker checking
| something that can be proven scientifically as objective
| truth. It doesn't happen.
| [deleted]
| syshum wrote:
| Well the obvious response to that is at one point in human
| history the objective truth was that the Earth was flat..
| you could literally be killed if you denied the Earth was
| flat.
|
| There is great danger in giving one group of people the
| power to choose what is "objective truth"
| lovecg wrote:
| Did Covid escape from a lab? True/False please.
| VLM wrote:
| Conspiracy theories are merely spoilers now.
| 13years wrote:
| 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.
| slg wrote:
| Fair, but this is a question of implementation. Objective
| truth being hard to define doesn't mean there is no such
| thing as objective truth.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > 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.
| 13years wrote:
| It is exactly what they are doing. You are playing with
| semantics. The public as well as private companies use
| the claims as an argument for validation of truth.
|
| The troubling aspect is it comes with some level of
| authority backing the claims. There are consequences for
| not aligning with the positions of the claims.
| teeray wrote:
| Exactly. It should be the user who decides which filters
| are applied for them. Right now, there is no choice.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Being the fact checker could be a _very_ profitable
| position.
| coffeecat wrote:
| Everyone loves to mock the flat Earthers, but I believe the
| theory deserves more respect.
|
| For the typical person, who roams around on some small
| patch of the Earth's surface, but who isn't launching
| rockets or traveling between continents, the flat earth
| theory is more useful than the spheroid earth theory. When
| you walk a short distance, your path's deviation from
| planar geometry due to the earth's global curvature is
| orders of magnitude smaller than the deviation due to local
| surface roughness, and hence the global curvature is
| irrelevant in practice. Let's say you walk 5km (about 3
| miles); the difference between your path as predicted by
| the planar-earth theory versus the spherical earth theory
| is about one tenth of a millimeter. For 99% of what we do,
| invoking the spheroid Earth theory would be like using
| general relativity to model a baseball's trajectory in the
| presence of air resistance.
|
| And if you happen to be far from the earth, on a length
| scale greater than about 10**9 km, then the point-earth
| theory is probably going to be the most useful model to
| you.
|
| In short, it's all a matter of perspective. "Objective
| truth" isn't a thing; all that matters is how effective
| your model is at describing the properties that are
| relevant to you.
| krapp wrote:
| "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong.
| When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were
| wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is
| spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat,
| then your view is wronger than both of them put
| together." - Isaac Asimov
| tomcooks wrote:
| The scientific method would like to have a drink with you
| notatoad wrote:
| the scientific method would also like to have a word with
| facebook.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Oh please. My 8 year old pulled a similar tactic to get out of
| doing dishes.
| aeturnum wrote:
| 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.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Facebook actively distributes content though. I'm pretty sure
| they don't show fact checks on private messages.
| cpr wrote:
| Let's face it, Big Social Media's "disinformation" label is no
| more than "things that go against the mainstream narrative" these
| years.
| Jaepa wrote:
| I feel like this is a meta commentary that someone who posts
| articles like
|
| - 'Too Big to Fail': Russia-Gate One Year After VIPS Showed a
| Leak, Not a Hack
|
| - Siri plays dumb about documentary "Hillary's America"
|
| And posts anticlimate change articles.
| hosteur wrote:
| Ad hominem much?
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Why do people go through profiles and post these sorts of
| comments?
|
| The parent comment is only a one sentence opinion, and I'm
| unsure if any additional context is required to discuss it.
|
| I get you're pointing out OP has some colourful post history,
| but what does that achieve?
| w0m wrote:
| replace "mainstream narrative" with "X narrative" and you have
| a point. 'mainstream' is meaningless.
| Fellshard wrote:
| At this point, by sheer institutional volume, 'mainstream'
| means 'American East Coast Left-liberal'.
| [deleted]
| 13years wrote:
| It will always be so. The power to control information is far
| too tempting to not be subverted for nefarious means.
| babesh wrote:
| It isn't just the social media giants. It applies to most if
| not all the corporate giants. Google's search and YouTube,
| Apple news, Netflix, Disney, etc...
| seriousquestion wrote:
| An honest label would be "unapproved".
| president wrote:
| 2020 was the year where tech companies went into censorship
| overdrive. They are not afraid of the consequences and I believe
| this is because they have somehow captured the government in a
| very significant way.
| vmception wrote:
| _gigglesnort_
|
| if true, that is maximum irony and exposes the folly of
| Facebook's positioning as an arbiter, or exposes the power of
| their positioning
| anm89 wrote:
| I mean, once they are in the business of fact checking, I don't
| see why any specific source would be off limits.
|
| On the other hand I think this shows the absurdity especially of
| labeling things as inaccurate without saying what specifically
| you are actually calling inaccurate because how would you know if
| the fact check is valid or not.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| ...plus, it's not like the CDC is incapable of error, but I
| trust them on this issue a whole lot more than Facebook.
| chris_wot wrote:
| My wife tried to hide her age, but not being terribly Facebook
| savvy changed her DOB to the current date.
|
| She was immediately blocked from Facebook. She appealed and gave
| her proof of age. Still, Facebook wouldn't budge.
|
| Facebook's automated mechanisms suck. If they can't tell that
| someone who has been on the platform for over a decade with
| photos showing she is a middle aged women, married with two kids,
| is not, in fact, several days old, then they have no business
| fact checking posts from the CDC!
|
| The simple fact is, I have massively decreased my use of Facebook
| in the last 6 months. I really feel that for the health and
| safety of everyone it might be a good idea for others to do so
| also.
| specialist wrote:
| Open markets require a way to escalate and resolve disputes,
| adjudicated impartially.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I haven't used Facebook in a decade. Not even a little bit. I
| highly recommend it.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Long time ago, Google use to give higher weight to .gov domains.
|
| Seems like at minimum the opposite should never happen, and
| that's negatively flagging .gov domains.
|
| Edit: why the downvotes? If you disagree, please post a comment
| so we can have a healthy dialogue.
| nafix wrote:
| How should this message from the CDC be interpretted? Why is the
| CDC removing authorization for this test?
|
| This is the CDC post in question:
| https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert...
| hnthrowaway8493 wrote:
| Here's a nice article answering your question and explaining
| the confusion here. It definitely seems like people who want to
| believe that covid is a hoax are taking this CDC post (which is
| technical and directed at scientists in testing labs) out of
| context and misinterpreting it to back up their narrative.
|
| https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-viral-posts-misre...
|
| From the article:
|
| _In explaining the CDC's decision to end the use of its own
| PCR test at the end of 2021, Kristen Nordlund, an agency
| spokeswoman, in an email to us cited "the availability of
| commercial options for clinical diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2
| infection, including multiplexed (discussed here) and high-
| throughput options" -- referring to technologies that use an
| automated process to administer hundreds of tests per day._
|
| _"Although the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019 nCoV) Real-
| Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel met an important unmet need when
| it was developed and deployed and has not demonstrated any
| performance issues, the demand for this test has declined with
| the emergence of other higher-throughput and multiplexed
| assays," Nordlund said._
|
| _She continued: "CDC is encouraging public health laboratories
| (PHL) to adopt the CDC Influenza SARS-CoV-2 (Flu SC2) Multiplex
| Assay to enable continued surveillance for both influenza and
| SARS-CoV-2, which will save both time and resources for PHL."_
| rossdavidh wrote:
| If I'm reading the post correctly (and I am no expert in the
| field), they're saying "this test will be obsolete by end of
| year, as better tests become available". It was an EULA, which
| is by intention "we wouldn't approve this so quickly except
| this is an emergency", so it's not surprising that as better
| tests were developed they would withdraw the EULA.
|
| Given that they were withdrawing it with several months'
| advance notice, I doubt there was anything massively wrong with
| it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-29 23:00 UTC)