[HN Gopher] Ending our third party fact-checking program and mov...
___________________________________________________________________
Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to
Community Notes model
Author : impish9208
Score : 778 points
Date : 2025-01-07 12:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (about.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.fb.com)
| donohoe wrote:
| From bad to worse. Meta is probably one of the single largest
| funders of fact checking. Now that appears to be coming to an
| end. Third parties will no longer be able to flag misinfo on FB,
| Instagram or Threads in the US.
|
| This is not good imho.
| raxxor wrote:
| I think internet discussion worked far better without fact
| checkers, where some of them cannot really be called accurate.
| The community notes are the better approach. They aren't always
| correct either, but it certainly is the better fit for freedom
| of expression and freedom of speech. Fact checkers are the
| authority approach that just does not fit.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| I haven't seen a single discussion be worse off due to fact
| checking, but I've seen tons of discussions where having it
| would improve things. I have seen people get mad because they
| can't post BS without it being challenged.
|
| To claim internet discussion worked better without fact
| checking is something I haven't seen any actual evidence for,
| just opinions like yours.
|
| Community notes is just a watered down, more easily 'ignored'
| version that appeases people that were angry about fact
| checkers to begin with.
|
| Hopefully there is a push-back, likely from EU legislation.
| Between the AI generators many of these companies are
| implementing and changes like this, platforms need to be held
| more accountable for what they allow to be posted on them.
| raxxor wrote:
| Claims are challenged all the time by other users and there
| are enough cases where fact checkers were wrong or heavily
| biased.
|
| EU legislation tries to introduce "trusted flaggers". A
| ridiculous approach, an information authority by a state-
| like entity doesn't work, even if they paint these flaggers
| as independent. They simply are not, a trusted and
| verifiable fact.
|
| Community notes provide higher quality info, it is the
| better approach. That is an opinion of course.
|
| We will probably see community notes on trusted flaggers.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| >Claims are challenged all the time by other users and
| there are enough cases where fact checkers were wrong or
| heavily biased.
|
| I've only seen a handful of cases where they were wrong
| of heavily biased, but I've seen hundreds of cases where
| the poster refuses to accept they are wrong and the fact
| checkers are right.
|
| >Community notes provide higher quality info, it is the
| better approach. That is an opinion of course.
|
| Roughly the same info but from less trusted sources and
| with less controls being higher quality sounds like a big
| bag of wishes but not grounded in reality.
|
| >We will probably see community notes on trusted
| flaggers.
|
| I expect lots of partisan complaining and yelling, but
| not a lot of actual valid challenges.
| raxxor wrote:
| I don't know. I believe the average internet user has
| less to gain to feed me wrong info. It happens of course,
| that is why you shouldn't believe everything you read on
| the internet.
|
| A fact checker however has economic incentive towards
| their employers. You can paint them as independent, but
| the will always be in a precarious situation or are
| influenced by third party financiers. This does not at
| all evoke more trust than a random internet person.
| Trusted source is pretty subjective, but for me
| "official" fact checkers don't have too much of that.
| leovingi wrote:
| > I haven't seen a single discussion be worse off due to
| fact checking
|
| The idea that there is some official governing body that
| has access to undisputable facts and they have the power to
| designate what you or I or anyone else can talk about is
| preposterous and, frankly, anyone on a site called Hacker
| News should be ashamed for supporting it.
| bavell wrote:
| A voice of sanity in a cacophony of madness. I hold no
| sympathy for Meta but it's laughable that so-called
| "fact-checkers" are anything but "status-quo enforcers".
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| >The idea that there is some official governing body
|
| Platforms were encouraged to create their own
| departments, and have. There is no "one" or "governing"
| body here, so this is more hyperbole in this already
| flagrantly absurd discussion.
|
| >have the power to designate what you or I or anyone else
| can talk about is preposterous
|
| No one is stopping you from posting bullshit, fact
| checkers simply post the corresponding challenge or facts
| that allow others to see the lack of truth in your
| statements.
|
| The idea you can say whatever you want, lie all you want,
| and be unchallenged as some form of right is absurd.
| Claiming because you can be challenged is censoring you
| or preventing you from talking is also completely absurd.
|
| >and, frankly, anyone on a site called Hacker News should
| be ashamed for supporting it.
|
| Frankly anyone on this site should be able to separate
| hyberbolic strawmen from reality.
| leovingi wrote:
| > Platforms were encouraged to create their own
| departments, and have. There is no "one" or "governing"
| body here, so this is more hyperbole in this already
| flagrantly absurd discussion.
|
| > Finally, in the midst of operating or considering up to
| three different avenues of "misinformation reporting"
| (switchboarding, EI-ISAC, and the "misinformation
| reporting portal"), by early 2020, CISA had dropped any
| pretense of focusing only on foreign disinformation,
| openly discussing how to best monitor and censor the
| speech of Americans.
|
| That's a quote taken directly from the House Judiciary
| report on "disinformation", page number 31 -
| https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-
| subsites/republicans-j...
|
| Here's another one
|
| > The EIP repeatedly used its fourth category, in
| particular, to justify the censorship of conservative
| political speech: the "Delegitimization of Election
| Results," defined as "[c]ontent that delegitimizes
| election results on the basis of false or misleading
| claims."166 This arbitrary and inconsistent standard was
| determined by political actors masquerading as "experts"
| and academics. But even more troubling, the federal
| government was heavily intertwined with the universities
| in making these seemingly arbitrary determinations that
| skewed against one side of the political aisle.
|
| So please, let's not pretend that the fact-checking
| organizations, the information streams they themselves
| depended upon and the pressure that was applied to all of
| the social networks was organic "encouragement" meant to
| challenge bullshit posted online - it was a censorship
| campaign by the United States government, plain and
| simple.
| kcplate wrote:
| Exposure to many viewpoints, including wrong ones, provides
| a counterbalancing effect. When you actively try and
| suppress information you create a "forbidden knowledge"
| effect where people seek out silos where extreme and
| wrongheaded information gets passed without the "sunlight
| is the best disinfectant"---it grows faster...becomes more
| wrong, more extreme, and more dangerous.
|
| Seems to me in my experience after decades of watching and
| participating in online discussion extremism really only
| became _more_ problematic when fact checking and active
| efforts to suppress took hold. Whatever the good intentions
| may have been, the results were worse.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's some academic research to the contrary; banning
| /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/coontown on Reddit reduced
| incidents of hateful speech across the platform.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6zg6w6/reddits_
| ban... /
| https://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-
| hate.pdf
|
| "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" is a great pithy
| slogan, but modern society needs bleach and chlorhexidine
| sometimes.
| naasking wrote:
| > There's some academic research to the contrary; banning
| /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/coontown on Reddit reduced
| incidents of hateful speech across the platform.
|
| That does not imply it reduced hateful speech overall,
| maybe the censorship just increased antipathy and drove
| that speech underground or to other platforms where it
| couldn't be seen.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Off Reddit" is a win. Recruitment in neutral-ish venues
| like Reddit is critical for extremist groups; people
| aren't _starting_ on Stormfront.
| naasking wrote:
| That's still just a conjecture of a meaningful effect.
| Recruiters are able to change tactics in response you
| know. You're just naively assuming that those old tactics
| worked better just because reddit itself changed, but it
| could very well be the case that the more extreme
| rhetoric only attracted people who were already extremist
| and turned off moderates, but a more moderate approach
| that's now required could funnel more moderate people
| into an extremist pipeline.
|
| "Off reddit" is just a win for reddit's PR, and that's
| why they did it, and no other reason and no other effects
| can be inferred.
| intended wrote:
| The claim you are addressing is a separate one from the
| fatpeople hate story.
|
| And that claim is evidenced, It's not conjecture. I dont
| have it handy on me, but we have mapped out the ways
| people are recruited, and things like fatpeoplehate,
| coontown, are the funnels for groups to find new
| recruits.
|
| Here's one -
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3447535.3462504
|
| There's several others on things from ISIS to
| hacktivists. The mechanism is the same, heck - "red pill"
| is the term for this, it's actually quite known.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Not necessarily. If it drives the content off Reddit but
| onto another platform that's friendly to only these
| extremists and their views then you may just end up
| radicalizing the members of the original banned subs even
| more.
|
| I don't know if that's what happened and there's probably
| a lot more research to do here but I'm not convinced that
| deplatforming is actually a good outcome societally
| without more data.
| kcplate wrote:
| So your example is two places that were intentionally
| moderated to be hateful and also suppressed the non-
| hateful speech in those subreddits?
|
| So removing a censored platform eliminated the problem?
| Amazing how that works!
| Barrin92 wrote:
| No, you should actually go and read the paper. It didn't
| just reduce the type of content posted in the subreddit,
| they tracked individual users that were active and their
| behavior _overall_ changed, including in other subreddits
| compared to before.
|
| Essentially what it showed was that if you pull people
| out of a particular echo chamber, then that had a
| sustained effect on how they behaved. Which is evidence
| contrary to the often made claim that they'd just leave
| and go somewhere else. It's in line with the theory that
| the internet fosters extremism because it enables insular
| pathological communities that in the analog era you'd
| have been slapped out of long ago by people who aren't
| nuts.
| kcplate wrote:
| > Essentially what it showed was that if you pull people
| out of a particular echo chamber, then that had a
| sustained effect on how they behaved.
|
| So...silos and echo chambers _are bad_. Seems to me that
| was part of my original point. I am suggesting that
| censorship of information leads people to the silos.
| intended wrote:
| So you are saying, that things got better when people
| were banned.
|
| Because when they got banned, many other communities saw
| improvements as well, not just those?
| kcplate wrote:
| No I am saying that when you censor/suppress debate in
| the public square you drive people underground where they
| land in echo chambers and develop extreme views because
| they don't have public debate.
|
| You don't need to ban people from echo chambers if they
| don't land there in the first place.
|
| Your solution is reactive to a problem you caused. My
| solution is don't create the problem in the first place.
| intended wrote:
| So I have done the leg work to see what happens and it
| turns out that if you give space to extremist views they
| overtake other conversations and dominate the community.
|
| What people don't seem to grasp is that all speech is not
| equal, and that our brains react very predictably to
| certain arguments and content.
|
| For example, your argument is not supported by the paper,
| which I have read. Because the paper shows behavior of
| the bad actors changed across the site, and became less
| hateful.
|
| However the argument is complex, and goes against
| commonly held beliefs, such as sunlight is the best
| disinfectant etc.
|
| More exposure results in more reinforcement of popular
| ideas, until something happens externally.
| kcplate wrote:
| When you feel the need to censor or suppress information
| all you are doing is admitting that your argument is just
| not as persuasive as the opposition and requires
| handicapping. People see that as the same thing as your
| argument being false which is why they always work their
| way tirelessly around your efforts to suppress and
| censor.
|
| If you get to the point where you feel you need to
| censor, suppress, or outright ban voices to be heard, you
| have already lost the communication high ground and no
| matter how true or good your opinion/idea/position. It
| will lose in the court of public opinion...and frankly
| should...because you did not put the appropriate effort
| in to be persuasive.
| raxxor wrote:
| Maybe it reduced hate on this single metric, but the
| complaint is more about the errors in fact checking.
|
| And single subreddits aren't really convincing about the
| reliability of fact checkers if their independence is in
| question. In the end they do rely on a truth-authority,
| which is problematic, especially for political content.
| And Meta reported that political demands increased.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Seems to me in my experience after decades of watching
| and participating in online discussion extremism really
| only became more problematic when fact checking and
| active efforts to suppress took hold. Whatever the good
| intentions may have been, the results were worse.
|
| Seems like the opposite. Traditionally we only had siloed
| forums which were often heavily moderated by volunteers
| who considered the forums their personal fiefdom, read
| every single thread and deleted stuff for being "off
| topic" never mind objectionable, plus the odd place like
| /b/ which revelled in being unmoderated. Then you ended
| up with more people on big platforms that were
| comparatively-speaking, pretty lightly and reactively
| moderated. Then you ended up with politicians weighing in
| against moderation with the suggestion even annotating
| content published on their platform was a free speech
| violation, let alone refraining from continuing to
| publish it.
|
| The difference between antivax sentiment now and circa
| 2005 isn't that nobody ever determined that they weren't
| having that nonsense on their forums or closed threads
| with links to Snopes back then or that it's become
| difficult to find any references to it outside antivaxxer
| communities since then. Quite the opposite, the
| difference is that it's now coming from the mouth of a
| presumptive Health Secretary, amplified on allied news
| networks and now we have corporations running scared that
| labelling it a hoax might run the risk of offending the
| people in charge. Turns out sunlight is a catalyst for
| growth
| kcplate wrote:
| > The difference between antivax sentiment now and circa
| 2005
|
| The antivax movement literally grew exponentially when
| vaccine information started to be actively censored on
| the largest social media platforms and you think that is
| because there wasn't enough censorship? _People were
| literally driven into antivax information silos_ because
| a bunch of idiots decided that vaccine criticism should
| be _forbidden_ in the public square
|
| Wow.
| notahacker wrote:
| Sorry, but I live in a country using exactly the same
| social media providers as you, subject to exactly the
| same (actually pretty limited) censorship and without
| widespread, committed and politically-aligned antivax
| sentiment
|
| People in the US didn't need to be "driven into antivax
| information silos", because those antivax information
| silos were their favourite talk show hosts and some of
| the country's most prominent politicians. Turns out that
| promotion of antivax sentiment as an _important issue
| that must be discussed_ and constant attacks on public
| health officials doesn 't "disinfect" people against the
| belief that there might be some truth to it...
| kcplate wrote:
| So you are arguing for exactly what? You don't want
| freedom of speech? You don't want body autonomy? You
| _want_ authoritarian control of the populace?
|
| Not sure where you live, but if those are the things that
| are important to your leaders and people, I wouldn't want
| to live there or even visit. Sounds awful.
| notahacker wrote:
| I don't recall expressing any of those sentiments you've
| attributed to me, but I'll note it's quite a shift on
| your side from "sunlight is the best disinfectant" to
| "your country's mainstream media and politicians didn't
| encourage antivax sentiment enough to reduce vaccination
| levels or increase death rates to US levels? Sounds
| horrible"
|
| I note that the original topic was about Zuckerberg being
| so afraid of his corporation being censured by the
| incoming government that he's pledged to move his
| moderation team to a state which voted for them and
| refrain from publishing any "fact checking" notes in
| Facebook's name lest they conflict with the government
| and its supporters. That doesn't sound like a libertarian
| paradise either
| kcplate wrote:
| > I don't recall expressing any of those sentiments
| you've attributed to me
|
| Perhaps I misunderstood your intentions then.
|
| If you believe that antivax debate was in the mainstream
| in the US and there wasn't an active attempt to suppress
| just because some voices bled through the censorship, you
| are simply wrong. Zuckerberg even noted in this
| announcement that pressure from the Biden administration
| to censor speech was significant.
|
| My consistent point here is that censorship drives
| extremism because it suppresses the debate _where the
| debate wants to take place_ and pushes the conversation
| to those interested in the topic to siloed echo chambers.
| That definitely happened around vaccines in the US over
| the last 4-5 years. I know that happens for a fact and
| have personally tried to gently encourage people I know
| that felt the censorship frustrations and leapt to other
| platforms to still read all sides before making decsions.
|
| Whatever Zuckerberg's internal motivations are on this
| change of policy, I don't care. Community notes seems to
| be a better way than suppression. Others may have a
| different opinion and thats ok. I encourage them to
| freely express it and would never support any one trying
| to shut that debate down.
| notahacker wrote:
| How wrong of me to think that high-profile politicians
| and wall to wall cable news coverage are anything other
| than little-noticed voices bleeding through the all-
| pervading censorship of... two internet companies
| deleting a handful of accounts after people had pointed
| out how many million likes their dangerous medical advice
| was getting and some algorithmic "are you sure you want
| to link to this hoax?" interstitials. Really, the
| argument that Meta's moderation was futile and inept
| (even more so than its policing of scam ads and spambots)
| has far more credibility than attempts to portray it as
| some evil internet police forcing people to hide out on
| tiny islands of antivax.
|
| It seems a little unlikely that people who decided to
| delete their Facebook account and seek out an echo
| chamber because they didn't like seeing FactCheck.org
| links slapped on vaccine function would have nevertheless
| listened very carefully to FactCheck.org or the public
| health officials their favourite politicos were slagging
| off if only they were able to debate post misleading
| memes about public health on Facebook _first_. I mean,
| the anger at third party fact checkers is explicit
| rejection of the idea there 's anything to debate.
|
| Anyway, regardless of whether self-proclaimed fact
| checkers actually live up to their label, it's difficult
| to describe a corporation bending the knee to an incoming
| administration that's determined that corporations
| _shouldn 't_ link to them as a victory for free speech or
| enabling controversial viewpoints to be _debated_ as
| opposed to merely promoted on internet platforms. Must be
| wonderful for Zuckerberg to be able to express himself
| freely without any threat of censure whatsoever on the
| day he announces that he 'll be firing his his moderation
| team so he can relocate it to a state the incoming
| administration considers less susceptible to wrongthink
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| >Exposure to many viewpoints, including wrong ones,
| provides a counterbalancing effect. When you actively try
| and suppress information you create a "forbidden
| knowledge" effect where people seek out silos where
| extreme and wrongheaded information gets passed without
| the "sunlight is the best disinfectant"---it grows
| faster...becomes more wrong, more extreme, and more
| dangerous.
|
| Fact checkers don't suppress information, they add
| context and information to posts others make and provide
| the exposure to many viewpoints that echo chambers often
| do not have.
|
| People haven't stopped posting wrong and biased
| information with fact checkers, they just have the
| counterpoint to their bullshit displayed alongside their
| posts on the platform.
|
| >Seems to me in my experience after decades of watching
| and participating in online discussion extremism really
| only became more problematic when fact checking and
| active efforts to suppress took hold. Whatever the good
| intentions may have been, the results were worse.
|
| My decades of watching is exactly the opposite. Extremism
| is and was rampant long before fact checking, and fact
| checking really only served to push some of the most
| extreme content to the margins and to smaller platforms
| that don't have it. It concentrates it in some ways as
| many of these opinions fall apart quickly when exposed to
| truth and facts.
| freedomben wrote:
| > Fact checkers don't suppress information,
|
| I think some moderation is important, but misrepresenting
| fact checkers (damn ironic actually) doesn't serve us. Of
| course fact check suppresses information! That's the
| whole point. Sometimes it results in straight up
| deletion, but even when not it results in lowered reach
| aka suppression of what the algorithm would normally
| allow to trend, etc.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| >Of course fact check suppresses information! That's the
| whole point
|
| Its not. The fact checkers in this case, and almost all
| cases we're discussing ADD information that challenges
| the posted data, not censor or restrict it from being
| posted.
|
| Outside of illegal content that is. Content deemed
| illegal was removed by moderation teams, this was before
| fact checking, and will continue with community notes
| with little to no change.
| kcplate wrote:
| Yes I am aware of what a fact checker is _supposed to do_
| and am aware of what they _really do_.
|
| What they _really do_ is spin information.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Seems to me in my experience after decades of watching
| and participating in online discussion extremism really
| only became more problematic when fact checking and
| active efforts to suppress took hold. Whatever the good
| intentions may have been, the results were worse.
|
| This is just overtly and flatly wrong. I reject your
| experience fully because over the past few decades the
| internet has become more open, not less. We openly
| debated people that believed vaccines caused autism and
| gave them microphones. Every single loud asshole and
| dipshit was given maximum volume on whatever radio show
| or podcast or social media platform they could want.
| kcplate wrote:
| You can reject my experience all you want but the reality
| is that between 2020 and 2023ish the world's top social
| media platforms became less open about specific kinds of
| information and actively tried to censor and suppress any
| contrary information to a government opinion/narrative
| about certain subjects. During this time certain forms of
| extremism exploded in popularity as people were driven to
| information silos to find and learn about the information
| that the social media platforms were trying to suppress.
| Those silos generally didn't have censorship but they
| also didn't have contrarian voices either. So when folks
| landed in those silos all they heard was the assholes at
| the loud volumes and without the contrarians, followed
| those assholes.
|
| Specifically to vaccines, the antivax crowd was pretty
| minimal to a some nutjob soccer moms, holistic medicine
| fanatics, and RFKjr until you stopped having
| conversations with them, because you folks who want or
| believe that censorship is good _silenced the debate_ and
| did not follow them to the forums where they went to
| spread their ideas to continue the debate.
|
| I am absolutely convinced that the growth in the antivax
| movement is directly tied to the censorship effort (and
| the desire of the government to not be completely honest
| about the vaccines at the time).
| jasdi wrote:
| No free lunch here. Social media is different from
| systems in the past cuz it give everyone Free Broadcast
| capability.
|
| In the past people were told they had Free Speech, but
| they didn't have Free access to Broadcast Media
| (newspapers/radio/tv/movie studios/satellites). It was
| always up to someone else with Access to Broadcast(one to
| all messaging) to prop up voices they thought was
| important.
|
| Shannon's Information theory tells us Social Media as a
| system can't work cause - once you tell people their
| voice matters, give everyone in the room a mic, plugged
| into the same sound system, and allow everyone to speak,
| firstly you get massive noise, secondly as a reaction
| people will scream louder and louder and repeat their
| message more and more. Noise only compounds. The math
| says it can't work. The way people are debating about
| this is under an assumption that it can.
| kcplate wrote:
| > The math says it can't work. The way people are
| debating about this is under an assumption that it can.
|
| Yet here we are...the math seemed to work overall just
| fine minimizing the anti-vax movement until someone
| started externally futzing with the numbers to try and
| force a specific result to that math. When you do that
| apparently more of your components run off to form other
| equations and no longer participate in your equation then
| before you tried to manipulate the messaging.
|
| You are not going to get everyone to agree with
| you...ever. But suppressing and censoring debate in the
| real world example of vaccine acceptance to try and
| achieve that result backfired spectacularly by
| galvanizing and growing that movement far far beyond what
| it was...or should have ever been.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Minimal? Again you are just objectively wrong. The
| antivax movement had been growing since the 90s, RFK Jr
| didn't exist in a vacuum. The entire reason why there was
| push back against the COVID vaccine in the first place
| was because this movement was there already, much like
| the movement against abortion.
|
| You are rewriting history to fit your viewpoint which is
| wrong. The reality is that you are wrong. And those silos
| that people moved to were equally sinful of censoring
| voices and banning people not aligned with their beliefs.
| Even now Musk has no problem censoring and banning people
| off Twitter for being too mean to him.
| intended wrote:
| The principle is sound, but it's a principle.
|
| The mechanisms of online speech show us a few other
| issues.
|
| For example certain ideas are far more "fit" for
| transmission and memory than others. Take a look at
| something as commonplace as "ghosts" or the idea of
| penguins. Ghosts are in all cultures, and they are
| essentially people with some additional properties.
| Penguins are birds that dont fly.
|
| Brains absorb stories and ideas like flightless birds
| easily, because they build on pre existing concepts.
|
| Talk about spacetime, or multiple dimensions and you
| aren't going to have the same degree of uptake.
|
| So when I put certain ideas into competition with each
| other, all else being equal - the more suited for human
| foibles, the more successful the idea.
|
| People also dont make that much effort to seek out
| forbidden knowledge. Conservative main stream media has
| made many things forbidden - 1/3rd of America isnt aware
| that Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing.
|
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant for certain breeds of
| germs. Many others get on just fine.
|
| In my many decades of online existence, which includes
| being on multiple sides of moderation, extremism was on
| the rise from before, because we had created the
| arguments and structures that thrive on it.
|
| Content moderation was a hap hazard effort created out of
| necessity to stall it.
|
| Personally - I hope this works. Moderation sucks, and is
| straight up traumatic. If we can get better, more
| effective market places of ideas, then I am all for it.
|
| I care about the effectiveness of the exchange of ideas.
| I see free speech as a principle that supports this. But
| the goal is always the functioning of the marketplace.
| llm_trw wrote:
| You must have slept walked through covid then.
|
| Citing the simple fact that every western government
| ignored their own pandemic plans and did adlib bingo
| instead was enough to get you banned of Twitter, Facebook
| and reddit for close to two years.
| quantadev wrote:
| The problem with "Fact-Checkers" was that since they're human
| they're going to impose their own biases, and their own sense
| of morality. For well over a decade the majority of them were
| also left-leaning (per Silicon Valley), and so even true
| things that conservatives were trying to say got "censored"
| because these left-leaning folks believed their own sense of
| truth and morality were superior.
| intended wrote:
| When you say this, what are you referring to? Was this about
| the general vibe of online conversations, or are you talking
| about specific incidences or traits?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Fact checkers are often wrong, and often corrupted by the
| activists that end up working at them. For example I've
| repeatedly noticed articles from Politifact that are blatantly
| wrong or very misleading. When I look up those authors and
| their other work, their bias is clear. Community notes on
| X/Twitter is far more effective and accurate.
| silverquiet wrote:
| The older I get, the more I realize that people just live in
| different realities and so many contradictory facts can be
| true. Obviously this is a source of conflict.
| naasking wrote:
| I don't think facts ever contradict each other, it's the
| stories people create to explain the facts that are at
| odds. These stories lead people to extrapolate other
| beliefs which they present as "facts", and it's an organic
| process of discussion and exposure that changes peoples
| minds over time.
|
| I personally think aggressive fact checking authorities
| impedes this process, because people don't change their
| minds when faced with authoritarian power against which
| they are powerless, and because they are powerless here,
| they get angry and they disengage. This ends up which
| reinforcing their beliefs and now you've lost all chance of
| change.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Right. Imagine facts as data points on some Cartesian
| plane, and the narrative surrounding the facts as the
| curve fit to those points. The data points might all be
| sound, but by selectively omitting some, or by weighting
| their "uncertainty" higher or lower, you can fit just
| about any damn curve you want to them.
|
| One such instantiation of this:
| https://chomsky.info/consent01/
| tensor wrote:
| I also think that simple exposure to a narrative, whether
| it has any actual facts/data backing it up or not, is
| likely the primary driver of people believing it.
|
| Now, consider that in most "free speech" societies, those
| with money can repeat things many orders of magnitude
| more than others. Over time, this results in influence.
| Thus, while many countries have "free speech," I'd say
| they don't have "fair speech." The two concepts
| complement each other, but one is not the opposite of the
| other.
| chillacy wrote:
| The idea of some kind of universal fact is also misleading,
| some statements of fact are only statements of belief,
| others are so ill-defined that people end up debating two
| different things.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yeah, journalism always has some inherent bias. But to say
| that the X community is going to be less biased than a fact-
| checking organization staffed by journalists whose job is to
| be neutral (within what's humanly possible), is frankly
| absurd.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Why is it absurd? Journalists don't think their job is to
| be neutral. They are among the most biased. They abuse the
| trust given to them, which is why they don't deserve it.
| Community notes allows a diversity of opinions to compete,
| which is a better way to seek truth.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| you're confusing fact checking with forum discussions and
| social media posts
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| What specifically is the difference? Other than an appeal
| to authority?
| gitaarik wrote:
| But they are not claiming to have the facts. That's the big
| difference.
| nxm wrote:
| Who was checking the fact checkers, when they were wrong quite
| often?
| cmdli wrote:
| I've not seen any examples of the "official" fact-checkers
| being wrong; have you?
| zahlman wrote:
| It's trivial to find examples. I put "fact checkers were
| wrong" into DDG and turned up:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/07/five-
| times-f...
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95
|
| https://reason.com/2021/12/29/facebook-masks-false-
| informati...
|
| Even when they aren't wrong, they can be biased. See for
| example:
|
| https://www.allsides.com/blog/media-bias-alert-politifact-
| fa...
|
| Also, compare and contrast how they handled Sanders and
| Trump's presentations of substantially the same claim:
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/jul/13/bernie-
| san...
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jun/20/donald-
| tru...
|
| There's an entire site dedicated to pointing out more
| examples, aptly named https://www.politifactbias.com/ .
| They show their work in great detail.
|
| It's trivial to introduce bias by simply being selective
| about who you hold to greater scrutiny
| (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-
| demand...).
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Trump says the unemployment rate for African-American
| youths is 59 percent.
|
| > In May, the bureau said the employment-population ratio
| for blacks ages 16 to 24 was 41.5 percent. Flipped over,
| that would mean that the unemployment ratio - although
| such a statistic is not published by the bureau - would
| be 58.5 percent. That's pretty close to the 59 percent
| figure Trump cited, Sinclair noted.
|
| > Mostly False
|
| Crazy
| cmdli wrote:
| In the examples you provided, they mostly deal with
| hotly-contested information around Covid-19, where there
| exists countless amounts of incorrect information,
| politicized reporting, and straight up propaganda. I'm
| not surprised that Facebook's fact-checkers got a couple
| articles mislabeled, especially if they blended in with
| the wave of genuine disinformation that accompanied the
| pandemic.
|
| Given that there seems to only be two articles that are
| listed as falsely reported as misinformation (the Reason
| article and the BMJ article also mentioned in the
| Telegraph report from today), I have to assume that there
| actually aren't that many large errors on the part of the
| fact checkers. If there were more than two or the
| mistakes were much bigger, then the free speech advocates
| would never stop mentioning it.
|
| There can definitely be bias when it comes to fact-
| checking, I wouldn't deny that. I also think that
| education and knowledge sharing can be greatly harmed by
| social media incentives to provide the most "engagement".
| Having an actual human in the process somewhere
| introduces some error but also cuts down on a lot of the
| dumb crap that would otherwise spread.
| zahlman wrote:
| You asked if I saw examples and said that you haven't
| seen any examples; I showed you examples.
|
| There certainly are more examples, and the free speech
| advocates I know do talk about the subject generally
| quite a bit.
|
| One I just now remembered: Dr. John Campbell
| (https://www.youtube.com/@campbellteaching) has run into
| issues with this and has pointed out many other cases
| where established "knowledge" about Covid that we were
| previously not allowed to criticize, turned out to be
| objectively wrong. These disputes have resulted in many
| other people being censored despite later being shown to
| be correct, or at least reasonably justified by the best
| information available at the time.
|
| This is someone who was proactively warning about the
| potential severity of Covid well before others, and
| advocating for proper hand-washing very early on (before
| more science emerged suggesting that skin contact is a
| relatively minor transmission vector). In the early days
| of the pandemic, he was complaining loudly about Fauci's
| initial mask rhetoric, arguing that the general
| population absolutely should wear masks and that
| production needed to step up. He's been doing serious
| medical content on Youtube for 17 years (sort by oldest
| to see) and first posted about Covid on Jan 26 2020 when
| awareness was still low and it was imagined that the
| virus had been contained to China and presented extensive
| detail on what little was known at the time
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvpfC7NfR0).
|
| But now he mostly makes videos against "the
| establishment", out of frustration with their
| unwillingness to consider new science over dogma.
| cmdli wrote:
| I apologize for not scouring the internet for examples.
| If you had not sought those examples out and provided
| them, I probably would have never seen any cases of
| incorrect fact-checking in my actual life, but I would
| have seen many cases of misinformation being fact-
| checked. If you have to intentionally find such cases or
| hear them shouted from the rooftops by free speech
| advocates, then they probably aren't that many such
| cases.
|
| I don't have time to search through an entire Youtube
| channel, but I will say this: there are many, many
| doctors out there with factually incorrect views about
| medical science. I personally have talked with doctors
| who think that the Covid vaccine killed hundreds of
| thousands of people (it didn't). I do not necessarily
| think this doctor is wrong, but from the perspective of a
| fact-checker who is given the current best knowledge of
| Covid it is hard to determine who is making genuine good-
| faith efforts to criticize vs who is simply repeating
| what they want to be true.
|
| And for the record, you absolutely are allowed to
| criticize the establishment views. When it comes to
| important topics like medical science, however, you may
| just have additional context added saying that this is a
| contrarian view which (statistically) is more likely to
| be false than the consensus. Everybody likes to complain
| loudly about being censored, but the reality is that
| their views are just being disputed and information
| provided that they are going against the mainstream view.
| wtcactus wrote:
| You wrote: "I've not seen any examples of the "official"
| fact-checkers being wrong; have you?".
|
| So, you do now admit there are examples of official"
| fact-checkers being wrong?
| cmdli wrote:
| Specifically, I was talking about in my daily usage, not
| a widely-distributed article on a single example. Have
| you personally seen any fact-checking whatsoever, much
| less fact-checking that is misleading? Or do you need to
| search it out in order to find it?
| e2021 wrote:
| Joe Biden is sharp as a tack and any videos purporting to
| show the opposite are cheap fakes deceptively edited by the
| Republicans and their far right allies [1] [2] [3]
|
| [1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jun/21/cheap-
| fake-vi...
|
| [2] https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-videos-age-
| cheap-fake...
|
| [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/biden-g7-vi
| deo-j...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > when they were wrong quite often?
|
| citation please
| wtcactus wrote:
| There you go: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-
| news/facebook-execs...
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| Who was fact checking the fact checking fact checkers?
| kristianc wrote:
| > From bad to worse. Meta is probably one of the single largest
| funders of fact checking. Now that appears to be coming to an
| end. Third parties will no longer be able to flag misinfo on
| FB, Instagram or Threads in the US.
|
| Zuck has probably done exactly that cost-benefit calculation --
| FB has put enormous resources into fact checking, and to most
| people it hasn't moved the needle on public perception in the
| slightest. Facebook is still seen through the lens of Cambridge
| Analytica, and as a hive of disinformation. The resources
| devoted to these efforts haven't delivered a meaningful return,
| either in public trust or regulatory goodwill.
| nailer wrote:
| Thank God. Fact checkers and political organisations pretending
| to fact check frequently spread false information. Aside from
| the 2020 election interference regarding the Hunter Biden
| laptop (which was falsely claimed to be a Russian
| disinformation effort), you can visit Snopes right now and read
| an article on how someone that blew up people (and now works
| for BLM) may not be a terrorist because 'there are many
| different definitions of terrorist'.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/
| efdee wrote:
| I think that Snopes link makes it perfectly clear what is
| going on. Just because you disagree doesn't mean that it's
| wrong.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| I think the Snopes link indicates the grandparent's point
| well, if not in the way that was intended: words being
| subjective and imprecise, the fact checker has many degrees
| of freedom. If we allow fact checkers to censor content,
| they will use the linguistic degrees of freedom to censor
| selectively to the benefit of their political bias. (Your
| terrorist is my freedom fighter, your demonstrator is my
| rioter, your just cause is an imposition on my freedoms,
| etc.)
|
| Snopes was careful to show degrees of freedom with this
| fact check, but most social media fact checkers will not be
| so careful. Social media fact checkers will have a tendency
| to censor in the direction of the currently-in-power
| political party, because that party is able to set
| regulatory policy on social media companies. So the only
| thing which will prevent censorship from blowing with the
| political winds is to not have centralized censorship.
|
| Community notes (as implemented at Twitter) require
| agreement of multiple people who are not in agreement on
| issues to agree on Notes. I am cautiously optimistic that
| it may be possible to correct wrong speech with more speech
| in a nonpartisan manner.
| nailer wrote:
| No. Someone who attacks civilians for political gain is a
| terrorist.
|
| Edit for the reply below: yes that very obviously includes
| being a member of a group that attacks civilians for
| political purposes.
|
| There being debate over whether other groups that do other
| things should be called terrorists is a separate matter.
| defrost wrote:
| Her specific crimes were possession of unregistered
| firearms, transport of firearms and explosives shipped in
| interstate commerce, unlawfully use of false
| identification documents, and robbing armoured cars.
|
| Given all armoured car robbers would engage in such
| activities (unregistered firearms, explosives, fake
| papers, etc),
|
| is it your position that all armoured car robbers are
| terrorists?
| nailer wrote:
| No. Due to rate limits, I replied above.
| londons_explore wrote:
| you can still flag via the community notes system.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It's ending because the government that encouraged fact
| checking is ending. The new one has made it clear they despise
| fact checkers
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Right. And you know what type of government really despises
| fact checkers? Autocratic / oligarchic governments (Russia,
| China, etc.)
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Sure, and that's the gov't we have now. The previous one
| was also suppressive but in different ways
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| That's simply not true.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Exactly! They simply used lawfare in an attempt to
| bankrupt, sieze the assets of, and imprison their main
| political opponents rather than keep the scale balanced
| (for the sake of democracy) /s
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| You know lawfare can only be used against you (in the US)
| to seize your assets, bankrupt you, and imprison you if
| you commit major crimes right?
| gitaarik wrote:
| Or they are more realistic, or less corrupt.
|
| Seems to me that if some authority is determining what are
| facts and what are not for me, that I am easily shapable and
| foolable.
|
| Community Notes at least don't claim they have the facts. So
| that leaves you more with a responsibility to make up your
| own mind.
|
| I know this isn't for everyone, there are still a lot of
| people that like to have leaders tell them how they should
| live. But nowadays there are more and more people that like
| to have more independence. You will have to live with that
| too.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| None of this is to do with anything about what people want.
| It's to do with the government. Meta has always, by
| necessity to some degree, gone with what the current US
| administration wants re: content moderation. This is the
| same thing.
|
| Do you really think the company which has openly admitted
| it wants to create AI profiles that post as if they're
| humans and not tell you they are AI care at all about facts
| or what you think or believe?
| gitaarik wrote:
| Well yeah true, the decision is probably mostly made
| because of the change of government. The fact checking
| was pleasing the left, and now that the right has the
| power, this left-wing-propaganda thing has to go.
|
| But then is community notes right-wing?
|
| They could also have kept the fact checking system, but
| just alter the facts to please their agenda.
|
| But they didn't do that, they are replacing it with
| Community Notes, which isn't some small group supposedly
| figuring out the facts for everyone, but a community
| build information system.
|
| To me that seems a lot more fair and less prone to
| corruption. So regardless of the real motivation behind
| the move, I think it will have positive effects for
| society. At least a step in the right direction. Still a
| long way to go.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > The fact checking was pleasing the left, and now that
| the right has the power, this left-wing-propaganda thing
| has to go.
|
| Yes you understand. Meta, due to its problems with
| moderation over the years, both legal and political, has
| largely ceded direction of that to the government.
| Previous government wanted things like fact-checking, an
| oversight board for moderation decisions, and censorship
| of certain issues. Current government doesn't want any
| moderation at all, like X, the social media owned by
| Trump's biggest ally, which he personally loved so much
| that he created his own Twitter clone when he was booted
| off of Twitter. So in that environment, the easiest,
| simplest thing is to treat Meta platforms like X. That's
| all there is to it. It signals commitment to the new
| administration, it heaves political and legal pressure
| off Meta, etc. much more than your suggestion, that they
| keep fact-checking but bias it towards the right (which
| would need to be explained to the administration, etc.)
| Just saying "We're like X now" gets the point across most
| cleanly, and it's cheaper
| saxonww wrote:
| What I think I just read is that content moderation is
| complicated, error-prone, and expensive. So Meta is going to do a
| lot less of it. They'll let you self-moderate via a new community
| notes system, similar to what X does. I think this is a big win
| for Meta, because it means people who care about the content
| being right will have to engage more with the Meta products to
| ensure their worldview is correctly represented.
|
| They also said that their existing moderation efforts were due to
| societal and political pressures. They aren't explicit about it,
| but it's clear that pressure does not exist anymore. This is
| another big win for Meta, because minimizing their investment in
| content moderation and simplifying their product will reduce
| operating expenses.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > reduce operating expenses
|
| If you assume they are immune to politics (not true but let's
| go with it), this is the most obvious reason.
|
| They've seen X hasn't taken that much heat for Community Notes
| and they're like "wow we can cut a line item".
|
| The real problem is, Facebook is not X. 90% of the content on
| Facebook is not public.
|
| You can't Fact Check or Community Note the private groups
| sharing blatantly false content, until it spills out via a re-
| share.
|
| So Facebook will remain a breeding ground of conspiracy, pushed
| there by the echo chamber and Nazi-bar effects.
| raxxor wrote:
| How would fact checkers access the 90% of private content?
| And should they? I don't think so, even if the respective
| private content is questionable.
|
| The EU goes its own way with trusted flaggers, which is more
| or less the least sensible option. It won't take long until
| bounds are overstepped and legal content gets flagged.
| Perhaps it already happened. This is not a solution to even
| an ill-defined problem.
| timeon wrote:
| Yes. Those are all bad solutions. Banning social networks
| would be probably better.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Right, if you don't agree with people at an online
| community, these communities should just be banned!
|
| You would be a good dictator.
| cwillu wrote:
| Good. Private communication is private, even if it's a group.
| The nice thing about the crazy is that they're incapable of
| keeping quiet: they will inevitably out themselves.
|
| In the meantime, maybe now I can discuss private matters of
| my diagnosis without catching random warnings, bans, or
| worse.
| autoexec wrote:
| What kind of diagnosis spawns so many fact checks that it's
| a problem? I'd think any discussion about medical issues
| would benefit greatly from the calling out of
| misinformation.
| cwillu wrote:
| Amusingly enough, it's not misinformation being blocked
| or called out, it's just straight up censorship of any
| mention of the topic.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| Yes, this just reads like "oh, thank God for that, that
| department was an expensive hassle to run".
|
| I don't know if I'd call it a certain win for Meta long term,
| but it might well be if they play it right. Presumably they're
| banking on things being fairly siloed anyway, so political
| tirades in one bubble won't push users in another bubble off
| the platform. If they have good ways for people to ignore
| others, maybe they can have the cake and eat it, unlike
| Twitter.
|
| Like Twitter, the network effect will retain people, and unlike
| Twitter, Facebook is a much deeper, more integrated service
| such that people can't just jump across to a work-alike.
|
| A CEO who can keep his mouth shut is also a pretty big plus for
| them. They skated away from bring involved with a genocide
| without too many issues, so same ethical revulsion people have
| against Musk seems to be much less focused.
| ColdTakes wrote:
| The pressure has just shifted from being applied by the left to
| the right. There is still censorship on Twitter, it is just the
| people Elon doesn't like who are getting censored. The same
| will happen on Facebook. Zuckerberg has been cozying up to
| Trump for a reason.
| LtWorf wrote:
| fb has been censoring left wing stuff and leaving fascists be
| since several years. This is just "like before, but even
| more" I think.
| gitaarik wrote:
| What is this based on? I see so many people shouting things
| like this, but there doesn't seem to be any basis for these
| arguments. They seem a bit useless and empty.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Experience.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Ah ok, nothing noteworthy
| xvector wrote:
| So glad FB abandoned moderation. Both of you guys (left and
| right) blame Facebook for censorship. What a thankless job.
| I'd throw my hands up as well.
|
| If you care so much about it, now you can contribute with
| Community Notes. The power is in your hands! Go forth and
| be happy.
| urmish wrote:
| You're right, censorship is same as lack of censorship.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Heh?
| phatfish wrote:
| > it means people who care about the content being right will
| have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their
| worldview is correctly represented.
|
| Or maybe such people have far better things to do than fact
| check concern trolls and paid propagandists.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I pay for some news subscriptions now. I actually love it.
| Read it, support journalism , log off. Done.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Right, so from where?
|
| Many of us might pay for journalism if we knew who was
| producing content not already beholden to some ridiculous
| bias sink.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Checkout Ground News. Then you can choose your specific
| poison :)
| jfengel wrote:
| There do seem to be a lot of people who enjoy fact checking
| concern trolls and paid propagandists.
|
| I'm not sure if they do more good than harm. Often the entire
| point seems to be to get those specific people spun up,
| realizing that the troll is not constrained to admit error no
| matter how airtight the refutation. It just makes them look
| as frothing as trolls claim they are.
|
| And yet, it's also unclear if any other course of action
| would help. Despite decades of pleading, the trolls never
| starve no matter how little they're fed.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > And yet, it's also unclear if any other course of action
| would help. Despite decades of pleading, the trolls never
| starve no matter how little they're fed.
|
| Downvotes that hide posts below a certain threshold have
| always seemed like the best approach to me. Of course it
| also allows groups to silence views.
| toofy wrote:
| > Often the entire point seems to be to get those specific
| people spun up, realizing that the troll is not constrained
| to admit error no matter how airtight the refutation.
|
| Your point is exactly why I can't take anyone serious who
| claims that randoms "debating" will cause the best ideas to
| rise to the top.
|
| I cant count how many times i've seen influencer
| propagandists engage in an online "debate", be handheld
| walked through how their entire point is wrong, only for
| them to spew the exact same thing hours later at the top of
| every feed. and remember these are often the people with
| some of the largest platforms claiming they're being
| censored ... to _millions_ of people lol.
|
| it's too easy to manipulate what rises to the top. for
| debate to be anything close to effective all parties
| involved have to actually be interested in coming closer to
| a truth. and the algorithms have no interest in deranking
| sophists and propagandists.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > They aren't explicit about it, but it's clear that pressure
| does not exist anymore
|
| It's clear that the pressure comes now from the other side of
| the spectrum. Zuck already put Trumpists at various key
| positions.
|
| > I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people
| who care about the content being right will have to engage more
| with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly
| represented.
|
| It's a good point. They're also going to push more political
| contents, which should increase engagement (eventually
| frustrating users and advertisers?)
|
| Either way, it's pretty clear that the company works with the
| power in place, which is extremely concerning (whether you're
| left or right leaning, and even more if you're not American).
| lazyeye wrote:
| Is it less concerning if Facebook only worked with one side
| of politics? How is reducing censorship a bad thing?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Who said anything about that?
| hintymad wrote:
| > content moderation is complicated, error-prone, and expensive
|
| I think the fact-checking part is pretty straightforward.
| What's outrageous is that the content moderators judge content
| subjectively, labeling perfect discussions as misinformation,
| hate speech, and etc. That's where the censorship starts.
| nicce wrote:
| > That's where the censorship starts.
|
| It also starts when there is no third-party anymore. Where is
| the middle line?
| hintymad wrote:
| I thought there would be community notes. And how would
| third-party work? The Stanford doctor was banned from X
| because he posted peer-reviewed papers that challenge the
| effectiveness of masks (or vaccines)? I certainly don't
| want to see that level of hysteria.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The Stanford doctor was banned from X because he posted
| peer-reviewed papers that challenging the effectiveness
| of masks (or vaccines)? I certainly don't want to see
| that level of hysteria.
|
| Not familiar with that specific case, though generally
| I'm not a fan a bans. Fact checks are great though. There
| have been peer reviewed papers about midi-chlorians too (
| https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/science/2017/07/24/new
| s/a...), but I'd sure hope that if someone brought it up
| in a discussion they'd be fact checked.
| raxxor wrote:
| I do not follow, I do not believe this is correct. Third
| parties introduce the censorship.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| How do you avoid judging actual human discussions
| subjectively? I remember being a forum moderator and
| struggling with exactly the same issues. No matter what
| guidelines we'd set, there'd be essentially legitimate
| discussions that were way over the line superficially, and on
| the other you'd have neo-nazis acting in ways that weren't
| technically bad, but were clearly leading there.
|
| Facebook moderators have an even harder job than that because
| the inherent scale of the platform prevents the kinds of
| personal insights and contextual understanding I had.
| hintymad wrote:
| My answer is don't. If something is subjective, then why
| bother? "Words are violence" is such a bullshit.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Okay, but you're saying this on a platform where the
| moderator (dang) follows intentionally vague and
| subjective guidelines, presumably because you like the
| environment more here than some unmoderated howling void
| elsewhere on the Internet.
| hintymad wrote:
| Good point, and thanks. I have to admit I don't have a
| good answer to this. Maybe what dang needs to assess can
| be better defined or qualified? Like we can't define porn
| but we know it when we see it? On the other hand,
| assessing something is offensive or is hate speech is so
| subjective that people simply weaponize them,
| intentionally or unintentionally.
| int_19h wrote:
| > we can't define porn but we know it when we see it?
|
| But we don't, though. Or rather, there's broad consensus
| over most of it, but there's plenty of disagreement over
| where exactly the dividing line is.
| nullc wrote:
| The quality of the platform lives or dies on the quality
| of these decisions. If dang's choices are too bad, this
| site will die.
|
| The situation is somewhat different between a niche
| community and a borderline monopoly. But it's also true
| that facebook's success depends on navigating it well. At
| the end of the day we can choose to use it or not.
|
| To the extent that people feel _forced_ to use a platform
| that 's a reason to further bias away from suppressing
| free expression, even if the result is a somewhat less
| good platform.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You're still making subjective judgements wherever you
| draw the line. I don't know how a platform could avoid
| making subjective judgements at all and still produce an
| environment people want to be in.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > I think this is a big win for Meta, because it means people
| who care about the content being right will have to engage more
| with the Meta products to ensure their worldview is correctly
| represented.
|
| Strong disagree. This is a very naive understanding of the
| situation. "Fact-checking" by users is just more of the kind of
| shouting back and forth that these social networks are already
| full of. That's why a third-party fact checks are important.
| ldoughty wrote:
| True, but that doesn't discount that it's a win for Meta
|
| 1) Shouting matches create more ad impressions, as people
| interact more with the platform. The shouting matches also
| get more attention from other viewers than any calm factual
| statement. 2) Less legal responsibility / costs / overhead 3)
| Less potential flak from being officially involved in fact-
| checking in a way that displeases the current political group
| in power
|
| Users lose, but are people who still use FB today going to
| use FB less because the official fact checkers are gone?
| Almost certainly not in any significant numbers
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yeah, I agree it's a win for Meta from a $$ perspective,
| just not for the reason the OP expressed (which was what I
| was disagreeing with). \
| disconcision wrote:
| OP said it's a win for meta because it creates more
| engagement, which is a proxy for $$
| lazyeye wrote:
| Its more naive to think a fact-checking unit susceptible to
| govt pressure is likely to be better. There will always be
| govt pressure in one form or another to censor content they
| doesnt like. And we've obviously seen how this works with the
| Dems for the last 4 years.
| freedomben wrote:
| You should look into the implementation, at least the one
| that X has published. It's not just users shouting back and
| forth at each other. It's actually a pretty impressive system
| ipython wrote:
| I have a complicated history with this viewpoint. I remember
| back when Wikipedia was launched in 2001, I thought- there is
| no way this will work... it will just end up as a cesspool.
| Boy was I wrong. I think I was wrong because Wikipedia has a
| very well defined and enforced moderation model, for example:
| a focus on no original research and neutral point of view.
|
| How can this be replicated with topics that are by definition
| controversial, and happening in real time? I don't know. But
| I don't think Meta/X have any sort of vested interest in
| seeing sober, fact-based conversations. In fact, their
| incentives work entirely in the opposite direction: the more
| anger/divisive the content drives additional traffic and
| engagement [1]. Whereas, with Wikipedia, I would argue the
| opposite is true: Wikipedia would never have gained the
| dominance it has if it was full of emotionally-charged
| content with dubious/no sourcing.
|
| So I guess my conclusion from this is that I doubt any
| community-sourced "fact checking" efforts in-sourced from the
| social media platforms themselves will be successful, because
| the incentives are misaligned for the platform. Why invest
| any effort into something that will drive _down_ engagement
| on your platform?
|
| [1] Just one reference I found:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2024292118. From
| the abstract:
|
| > ... we found that posts about the political out-group were
| shared or retweeted about twice as often as posts about the
| in-group. Each individual term referring to the political
| out-group increased the odds of a social media post being
| shared by 67%. Out-group language consistently emerged as the
| strongest predictor of shares and retweets: the average
| effect size of out-group language was about 4.8 times as
| strong as that of negative affect language and about 6.7
| times as strong as that of moral-emotional language--both
| established predictors of social media engagement. ...
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| But "fact-checking" by people in authority is OK? Isn't that
| like, authoritarian?
|
| "Fact-checking" completely removed the ability for debate and
| is therefore antithetical to a functional democracy. Pushing
| back against authority, because they are often dead wrong, is
| foundational to a free society. It's hard to imagine anything
| more authoritarian than "No I don't have to debate because
| I'm a fact-checker and by that measure alone you're wrong and
| I'm right". Very Orwellian indeed!
|
| Additionally, the number of times that I've observed "fact-
| checkers" lying thru their teeth for obvious political
| reasons is absurd.
| kmoser wrote:
| Without some sort of controls in place, fact-checking
| becomes useless because it's subject to being gamed by
| those with the most time on their hands and/or malicious
| tools, e.g. bots and sock puppets.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > But "fact-checking" by people in authority is OK?
|
| it's by third-party journalism organizations, not Meta
| employees, so not "people in authority"
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| They are given the title of fact checker, ending debate,
| this is the authoritarian part. It does not matter who
| employs them. If fact checkers were angels we wouldn't
| have this problem. However fact checkers are subject to
| human nature just like the rest of us, to be biased,
| wrong, etc.. Do you think these fact checkers don't have
| their own opinions? Do you think they don't vote? Don't
| lie?
| flawn wrote:
| You are assuming the people in social media are a
| representative cut of people in the society but what you
| will notice quickly is that this is not the case, just look
| at echo chambers.
|
| If I am trying to debate the same fact on a far-right or
| far-left post, undoubtedly both will come up with the same
| discussion and conclusion - let's not lie to ourselves.
|
| So for your claim to have any validity the requirement of a
| fair, unbiased group of people on all posts would need to
| be given (in the first instance, there are a lot more
| issues with this, just look at the loud people versus the
| ones not bothering anymore to comment as discussing seems
| impossible) and that is just de facto not the case and the
| reason fact-checking is indeed helpful.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Community Notes is the best thing about Musk's Dumpster fire.
|
| The problem with CN right now, though, is that Musk appears to
| block it on most of his posts, and/or right-wing moderators
| downvote the notes so they don't appear or disappear.
| kristianc wrote:
| The bad faith "NNN - just expressing an opinion" is a cancer
| on CNs too.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Community notes launched at the start of 2021. It predates
| the buyout by almost two years.
|
| If what they said about their design is to be believed,
| political downvoting shouldn't heavily impact them. I wish it
| was easier to see pending notes on a post though.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Right, I think that's the parent's point: CN is a great
| design, dragged down by the fact that Elon heavily puts his
| thumb on the scale to make sure posts he likes spread far
| and wide and posts he dislikes get buried, irrespective of
| their truth content.
| qingcharles wrote:
| This. You're getting downvoted as bad as me LOL
| qingcharles wrote:
| I agree, you should be able to see pending notes even if
| you're not a CN moderator.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| You can see them, it's just that finding the button to do
| so on a post is difficult. I think you need to navigate
| to the post from the notes section of the website.
| raphman wrote:
| I am not so sure that Musk or right-wing moderators are
| directly to blame for the lack of published community notes.
| My guess: in recent months, many people (e.g., me) who are
| motivated to counter fake news have left Twitter for other
| platforms. Thus, proposed CNs are seen and upvoted by fewer
| people, resulting in fewer of them being shown to the public.
| Also, I ask myself: why should I spend time verifying or
| writing CNs when it does not matter - the emperor knows that
| he is not wearing any clothes, and he does not care.
| netsharc wrote:
| > the emperor knows that he is not wearing any clothes, and
| he does not care.
|
| Indeed the ending of the famous story is:
|
| > "But the Emperor has nothing at all on!" said a little
| child.
|
| > "Listen to the voice of innocence!" exclaimed his father;
| and what the child had said was whispered from one to
| another.
|
| > "But he has nothing at all on!" at last cried out all the
| people. The Emperor was vexed, for he knew that the people
| were right; but he thought the procession must go on now!
| And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than
| ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality,
| there was no train to hold.
| brigandish wrote:
| To be fair, a lot (not all) of notes on Musk's posts are
| spurious, including the NNN's. It's clearly being misused
| there, but in general they seem to work very well indeed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The trouble with fact checkers was quite evident in the Trump-
| Harris debate.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Non-American here (i.e. did not watch the debate), what
| trouble became evident?
|
| Were they fact-checking too much? Not enough? Incorrectly?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Only one side was fact checked.
| autoexec wrote:
| Was it the side that did the vast majority of the lying?
| saulpw wrote:
| Yeah, the problem is that if one side tells 100 lies, and
| the other tells 1 lie, you can't correct all 100 lies,
| but if you only correct the most egregious lies then
| statistically you'll only be correcting the one side, and
| if you correct 1 lie from each side, then you make it
| seem like both sides lie equally. The Gish Gallop wins
| again.
| autoexec wrote:
| Especially for live fact checking the greater the number
| of lies and the more obvious/blatant those lies are the
| more likely someone is to get fact checked.
| gitaarik wrote:
| We would have to fact check if those numbers are correct.
|
| Oh wait, fact checkers don't work, better just inform
| yourself and make up your own mind, and don't just
| believe some supposedly authoritarian figures.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This is the problem, you are clearly biased. She brought
| up the Charlottesville issue that has been widely
| debunked; it is blatantly false and well-known to be
| false. She was not fact-checked. That's the issue.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Only one side made claims like it being legal to abort
| babies post-birth.
| techfeathers wrote:
| As a Harris supporter, I actually agree, I think it was way
| too heavy handed and hurt Harris more than helped. I'm not
| sure anymore what the goal of fact checking is (I've always
| felt it was somewhat dubious if not done extremely well).
| WalterBright wrote:
| Any fact checker is going to be inevitably biased. For a
| debate, there should be two fact checkers, each candidate
| gets to pick a fact checker.
|
| That could lead to a debate between the fact checkers,
| which would derail the debate.
|
| Better to not have fact checkers as part of the debate, and
| leave the fact checking to the post-debate analysis.
| techfeathers wrote:
| Agreed, I always felt like most of the fact checking that
| has become vogue in the past ten years is designed to
| comfort the people who already agree, not inform people
| who want genuine insight.
| riversflow wrote:
| If you don't have fact checkers, a debate loses all its
| value. Debates must be grounded in fact to have any value
| at all. Otherwise a "debate" is just a series of campaign
| stump speeches.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The value in a debate is the candidates can directly
| address the opposition's claims.
| riversflow wrote:
| They routinely do just that in campaign stump speeches.
| frankzinger wrote:
| Theoretically, yes, but when every second sentence is a
| lie it becomes impossible.
| aklemm wrote:
| What I heard is that trying to maintain sane content is less
| profitable than the alternative, and definitely less
| politically advantageous.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > it means people who care about the content being right will
| have to engage more with the Meta products to ensure their
| worldview is correctly represented.
|
| To me it sounds better for large actors who pay shills to
| influence public opinion, like Qatar. I disagree that this is
| better for either Facebook users, or society as a whole.
|
| It does however certainly fit the Golden rule - he with the
| gold makes the rules.
| morley wrote:
| I was under the impression that Community Notes were designed
| to be resistant to sybil attacks, but I could be wrong.
| Community Notes have been used at Twitter for a long time.
| Are there examples of state-influenced notes getting through
| the process?
| BryantD wrote:
| Twitter's Community Notes were designed to be resistant to
| sybil attacks. Meta is calling their new product Community
| Notes, but it would be a mistake to assume the algorithms
| are the same under the hood. Hopefully Meta will be as
| transparent as Twitter has been, with a regular data dump
| and so on.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Qatar is not well known for paying people to bot on social
| media. They play the RT game by using their news network Al
| Jazeera to do that instead and give their propaganda a
| professional air. The first country to do this was India[1].
| Israel has special units in the army to do this[2]. At this
| point so many countries pay people to do what you say, but
| Qatar doesn't, from what I can tell. If you have proof of it,
| I'm all ears.
|
| I was cautiously optimistic when this was announced that
| India and Saudi Arabia (among others, incl. Qatar) might see
| some pushback on how they clamp down on free speech and
| journalism on social media. But since Zuck mentioned Europe,
| I fear those countries will continue as they did before.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_IT_Cell
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
| elsewhere-23695896
| gitaarik wrote:
| How is that different from fact checkers? They can also be
| driven by large actors who pay shills to influence public
| opinion?
|
| Only the name "Community Notes" is less misleading then "Fact
| checkers".
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Fact checkers are employed by Meta?
| gitaarik wrote:
| And you are trying to say that makes it better?
|
| Sure, I'll trust the leadership of this huge commercial
| company, famous for lots of controversies reagarding
| privacy of people. I'll trust them to decide for me what
| is true and what is not.
|
| Great idea!
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| You can just pay people, regardless of their place of
| employment.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > They also said that their existing moderation efforts were
| due to societal and political pressures. They aren't explicit
| about it, but it's clear that pressure does not exist anymore.
|
| I didn't think it was any secret that Meta largely complies
| with US gov't instructions on what to suppress. It's called
| jawboning[1]
|
| [1] https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/what-jawboning-and-
| do...
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Corporate censorship should have never happened. It is a huge
| corruption of public discourse and the political process. These
| platforms have hundreds of millions of users, or more, and are as
| influential as governments. They should be regulated like public
| utilities so they cannot ban users or censor content, especially
| political speech. Personally I don't trust Zuck and his sudden
| shift on this and other topics. It doesn't come with a strong
| enough rejection of Meta/Facebook's past, and how they acted in
| the previous election cycle, during COVID, during BLM, etc. But I
| guess some change is still good.
| jhedwards wrote:
| Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's
| any reasonable political discourse that is ever* censored by
| social media companies.
|
| During COVID, there were people spreading lies about the
| vaccine, which many people believed, and many people died as a
| result of believing those lies. Even Louis Brandeis, one of the
| fiercest advocates of free speech, made an exception for
| emergency situations[0], which is arguably what a pandemic is.
|
| But again, lies about a vaccine do not constitute reasonable
| public discourse, it is more akin to screaming fire in a
| crowded theater. If you have counter examples of regular public
| discourse that has been censored by a social media company,
| please share it.
|
| * I realize "ever" is a stretch, I'm sure there are instances,
| but my understanding is that they are the exception rather than
| the rule.
|
| [0] "If there be time to expose through discussion the
| falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of
| education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not
| enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.
| Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with
| freedom." - Louis Brandeis, Whitney vs. California
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's hard to talk about, because when a discussion is
| _successfully_ censored you usually don 't hear about it and
| presume any discourse on it would have been unreasonable.
|
| I would point towards immigration as a topic where meaningful
| discourse is missing from social media. On most social media
| sites, the discussion will be dominated by people who think
| immigration should rarely if ever be restricted; Twitter has
| been colonized by some people who take the opposite extreme,
| often for overtly racist reasons, although this is tempered a
| bit by Elon Musk's personal support of high skill visas.
|
| The "normie" immigration restrictionist position, that
| immigrants are great but only so long as they enter the
| country lawfully, is something I very often see expressed in
| news interviews or supported by older relatives and rarely if
| ever see expressed on a social media platform. I don't know
| how I'd go about proving this is downstream of fact checking,
| but there's a lot of orgs who argue that it's factually false
| to characterize, for example, someone who crosses the border
| without authorization and then applies for asylum as an
| illegal immigrant.
| astrange wrote:
| You can't use a social media platform that can't ban users,
| because it'll be full of spammers and people who only
| communicate in death threats.
| oliviergg wrote:
| But being at the head of a social network is political. Every
| choice is political. Allowing extreme speech to circulate is
| political, not authorizing it is political too. It is not
| corporate censorship, it's regulation. without regulation, it
| will be the voice of the loudest / strongest. And I think we
| need some rationality, not polarisation.
| pavlov wrote:
| Meta also nominated a Trump-affiliated boxing entertainment
| businessman to its board yesterday.
|
| They're doing everything they can to suck up to the incoming
| administration.
| netsharc wrote:
| It seems one doesn't become billionaire without being a immoral
| opportunist...
| aimazon wrote:
| Mark has looked at what has happened to Twitter since Musk took
| over, a notable decline in activity and value... and decided he
| wants a piece of that? Musk is begging people on Twitter to post
| more positive content, as it devolves into 4chan-lite.
|
| If Musk's ideological experiment with Twitter had proven the idea
| that you can have a pleasant to use website without any
| moderation then Mark's philosophical 180 would at least make
| sense, but this doesn't, at all. What's to gain? Musk has done
| everyone a favor by demonstrating that moderation driven by a
| fear of government intervention was actually a good thing.
| dpritchett wrote:
| Could be an exit strategy... maybe he's tired of running a
| social network and wants to help run governments and fly to
| space like the other guys.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It starts to make more sense when you think about who is arm in
| arm with the president elect. I don't know that Musk believes
| his philosophy is wrong and now he has the power to pressure
| others.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I use meta products, it's anecdotal but they're dead. At least
| they seem very stagnant. This is appeasing the new
| establishment and hoping for more engagement ?
| notahacker wrote:
| New government. So you've got _lack of_ moderation driven by a
| fear of government intervention.
| wumeow wrote:
| > Mark has looked at what has happened to Twitter since Musk
| took over, a notable decline in activity and value... and
| decided he wants a piece of that?
|
| Hell yes he does, Twitter helped Musk get a seat at the table
| with Trump and the ability to influence US policy decisions at
| an unprecedented level. Zuck craves power and sees sucking up
| to the incoming administration as an easy path to get more of
| it.
| nailer wrote:
| I'm not sure where you're getting data from but Twitter seems
| fine: https://www.demandsage.com/twitter-statistics/
|
| Additionally, if you haven't read the article you're commenting
| on, community notes is an excellent replacement so-called fact
| checking services which are notoriously biased.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I have a feeling it is more part of an agreement with the new
| administration. It was an agreement with the old administration
| that led to the current platform where there is way too much
| overreach on things the govt didn't want discussed: COVID,
| Palestine, immigration, etc.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Community Notes has nothing to do with trashfire of posters on
| Twitter now. CN is probably the only good thing about Twitter
| right now.
| louthy wrote:
| > Musk is begging people on Twitter to post more positive
| content
|
| Is this the same Elon Musk that recently called a British
| member of parliament a "rape genocide apologist"?
|
| Elon Musk has been radicalised and now he is using his platform
| to radicalise others.
| arielcostas wrote:
| Zuck's video claims Europe has been imposing a lot of censorship
| lately, which is a nicer way for him to say "we have done a
| crappy job at stopping misinformation and abusive material, got
| fined A LOT by countries who actually care about it, and that's
| somehow not our fault".
|
| Community notes is good news, and something I was expecting to
| disappear from Twitter since Elon bought it a couple years ago,
| especially since they have called out his lies more than once.
| Hearing Facebook/Instagram/Threads are getting them is great.
|
| Then he claims "foreign governments are pushing against American
| companies" like we aren't all subject to the same laws. And
| actually, it wasn't the EU who prohibited a specific app alleging
| "security risks" because actually they can't control what's said
| there; it was the US, censoring TikTok.
|
| Perhaps we the europeans should push for a ban of US platforms
| like Twitter, especially when its owner has actually pledged to
| weaponise the platform to favour far-right candidates like AfD
| (Germany) or Reform UK. And definitely push for bigger fines to
| monopolistic companies like Meta.
| zahlman wrote:
| Why should social media operators be responsible for "stopping
| misinformation" in the first place? That sounds a lot like the
| logic that was used to justify smashing the printing presses in
| Gutenberg's day, not to mention by countless villains of
| dystopian sci-fi (e.g. Fahrenheit 451), in turn based on other
| real-world concerns.
|
| I think I should have a right to let others lie to me, and
| decide for myself if I believe them. In the alternative where
| someone prevents me from hearing it, that other person is
| deciding for me. Why should I accept that other person as more
| qualified to do my own thinking?
|
| It's really strange to me how calls for banning
| "misinformation" in the US seem to come from the same political
| direction as complaints about controversial books being taken
| out of educational curricula.
| cakealert wrote:
| In all cases what they mean is that they want opinions or
| statements that go against to whatever ideology or political
| faction they belong to to be censored.
|
| Humans tend to strongly identify with such things and
| motivate their moral reasoning to fit.
|
| I would wager Mark and other sharks like him would find this
| entire thread very amusing. For they have no ideology other
| than self interest, nothing they do is for any other purpose
| other than their own.
| jjulius wrote:
| If you think this move exists in a vacuum or is actually about
| "getting back to their roots with free speech", you're wrong.
| Alongside Dana White joining the board[0], it's clear that this
| is solely about currying favor with the incoming administration.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2025/01/06/nx-s1-5250310/meta-dana-
| white...
| gizmo wrote:
| It's not solely about currying favor. Many tech giants hate
| getting pushed around by politicians and courts around the
| world demanding censorship. Free speech rights in the US are
| much stronger than elsewhere in the world, and even businesses
| as large as Meta need political support to successfully push
| back on censorious overreach.
|
| For context, in Germany you can face up to 3 years prison time
| for insulting a politician: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-
| greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
| tartoran wrote:
| > Many tech giants hate getting pushed around by politicians
| and courts around the world demanding censorship.
|
| They may not like that but they also don't like to take
| responsibility either.
| jjulius wrote:
| >It's not solely about currying favor. Many tech giants hate
| getting pushed around by politicians and courts around the
| world demanding censorship.
|
| Taking steps to not be pushed around by an incoming president
| who has clearly suggested he'll push them around is, quite
| literally, currying favor.
| philwelch wrote:
| Just like complying with government censorship demands was
| about currying favor with the outgoing administration.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Like this!
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-
| tru...
|
| > When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning
| hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed
| was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen
| had just called President Donald Trump "a pussy ass bitch" on
| Twitter -- and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Rollingstone makes up stories and is not a reliable source.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The claim was made in sworn testimony in a Congressional
| hearing by a Twitter executive.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/twitter-
| congr...
|
| On video, if you like:
| https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1623357770933145607
| bhouston wrote:
| 100%. It is about aligning with Trump's political opinions.
| Thus I do expect to see no fact checking of anti-trans, anti-
| vaccine and anti-immigrant content. But I don't think that
| Meta's documented censorship of Palestinian content [1] will
| change, because the censorship is inline with Trump's political
| opinions.
|
| [1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-
| censorship...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Maybe it's not Trump.
|
| Maybe the people elected Trump in a historic GOP win with
| demos that Reagan wouldn't have won with... and Zuck sees the
| writing clearer than most?
|
| The way you put it leaves out the cause and only gets the
| effect.
| philjohn wrote:
| They've also said there will be more harmful (but legal) content
| on there as they'll no longer automatically look for it, but
| require it to be reported before taking action.
|
| As someone who worked on harmful content, specifically suicide
| and self injury, this is just nuts - they were raked over the
| coals in both the UK by an inquest into the suicide of a teenage
| user who rabbit holed on this harmful content, and also with the
| parents of teenagers who took their lives, who Zuck turned around
| and apologised to as his latest senate hearing.
|
| There is research that shows exposure to suicide and self injury
| content increases suicidal ideation.
|
| I'm hoping that there is some nuance that has been missed from
| the article, but if not, this would seem like a slam dunk for
| both the UK and EU regulators to take them to task on.
| BryantD wrote:
| This exactly mirrors my thoughts, although I don't work in your
| field. One quote:
|
| "For example, in December 2024, we removed millions of pieces
| of content every day. While these actions account for less than
| 1% of content produced every day, we think one to two out of
| every 10 of these actions may have been mistakes (i.e., the
| content may not have actually violated our policies)."
|
| That is first order data and it's interesting. However, before
| making policy decisions, I would want the second order data:
| what is the human cost of those mistakes, and what percentage
| of policy-violating content will _not_ be removed as a result
| of these changes? Finally, what 's the cost of not removing
| that percentage?
|
| For that matter, by talking about the percentage of active
| mistakes without saying how many policy violations are
| currently missed, you're framing the debate in a certain
| direction.
| philjohn wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| The human cost of a piece of content being taken down depends
| on the piece of content, and the reason behind posting it.
|
| In the case of someone posting about recovery from self
| injury and including a photo of their healed self-harm scars,
| having that taken down by mistake would be more harmful than
| someone who posted a cartoon depiction of suicide for the
| lolz.
| BryantD wrote:
| Yes.
|
| My personal belief, for whatever that's worth, is that
| communication and speech are one of the most powerful tools
| any of us have. Talking can change minds, move societies,
| arouse emotions, and in general makes a difference. This is
| true no matter the format (text, voice, etc.).
|
| That means that restricting communication should not be a
| casual activity. Free speech is a good ideal for a reason.
|
| It also means that, if you believe in the primacy of free
| speech, you are obligated to consider the implications of
| that belief. Speech has effects. In my adult life, since
| 1990, we have seen a major change in the ease of
| communication. IMHO, society hasn't been able to fully
| adjust to that change -- or rather, that huge suite of
| changes. I sincerely do not know what a healthy society
| using the Internet looks like; I don't think we're in one
| now. All of these arguments (on all sides, mine included)
| are hampered by our lack of perspective.
| philjohn wrote:
| Which is why we should research this carefully - and the
| research thus far points to consumption or graphic or
| even borderline depictions of suicide, self injury and
| eating disorder content (eg thinspo) being bad for mental
| health in at least teens.
|
| Meta seem to be making the case for those who would see
| social media banned for people under the age of 18. To
| enforce that properly would require needing ID, and that
| then opens a whole can of civil liberty issues.
| nradov wrote:
| The social "science" research in this area is junk with
| small effect sizes, unclear causality, and multiple
| uncontrolled variables. People who claim to be following
| the science in this area are generally being disingenuous
| and picking results that support their preferred
| ideology.
| philjohn wrote:
| The ideology of ... not doing something that could make
| adolescent (and adult) mental health worse, to the point
| of suicide?
|
| Yeah, making that my ideology is a hill I'm willing to
| die on, sorry.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Forcing the entire world to conform to your idea of
| "child-safe" has negative consequences, too.
| philjohn wrote:
| Can you share the negative consequences of not allowing,
| and not promoting, graphic images of self harm and
| suicide on a social media network please?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It gives a lot of unearned power to those who decide what
| constitutes "promoting," "graphic," "self harm," and
| "social media," for one thing.
|
| If you or I happen to agree with the people who wield
| that power, rest assured it's only a temporary
| coincidence.
| ben_w wrote:
| Given how easy it is to take things out of context, I'm not
| so sure that the original context really makes a
| difference.
|
| There's more people online than any of us has heartbeats,
| and the n^2 number of user-user pairs generates detrimental
| effects that track any positive effects.
|
| Much better, I think, for each of us to have a small and
| private personal social network, not to hand everything
| over to a foreign* company trying to project its social
| norms worldwide.
|
| * Facebook claims about 3 billion active users, so for
| 89%-93.5%** of its users, the fact that Facebook is
| American makes them foreign.
|
| ** https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/facebook-
| statistics#:~:te....
| barbazoo wrote:
| > we think one to two out of every 10 of these actions may
| have been mistakes
|
| May have been a mistake? Reminds me of RTO and the subjective
| feeling of being more productive in the office. They have the
| feeling they _may have_ made mistakes and base their new
| policy on that feeling.
| theptip wrote:
| I think what they are saying there is the press release
| interpretation of experiments showing a false positive rate
| of 10-20%, with error bars wide enough that stating a
| percentage gives too many significant figures. But the
| definition of FP is necessarily fuzzy; if you can perfectly
| identify them as FP at scale then you have built a better
| classifier and you no longer have the FP problem. So any
| statement about FP rates necessarily needs to be couched in
| uncertainty.
|
| I don't think it's malicious wordsmithing where they are
| mis-representing the internal data, though I don't have the
| data to confirm.
| nradov wrote:
| The human cost can't be quantified in any meaningfully
| precise way on either side. The calculations are necessarily
| based on so many assumptions as to become entirely
| subjective. Ultimately the decisions will be made based on
| politics and business priorities, not any objective
| calculation of human cost.
| theptip wrote:
| > However, before making policy decisions, I would want the
| second order data:
|
| I think this the wrong lens. The correct lens is: if they
| don't voluntarily make this change, will they be forced to?
|
| The incoming administration seems committed to banning
| "censorship", so I believe making a cost/benefit analysis is
| something of a false choice.
|
| E.g. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJfUXVOoFBo
| philjohn wrote:
| That ignores the regulations in the EU, and the UK (coming
| into force this year), and also the huge volume of lawsuits
| they are facing in the US. Does everyone remember Zuck
| turning around to apologise to the parents in that senate
| hearing? Those parents must feel this is a slap in the
| face.
| theptip wrote:
| This is a decision for the US market first and foremost.
| The lawsuits you mention are sadly irrelevant to the
| decision-making; again, if you are about to be forced to
| make this change by Trump, the results of some
| cost/benefit study will not sway his reasoning. His
| decision is already made.
|
| FWIW I would not be surprised if the bluster about
| championing free speech abroad gets quietly forgotten;
| we'll see. They explicitly state they will comply with
| laws, which in EU likely means continuing to moderate
| (more not less over time, given the regulatory trends).
| naasking wrote:
| > There is research that shows exposure to suicide and self
| injury content increases suicidal ideation.
|
| Yes. However, I find this obsession with harm-based value
| judgment to the exclusion of all other considerations ethically
| problematic, to put it mildly. Ethics does not reduce solely to
| considerations of harm.
| philjohn wrote:
| Would you mind expanding on that please, what are the
| ethically problematic things you are trying to balance
| against this?
| crindy wrote:
| Freedom of expression comes to mind. If someone had a
| friend commit suicide, should they not be able to discuss
| their experience in public?
| philjohn wrote:
| Absolutely they should, and when I worked there that was
| known as "protecting voice", that content has always been
| explicitly allowed because it is free expression, even if
| reading it can be difficult for some people. The same
| with someone posting images of healed scars because
| they've been overcoming their self harm.
|
| The content I'm talking about is graphic photos of
| suicide and self injury, fresh, blood soaked cuts, bodies
| hanging, graphic depictions of eating disorder (that goes
| beyond "thinspo", which is more borderline, and so
| downranked and not recommended rather than removed).
|
| It's the latter that we believed (based on the advice of
| experts who we relied on for guidance) is harmful when
| consumed in large quantities.
| Dig1t wrote:
| "Think of the children" isn't really a good argument for
| censoring completely legal political discourse, which is what
| has been happening.
|
| They are admitting that there has been a global push against
| free speech on these platforms.
|
| >There is research that shows exposure to suicide and self
| injury content increases suicidal ideation.
|
| I mean do you really need research to show this link? Of course
| it does.
|
| We are okay with slapping an "R" rating on movies and allowing
| parents to be the ones who decide what content their kids can
| see. Why can't we decide that parents also need to be the ones
| to stop their kids from consuming bad content on social media?
| philjohn wrote:
| Automatically demoting, not recommending and adding "mark as
| disturbing" screens is what's going away - which is akin to
| the "R" rating.
|
| But at this point, I'm siding with the "no social media for
| adolescents" people more and more.
| jarsin wrote:
| I've already seen disturbing stuff on X since Elon took over
| that I never would have seen when it was twitter. They don't
| even show the warning "this might be harmful content" on images
| and videos anymore. The X algo seems to go haywire every couple
| of days and dumps a bunch of this crap in my feed until I block
| 20+ bluecheck accounts showing this crap.
|
| I believe it's only going to get worse going forward as they
| all adopt these policies.
| jeromegv wrote:
| It's okay to leave X.
| biosboiii wrote:
| My profile is largely unused, I follow no one, and like 1/3
| times I open up the front page I get straight holocaust
| denial threads suggested. Completely insane.
| dado3212 wrote:
| > So, we're going to continue to focus these systems on
| tackling illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism,
| child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams.
|
| I don't think this is exhaustive, and I think SSI
| (suicide/self-injury) + ED/etc. stuff is considered high-
| severity.
| philjohn wrote:
| Fingers crossed.
| zahlman wrote:
| Counterpoint: censorship inherently harms everyone. People I
| follow on Youtube have repeatedly had their ability to discuss
| topics such as suicide seriously interfered with. It actually
| gets in the way of factual reporting when a suicide occurs in
| the community and of discussing the facts of the situation _so
| that people can learn from it_ and possibly prevent future
| deaths.
|
| Not to mention, people just straight up have a right to talk
| about these things. It is not moral to hold one person
| responsible for an unintended and not reasonably foreseeable
| reaction to the discussion. And joking about these topics is
| legitimately therapeutic for some.
| philjohn wrote:
| I'm not talking about that here - and that always fell under
| protecting voice - if mistakes were made they should have
| been reversed on appeal. e.g. imagery of healed scars in the
| context of recovery, discussions of struggles with mental
| health, suicidal ideation etc.
|
| I'm talking about graphic images of self harm, suicide,
| eating disorders. And at some point you have to weigh the
| maximalist interpretation of free speech "you have to host
| whatever I want, as long as it's not illegal" with "promoting
| this stuff causes active harm, no".
| zahlman wrote:
| >And at some point you have to weigh the maximalist
| interpretation of free speech "you have to host whatever I
| want, as long as it's not illegal" with "promoting this
| stuff causes active harm, no".
|
| The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that it
| _causes_ such harm.
|
| I don't generally think people should be held responsible
| for the unintended reaction to their speech of a small
| minority of the audience.
| philjohn wrote:
| Having a piece of content removed, or demoted and not
| recommended, is being held responsible?
|
| Also as per the inquest into the death of Molly Russel
| found based on the preponderance of evidence, exposure to
| this kind of graphic content was largely the causative
| agent in her suicide.
|
| What would the bar you require be, is there a bar?
| julianeon wrote:
| Translation: community notes are "good enough" from the
| perspective of the business community, and probably an order of
| magnitude cheaper.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Ending Third Party Fact Checking Program, Moving to Community
| Notes
|
| CNotes were extremely successful on X.
|
| The problem with censorship, why digg and reddit died as
| platforms, you end up with second order consequences. The anti-
| free speech people will always deeply analyze their opponent's
| speech to find a violation of the rules.
|
| They try to make rules that sound reasonable but are beyond
| section 230. No being anti-LGBT for ex. But then every joke,
| miscommunication, etc leads to bans. You also ban entire cultures
| with this rule. Ive had bans because I meant to add NOT to my 1
| sentence, but failed to do so.
|
| Then when it comes to politics. You've banned entire swaths of
| people/viewpoints. There's no actual meaningful conversation
| happening on reddit.
|
| Reddit temporarily influenced politics in this way. In a recent
| election a politician built a platform that mirrored the
| subreddit. There was polls and if you were to go by reddit... the
| liberals were about to take at least a minority government, if
| not majority.
|
| What actually happened? The platform was bizarre and very out of
| touch with the province. They got blasted in the election. The
| incumbent majority got stronger.
| macNchz wrote:
| > CNotes were extremely successful on X.
|
| > reddit died
|
| By all measures I can find, reddit continues to grow year over
| year, while X seems to have been flat or in decline, so I'm not
| sure this is a strong premise.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Facebook is #1, followed by youtube.
|
| Tiktok is 4th.
|
| Linkedin is 8th.
|
| X is 12th.
|
| Reddit is 16th.
|
| Reddit fell a great deal in rankings. They mostly use bots to
| make it appear like they are still relevant. Which ironically
| is creating a 'dead internet' conspiracy theory. In reality
| its just 'dead reddit'
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ranked by whom, on what metrics?
|
| What were their relative rankings on the same metrics, say,
| five years ago?
| bhouston wrote:
| Zuckerberg 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...
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/29/m...
| spencerflem wrote:
| People down voting this are being silly.
|
| Here's the topics the announcement mentioned:
|
| "We're getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like
| immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of
| frequent political discourse and debate."
|
| Palestine is completely absent.
| maxfurman wrote:
| Meta is giving up on the (impossible by design) task of policing
| their own platform.
|
| The result will be even more poisonous to users.
|
| Just like cigarette companies using chemicals in the papers so
| that they burn slower. Does it improve the product? Maybe, along
| one dimension.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > Meta is giving up on the (impossible by design) task of
| policing their own platform.
|
| It's a bit more than giving up. They are also going to push
| more political contents on feed.
| nicce wrote:
| And save money in the meantime, assuming users will not leave
| because of this.
| Volundr wrote:
| As far as I can tell they gave up moderation a few years ago, at
| least every time I report someone spamming about "Elon Musk
| giving away a million dollars if you click this shady link" or
| the like I invariably get told it meets their "community
| standards" and won't be removed. I guess technically I haven't
| seen a female nipple there though so, job well done?
| mint2 wrote:
| They also allow the scammiest ads for products that are 100%
| obvious frauds - pure distilled snake oil. It really brings
| meta's image to the dirt. They're like an online super market
| tabloid these days.
| drawkward wrote:
| Will this totally end content moderation? That could be a small
| silver lining, as content moderation for FB appears to be
| extremely hazardous to one's mental health:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/22/business/facebook-content-mod...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Obviously exposing the same content which was proven to cause
| harm to the content moderators to _absolutely everybody on the
| platform_ will be worse.
| drawkward wrote:
| It is not obvious that many people (when was the last time a
| single post was seen by the entirety of the platform?) seeing
| occasional soul-destroying stuff is worse than seeing soul-
| destroying stuff as full-time employment, 8 hours a day, 5
| days a week for the length of one's work life.
|
| Also: perhaps the occasional soul-destroying post would help
| people break their social media addictions.
| philjohn wrote:
| Counterpoint: Molly Russell.
|
| https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Molly-
| Ru...
| drawkward wrote:
| Certainly poor molly russell does not appear to have seen
| this cintent occasionally, which is just my point. There
| is no mention of how she accessed this content either:
| was it a message board, or was it served algorithmically,
| which is important to the contention here.
| philjohn wrote:
| Served algorithmically:
| https://mollyrosefoundation.org/november-2023-new-
| research-e...
| drawkward wrote:
| I am not sure that the death of one person outweighs the
| lifelong ptsd of 100% of fb content moderators. Again, my
| original claim is that it is not obvious.
|
| I am not trying to trivialize this persons death. If it
| were up to me, I'd completely get rid of social media in
| an instant.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I'd love if they just sorted by timestamp, but no moderation +
| algorithm deciding what gets shown is not good.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| That's pretty much the only legislation I'd support, i.e., a
| compulsory setting for chronological ordering of events,
| which effectively disables "the algorithm." Seems like it
| would be agreeable to media companies and pure libertarians
| alike.
| dmazin wrote:
| As a leftist, while this is concerning, it's also important to
| remember that Meta censors left content as much as it does right
| content.
|
| So, while this announcement certainly seems to be in bad faith
| (what could Mark mean by "gender" other than transphobic
| discussion?), this should be a boon both for far-right _and_ left
| discussion.
|
| Does that mean increased polarization and political violence?
| Surely, surely.
| spencerflem wrote:
| You know that this announcement is made to win favor with
| Trump. I would not expect that leftism will be any more allowed
| dmazin wrote:
| I agree. At the very least, it's using Trump as cover.
|
| That said, if they remove the political filter, they're
| opening the door for all discussion (even from the left).
|
| Of course, they could surreptitiously filter out the left.
| Hell, why not?
| spencerflem wrote:
| That's my guess as to what they intend to do.
|
| Just moving the needle for allowed content to include
| transphobia and racism.
| lapcat wrote:
| > this should be a boon both for far-right and left discussion.
|
| If by left discussion you mean discussion of the genocide in
| Gaza, don't count on it, because this censorship is bipartisan
| in the United States.
|
| Zuck cares about currying favor with the powerful. He doesn't
| give a crap about the powerless. Also, he's pretending that
| Texas, the proposed site for content moderation, is not
| politically biased, which is laughable. "We're moving from a
| blue state to a red state" is not a serious proposal for
| reducing or eliminating bias.
| sjsisixkxkkxxx wrote:
| > If by left discussion you mean discussion of the genocide
| in Gaza
|
| It's also a right wing complaint, and they're also silenced
| for bringing it up.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Everytime someone calls Biden "Left Wing", I roll my eyes.
| So it's quite possible that you have a different definition
| of Right Wing than I do.
|
| But Trump, Fox News, and the Republicans are absolutely
| actively aiding the genocide and squashing dissent.
| jl6 wrote:
| He explained it in the next sentence. If people are free to say
| it in Congress they should be free to say it on Meta platforms
| too, and that includes a range of non-binary opinions that
| aren't intrinsically istphobic.
| pasimm wrote:
| > while this announcement certainly seems to be in bad faith
|
| Not really though. It means that feminist campaigners can
| advocate for single-sex spaces and services without the looming
| threat of being banned. This is great news and a win for free
| speech.
| ausbah wrote:
| there are plenty of TERFs on Meta's platforms already
| pasimm wrote:
| That's good, hopefully they can speak more freely now.
| zahlman wrote:
| >it's also important to remember that Meta censors left content
| as much as it does right content.
|
| This is a bold claim. I see a lot of people in this discussion
| that seem to have a very different experience. Your point would
| be much stronger with evidence, if only to calibrate everyone's
| understanding of what you mean by "left content".
|
| >what could Mark mean by "gender" other than transphobic
| discussion?
|
| From what I've been able to tell the last several years, the
| overwhelming majority of your ideological opponents here have
| no interest in visiting physical harm upon others simply
| because of how they view and present themselves. They just
| don't want to be, or feel, compelled to treat the other
| person's self-image as an objective fact. Some of them
| additionally have concerns about capacity of minors to give
| informed consent for the related medical procedures, or
| consider it suspicious that the prevalence of such self-
| identification has risen drastically in recent years (to the
| point that they imagine social pressures _toward_ such
| identification).
|
| >Does that mean increased polarization and political violence?
| Surely, surely.
|
| I have seen statements like this from your opponents
| interpreted as veiled threats in the past.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Your point would be much stronger with evidence, if only to
| calibrate everyone's understanding of what you mean by "left
| content".
|
| I think it's extremely likely that people will see the "de-
| ranking" of content they agree with as bias, regardless of
| their place on the spectrum.
|
| Similar: "Biden must have committed election fraud, because
| all of my friends voted for Trump and I don't know anyone who
| voted for Biden." (previous election, obviously) Well, is
| that because no-one voted for Biden, or that the
| friends/content you see is tuned to how you lean.
| paxys wrote:
| FYI Meta just removed Nick Clegg as their global head of policy
| and replaced him with Joel Kaplan, who was Trump's deputy chief
| of staff.
|
| They also appointed Dana White, a prominent Trump supporter, to
| their board this week.
|
| Their content moderation team is moving from California to Texas.
|
| If people think all this is Meta going "neutral", you are
| delusional.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| You have gotten to the heart of the matter. Well done, indeed,
| sir/madam!
| rayiner wrote:
| > Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking
| program and moving to a Community Notes model.
|
| The Community Notes model works great on X at dealing with
| misinformation. More broadly, this is a vindication of the
| principle that putatively neutral "expert" institutions cannot be
| trusted unless they're subject to democratic checks and balances.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| great news by the zuck good to see the framework being laid is
| having benefits for everyone
| throwaway12127 wrote:
| Dupe with more explicit comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622082
| ColdTakes wrote:
| This is my conspiracy theory but this is all in preparation for
| the end of Section 230 which will also inadvertently kill Blue
| Sky.
| nunez wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| ColdTakes wrote:
| There is a long history but the short of it is, before
| Section 230, platforms that moderated user content faced
| potential liability. Oakmont v. Prodigy[1] is a case where
| Prodigy was held liable for defamatory posts due to its
| moderation efforts. However, in Cubby v. CompuServe[2], the
| court ruled that platforms without active moderation,
| CompuServe were not liable for user-generated content because
| they were just hosting with no active involvement. Section
| 230 protected platforms from liability for user content,
| allowing them to moderate in good faith without being held
| responsible for all harmful material if they weren't able to
| moderate everything.
|
| I believe Elon and Trump, being the internet's biggest liars,
| have the goal to remove Section 230 making moderating online
| more or less a crime that will open you to litigation and
| allow them and all of their followers to spread lies not only
| unchecked but with the threat of punishment if a company,
| like Blue Sky, were to try to moderate them.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._P
| rod....
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I wouldn't mourn the loss of BlueSky, because it's basically
| designed from the ground up to create filter bubbles and echo
| chambers, and social media needs way less of those.
| ColdTakes wrote:
| I'm sure you also think Twitter is the free speech capital of
| the internet as well.
| oliviergg wrote:
| Zuck claims "Europe has an ever increasing number of
| laws,institutionalizing censorship and making difficult to build
| something innovative" Ouch. As a European, I feel very wary of
| such a sentence and the implications. Time for Europe to wake up
| ? (edit: fix typos)
| mongol wrote:
| We are awake. We should decouple ourselves from the tech giants
| on the other side of the pond. They don't have our best
| interests in mind.
| oliviergg wrote:
| I'm not sure that we are awake. As a dev for a long time, I
| realized only 6 months ago, that all the tools I use daily
| are directly from US. My job and my life would be very very
| different without this technology. We are loosing ground, or
| more, we are falling down more and more quickly.
| mongol wrote:
| It is individual of course. But for example Emanuel Macron
| and Mario Draghi have sounded the bell quite clearly. As
| individual citizens we should try to buy European any time
| there is a European alternative.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| >try to buy European any time there is a European
| alternative
|
| Good luck with that considering:
|
| >"Europe has an ever increasing number of
| laws,institutionalizing censorship and making difficult
| to build something innovative."
| mongol wrote:
| I don't take that for gospel. It is just Marc's poor
| take.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| It's pretty much right. Dig into what it takes to run a
| social network in most European countries and you'll hit
| at minimum the following problems:
|
| * Lack of a DMCA equivalent. DMCA lays out a lightweight
| process for platforms to process copyright disputes which
| if they follow it will avoid legal liability, which is
| needed on any platform that hosts user generated content.
| The EU Copyright acts require platforms themselves to
| enforce copyright and prevent users violating it. This is
| a gigantic technical implementation problem all by
| itself. Also, the US has the legal concept of fair use
| but that's not a concept in much of Europe, so people
| posting parodies etc thinking it's OK can still create
| liability problems.
|
| * No equivalent of Section 230. Many new laws that
| specifically criminalize the hosting of illegal speech,
| and which don't give any credit for effort. As what's
| illegal is vague and political in nature you can't make
| automated systems or even human-driven systems that
| reliably handle it, so the legal risks are large even
| with a good faith effort to comply.
|
| * GDPR, "right to be forgotten" and NetzDG style laws
| have large fixed costs associated with compliance which
| established companies can absorb but startups can't. For
| instance it's common for EU lawmakers to demand 24 hour
| turnaround times, which you can't reliably comply with if
| you're a one man startup.
|
| * Algorithmic transparency laws, which mean you can't
| obtain any competitive advantage by better ranking (being
| good at this is how TikTok got so big), and which can
| threaten your ability to clear spam or use ML.
|
| * Laws around targeted advertising mean you can't
| generate revenue comparable to what the US based firms
| can do, so you can't be competitive and your users will
| be annoyed by low quality barrel scraping ads for casinos
| after they click "No" on a consent screen without reading
| it.
|
| There's probably more. For example, running a commercial
| search engine or training AI models on the internet is
| illegal in the UK, because UK copyright law only allows
| "data mining" for research purposes. There's no way to
| argue it's fair use like they do in the US. Just one of
| many such problems off the top of my head.
| coldpepper wrote:
| We don't need social networks that are not compatible
| with the laws and rights you listed.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Lack of a DMCA equivalent.
|
| Good. It's heavily misused here.
|
| > No equivalent of Section 230.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Commerce_Directi
| ve_...
|
| > Laws around targeted advertising mean you can't
| generate revenue comparable to what the US based firms
| can do...
|
| Good! Agriculture is cheaper with slavery, but that isn't
| a great argument for permitting it.
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| It should be hard to run a social network.
| nradov wrote:
| Why?
| LtWorf wrote:
| What tools? The ones I use are done from people all over
| the world, certainly not predominantly in USA.
|
| https://map.debian.net/
| oliviergg wrote:
| Yes I somewhat agree on FOSS and I agree for the people.
| But I think that for the capital, it is massively US
| controlled (though is international too). Think of the
| seven first companies of the S&P500. (GAFAM, Nvidia, ...)
| If you look at the cac40 (france) or EUROSTOXX50 : I dont
| use directly any products of the tech company. But I'm
| sure that these companies use at least one the seven.
| Tech company in Europe are not ridiculous, but they are
| not leading the change. They optimize, they improve, but
| the lead is us centric. We have ASML, but for how long. ?
| LtWorf wrote:
| Yeah I'd agree that we should just forbid selling our
| software companies to not so friendly superpowers.
| dijit wrote:
| I know of exactly 0 European businesses they use free
| open source software for their office suites.
|
| Z-E-R-O.
|
| I don't even think companies have their own mailservers
| anymore, its mostly gsuite and microsoft office 365;
| people aren't even _hosting_ business critical
| applications in Europe unless compliance forces them- let
| alone using European made tools to do it.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I'm sure there is more to life than using "open source
| office suite"
| dijit wrote:
| I'm not sure I understood your point.
|
| There's a lot more to life than a lot of things, I'm not
| really trying to discuss personal fulfilment, moreso
| mentioning that there's no reality where we can get by
| with European technology right now, and if the US decided
| to sanction a european country that country would suffer
| a pretty significant (trillion-euro most likely) shock to
| productivity, as not only would they need to find new
| tools and retrain, but they would also lose all their
| mail and documents.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I'm trying to inform you that there are other jobs other
| than filling in data in excel.
|
| If the USA sanctioned europe (lol) we'd be completely
| fine, don't worry.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Looking around my apartment and my life, I see a Japanese
| game console, Japanese camera, US speakers, US laptop,
| Czech/German car, French photo software, Czech IDE, Swedish
| furniture, Swiss/US computer accessories, Chinese IoT
| devices, and a lot of the stuff was manufactured in China.
| If anything, my life would be very different without China
| (whether I like it or not).
|
| I don't know how to say this inoffensively, but a lot of US
| people seem to mistake the slightly higher chance (from
| 1/inf to 2/inf) of becoming a billionaire with a higher
| quality of life, and the ability of the select few to hoard
| capital for a rich society.
| pityJuke wrote:
| The problem is that these platforms have to be built, and
| people have to willingly use them... which is hard, given
| Meta have built brilliant addiction machines.
|
| The whole threat here is you can't regulate Meta away,
| because they'll use the US Government to bully you into not
| doing so. I'd imagine if the EU tried to publicly prop up a
| platform not making any profit, they'd do the same.
|
| But yes, the only way is for this to happen. But either way,
| this was the scariest statement of the announcement(s).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Europe has anti-nazi laws for .. historical reasons.
| naasking wrote:
| What gets interpreted under anti-nazi law is the wrinkle
| though.
| coldpepper wrote:
| The faster we decouple from societies like american, the better
| we europeans will be. We europeans defend our European way of
| life, against the degenerate capitalism of the US.
| multimoon wrote:
| I challenge you to find another economic system that has
| worked in history, because it sure isn't communism if that's
| what you're referencing. This is also aside from the fact
| that Europe is also a subscriber to capitalism.
|
| America is the most successful country on this earth and we
| bankroll most of the rest of the world but somehow we're
| always the bad guys.
|
| As an American I'd be very happy if my tax dollars stopped
| getting spent on Europe.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| I might be missing something - are you saying the only
| choices of economic systems is communism or American style
| capitalism?
| guax wrote:
| There is also the good old: "We can't discuss changes
| because there is nothing better already existing. There
| can't be anything better because we cannot change"
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > America is the most successful country on this earth
|
| According to what metrics? life expectancy? crime rate?
| wealth per inhabitant? education? work life balance? health
| care? happiness? incarceration rate? human rights?
| corruption? freedom of press?
|
| American tax dollars aren't spent in Europe or elsewhere in
| the world for some altruistic reason. The US want to
| maintain their hegemony and prevent other powers from
| emerging. They certainly don't care about Europeans or
| Taiwanese or whoever.
|
| > I challenge you to find another economic system that has
| worked in history, because it sure isn't communism if
| that's what you're referencing.
|
| Not that I'm a big fan of communism or China, but communist
| China has been doing pretty well, and is getting more
| innovative than the US
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| The part of China that is innovative is not communist.
| They have the most free-market labor market, the most
| free-market regulations in everything except media (which
| is heavily controlled by the state).
|
| China is the most brutally capitalist society in the
| world, with a dictator sitting on top managing it at the
| margins and ensuring media will never be free and
| threaten the communist party.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Bunch of lies lmao
| oliviergg wrote:
| Communism is the godwin point of economical discussion.
| There is so much more possibility than unregulated
| capitalism / Individualism
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > America is the most successful country on this earth and
| we bankroll most of the rest of the world
|
| I'm going to need a source (and some definitions) for that.
| megous wrote:
| Somehow US Americans managed in about a year and some to
| almost singlehandedly fund complete destruction of already
| impoverished and entrapped society of 2.3 million people,
| most of them younger than 18. Nevermind the pressure or
| direct military attacks on other nations to not intervene.
|
| And you wonder why you're viewed as baddies.
|
| I'd be happy if your tax dollars stopped going outside of
| US, too.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| As an American who lived in Europe in the 90s when I was
| young, a lot that I really appreciated about the European way
| of life has deteriorated and is now almost unrecognizable to
| me in some ways.
|
| When I visit every few years, it amazes me how quickly Europe
| is "Americanizing". More fast food and less traditional food.
| Ripping up vineyards that have been there for centuries.
| Fewer protections for your farmers. More people walking
| around staring at their phones and less people talking to
| each other in cafes. Seems like almost everyone dresses like
| Americans and can speak English now. And it's hard to tell
| the difference between the coffee shops in Spain and those in
| San Francisco. How long until you start building suburbs and
| driving everywhere?
|
| Don't get me wrong--I love the U.S., and I love living here.
| But its culture is not for Europe.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Comments like this are interesting because the changes
| you're describing aren't really "Americanizing", they're
| just a sign of modern times.
|
| For example: People weren't walking around staring at their
| cellphones in Europe in the 90s because they were
| distinctly European. It was because we didn't have
| smartphones anywhere. The smartphone changes happened in
| lockstep across the globe.
|
| Likewise, many of your other points are purely people's
| personal preferences. I think your criticisms are largely
| nostalgia for the 90s and your time spent living abroad,
| not an indictment of "Americanizing" Europe.
| f1refly wrote:
| Vineyards are ripped up because they have become
| unprofitable due to decreased alcohol consumption in
| general. I'm not sure that has much to do with
| Americanization.
| LtWorf wrote:
| What he means is "I can't 100% control what news people get to
| read, and that's bad"
| alibarber wrote:
| As a European who does generaly feel that the continent is on
| its way to becomming a museum, describing the absolute bilge
| that the flagship products of Facebook, YouTube, X etc are as
| 'innovative' feels in the same ballpark as describing the work
| of tobacco companies to sell and advertise their products in
| the 50s-80s as innovative.
| oliviergg wrote:
| They were innovative. I don't know for other eu countries,
| but it seems that in France, there were only unsuccessful
| copycat of end user service. I'm probably a bit harsh, it's
| because I m under impression that the gap between us (eu vs
| us) is widening. 10 years ago, there was open source, there
| was ovh, there was hope. With the cloud, we have surrender a
| lot of power to massive us company.
| LtWorf wrote:
| In italy there existed many similar things before. The
| thing is that in USA they invest 200x more to "distrupt"
| qingcharles wrote:
| As a European I would say that Europe's governments are
| radically more focused on the well-being of their populations
| than say, the USA.
|
| But... is it just luck or is it this Nanny-state issue that
| makes it very hard to think of a single major Internet
| destination or tech company that was born in Europe?
| guax wrote:
| To me its seems that its all about cash: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/List_of_largest_Internet_compa...
|
| The through-line is US/China with the vast majority. Eu I can
| only think of Spotify for non-retail.
|
| Being in Europe I find no shortage of local versions of
| companies for all kinds of providers but only the large
| social media or platforms are outside of EU mostly in US as a
| rule.
|
| The issue seems to be that saturation is real and the moat
| gets larger with time when companies just gobble up all their
| competition. How could Here maps compete with the free google
| maps + apples large pockets, etc. TomTom used to be much
| larger and European, seems to still survive but nowhere near
| to the size it could've otherwise.
| gabaix wrote:
| Ironically the post is affected by Hacker News flame-war
| detection system.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| If this occurs, and you feel it shouldn't, you can request mods
| disable the flamewar detector by emailing them at
| hn@ycombinator.com.
| rayiner wrote:
| > We're getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like
| immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of
| frequent political discourse and debate. It's not right that
| things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our
| platforms.
|
| My mom and my wife's mom both have remarked in the last year that
| they're upset with speech policing. My mom can't say things about
| immigration that she thinks as an immigrant, and my mother in law
| is censored on gender issues despite having been married to a
| transgender person in the 1990s. They're not ideological "free
| speech" people. Neither are political, though both historically
| voted left of center "by default."
|
| The acceptable range of discourse on these issues in the social
| circles inhabited by Facebook moderators (and university staff)
| is too narrow, and imposing that narrow window on normal people
| has produced a backlash among the very people who are key users
| of Facebook these days (normie middle age to older people). This
| is a smart move by Zuckerberg.
| dagmx wrote:
| I'm less concerned by the change of fact checking to community
| notes, because meta had often neutered the ability of their fact
| checkers anyway.
|
| What I am concerned about is their allowance of political content
| again.
|
| Between genocides and misinformation campaigns, meta has shown
| that the idea of the town square does not scale. Not with their
| complete abandonment of any kind of responsibility to the social
| construct of its actual users.
|
| Meta are an incredibly poor steward of human mental health. Their
| algorithms have been shown to create intense feedback loops that
| have resulted in many deaths, yet they continue down the march of
| bleeding as much out of people as possible.
| mongol wrote:
| > the idea of the town square does not scale.
|
| Completely agree. Instead of one giant town square ("Facebook")
| what we would benefit from are 1000 smaller ones ("Facebook
| competitors") and some way to "travel" between them. That is a
| smaller more human scale that can be responsibly governed. It
| does not create hyper-billionaires though.
| aurareturn wrote:
| I speculated what Zuckerberg wanted and what he'd do when he
| visited Mar-a-lago[0]:
|
| * Push to ban Tiktok
|
| * Drop antitrust lawsuits against Meta
|
| * Meta will relax "conservative" posts on its platforms
|
| * Zuckerberg will donate to Trump's cause
|
| So far, Zuckerberg has already donated to Trump's cause. Now he
| has relaxed "conservative" posts on its platforms directly or
| indirectly.
|
| When Trump comes into power, he'll likely ask the FTC to drop its
| antitrust lawsuit against Meta under the disguise of being pro-
| business.
|
| My last speculation is push to ban Tiktok. I'm sure it was
| discussed. Trump has donors who wanted him to reverse the Tiktok
| ban. Zuckerberg clearly wants Tiktok banned. Trump will have to
| decide who to appease when he comes into office.
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42262573#42262975
| pbasista wrote:
| > ban Tiktok
|
| I would be really interested in how someone could spin
| advocating for less moderation and at the same time asking to
| ban the competitors' social media platforms.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| you're assuming some kind of ideologically purity when it
| comes to "freedom of information" when the real answer is
| profit motive.
| zahlman wrote:
| It's not about the users of that competing platform, but
| about the country where the parent company is registered
| (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/tiktok-douyin-
| bytedance-...).
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| The public seems to eat everything you feed them, so it
| doesn't really matter.
| theptip wrote:
| Also, Zuck appointed Dana White to the board:
| https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/dana-white-john-elkann-cha...
|
| So they have also given a board seat to a friend of Trump.
|
| But yeah, I think you're right that there is clearly some
| combination of dealmaking and bending the knee going on.
| bananapub wrote:
| while it's obviously fair to be very very wary of everything FB
| does, especially moderation, the other side of this is a
| worldwide campaign by the worst people alive to use these
| platforms to shape public opinion and poison our (ie at least the
| West's) culture to death.
| goshx wrote:
| I read this as Zuck kneeling to the new king and first lady
| (Musk). I highly doubt these changes were not influenced
| (forced?) by them.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Of course, that you can also read it as Zuck not having to
| kneel to the old king anymore.
| goshx wrote:
| I don't remember him changing these rules for Trump's first
| term. Do you?
| theptip wrote:
| Community notes seems to be quite well received. I like that the
| algorithm seems to be public and (IIUC) tamper-evident.
|
| The obvious context is that either Meta gets out of the content
| moderation game voluntarily, or the incoming admin goes to war
| with them.
|
| > focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity
| violations.
|
| I imagine this will in practice determine how far they can go in
| the EU. Community notes, sure. No moderation? Maybe not.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I really like Community Notes, and hate the rest of what
| Twitter has become.
|
| But... Community Notes is subject to "tampering." Elon's either
| removes the CNs himself from his posts, or his brigade downvote
| them to infinity so they don't appear on all the misinfo he
| posts.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Elon's either removes the CNs himself from his posts, or
| his brigade downvote them to infinity so they don't appear on
| all the misinfo he posts.
|
| I don't know if this is the case, but X is Elon's property,
| so he can shape it as he pleases. Assuming that X (or
| Facebook) is unbiased and working for your benefit is simply
| foolish, unless you are Musk (or Zuckerberg).
| raphman wrote:
| [Posted also in another thread:]
|
| I am not so sure that Musk or right-wing moderators are
| directly to blame for the lack of published community notes.
| My guess: in recent months, many people (e.g., me) who are
| motivated to counter fake news have left Twitter for other
| platforms. Thus, proposed CNs are seen and upvoted by fewer
| people, resulting in fewer of them being shown to the public.
| Also, I ask myself: why should I spend time verifying or
| writing CNs when it does not matter - the emperor knows that
| he is not wearing any clothes, and he does not care.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Do we have any evidence that Musk has removed a CN on his own
| post? I've personally seen evidence to the contrary, and he
| makes a point of highlighting that even he gets a CN every
| now and then.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| As the root comment noted, one of the great things about
| community notes on X are that the algorithm and the data
| it's operating on are public. If Musk were removing notes
| that would be trivial to prove. The fact that such claims
| of tampering are never accompanied by said proof should
| tell you all you need to know.
| daveguy wrote:
| When you ban anyone who speaks against you, you don't
| even need moderation! Problem solved.
|
| But of course he can turn it off. He owns the entire
| platform and algorithms on it.
| zahlman wrote:
| Musk can't ban people from HN. If there existed evidence
| of him removing CNs from his own Twitter posts, it could
| trivially be posted here.
| daveguy wrote:
| How exactly would there be evidence if he can have every
| CN screened?
| davidclark wrote:
| How would it be trivial? Can you describe in a more
| specific way?
|
| The data I can find says it was last updated 9:02 PM Jan.
| 5, 2025 (presumably America/Chicago from my browser).
| That's a >2 day window as of writing this comment.
|
| Not throwing any accusation, just trying to understand
| the technicals.
|
| If there was any manipulation of community notes in the
| last 2 days, how would we know?
|
| If there's manipulation of this data before it is
| published, such as ratings or notes never hitting these
| data files, how would we know?
|
| Maybe, an individual could check to see their own
| contributions are included in updates to the published
| data. Is that sufficiently common such that it would get
| caught?
|
| Community note data I can find (log in required):
| https://x.com/i/communitynotes/download-data
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > If there was any manipulation of community notes in the
| last 2 days, how would we know?
|
| You can't know until the data is published. 2 days isn't
| that long though. Just wait a couple more days for the
| next data dump, then run the algorithm and compare the
| results to what the X UI was showing at that time.
|
| > If there's manipulation of this data before it is
| published, such as ratings or notes never hitting these
| data files, how would we know?
|
| That would be a bit more sneaky than just outright
| removing notes. As you noted, you'd need a user whose
| ratings or notes were omitted from the dump to notice and
| come forward. Or perhaps with careful analysis you could
| prove that the manipulated data could not have resulted
| in the allegedly removed note being shown and then later
| not shown, indicating something fishy happened.
|
| Theoretically if X wanted to improve on this system, they
| could go even further and implement something like
| certificate transparency (append-only log verified by a
| publicly distributed merkle tree), or create an
| independent third party organization that users interact
| with to submit and rate notes, rather than that happening
| through X's UI. Given the threat model though, I feel
| like the UX and complexity trade-offs of that wouldn't be
| worth it. Open sourcing the data and algorithm as X has
| is already far more transparency than we get from any
| competing social media company.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't think "CEO is able to remove community notes" is a
| strong mark against the community note algorithm. No system
| is immune to being turned off...
| zahlman wrote:
| Can you evidence that Musk posts things that are provably
| untrue?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Nancy Pelosi's husband's gay lover hammer attack?
|
| Diver rescuers being pedophiles?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| they asked for things that were provably _untrue_
| consp wrote:
| These accusations are untrue until otherwise presented.
| Or is the burden of proof these days on the Innocent?
| zahlman wrote:
| The post I replied to was accusing Musk of posting
| "misinfo". I responded by asking for evidence of Musk
| saying things that are provably untrue, because that is
| the standard of evidence that would be required to
| support such an accusation. This is not a criminal
| proceeding.
| intended wrote:
| Didnt Musk imply that the ex head of Twitter T&S was a
| pedophile
|
| The exact tweet being - " looks like Yoel is arguing in
| favor of children being able to access adult Internet
| services in his PhD thesis."
|
| Or this one where he accused his disabled employee ?
|
| (using community notes to make the point no less) https://x
| .com/elonmusk/status/1633011448459964417?ref_src=tw...
| zahlman wrote:
| From the sources I could find quickly to refresh my
| memory:
|
| > Over the weekend, Musk shared some of Roth's past
| tweets and what appears to be an excerpt from his PhD
| thesis about Grindr, the LGBTQ social media app. Roth is
| quoted as saying that the app is possibly too "lewd or
| hook-up-oriented" for people under age 18 who are already
| using it, but that providers should "focus on creating
| safe strategies ... for queer young adults" that aren't
| just about hook-ups. Musk commented, "Looks like Yoel is
| arguing in favor of children being able to use adult
| services in his PhD thesis." On Monday, the tweet had
| more than 60,000 likes and received 15,000 retweets.
|
| The thesis demonstrably exists (https://uploads-
| ssl.webflow.com/60981d118b006454de9222b2/61d...), and it
| does have a roughly matching quote at the bottom of PDF
| page 257 (labelled page 248). The idea of businesses
| "crafting safe strategies" to "safely connect queer young
| adults" (the context is very clear that Roth refers to
| people under the age of 18) is very reasonably
| interpreted as Musk did. There are very obvious reasons
| why existing services advertise themselves as 18+ and
| attempt to enforce that, and it should be clear to
| everyone that any such service intended specifically for
| minors could not plausibly be rendered safe.
|
| The idea that this observation constitutes an accusation
| of pedophilia is 100% media spin, and does not reflect
| Musk's words.
|
| Ideas like Roth's are not rare on the American (or
| Canadian) left, especially where they intersect with LGBT
| etc. rights - which is how things like
| https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/drag-kids can come
| to exist and be vigorously defended. This empowers quite
| a bit of culture warring from the American right.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Hot take:
|
| This is to please the incoming president.
|
| Both the far-right and far-left live off misinformation, but
| right now the far-right is experiencing a renaissance, and tech
| moguls are bending the knee to be on good terms with the leaders.
|
| MAGA and European far-right politicians have been moaning for
| ages that fact checking is "politically biased". The Biden laptop
| controversy was the catalyst for this.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| In what sense is this a hot take? This seems to be the dominant
| explanation by a wide margin.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Perhaps, given the situation with Twitter, now "X", more web and
| mobile app users will come to understand that despite its size,
| Facebook is someone's personal website. Like "X", one person has
| control. Zuckerberg controls over 51% of the company's voting
| shares. Meta is not a news organization. It has no responsibility
| to uphold journalistic standards. It does not produce news; in
| fact, it produces no content at all. It is a leech, a parasite,
| an unnecessary intermediary that is wholly reliant on news
| content produced by someone else being requested through its
| servers.
| megous wrote:
| News organizations have no responsibility either.
|
| And I don't see why publisher of news even if they just re-
| publish should not be held to some responsibilities, like eg.
| abstaining from nefarious manipulation of content people see on
| their platform.
| timeon wrote:
| Not sure about US but unlike Facebook, news publishers are
| regulated by law where I live.
| xvector wrote:
| As if actual journalists care to uphold "journalistic
| standards."
|
| X/FB is far more trustworthy than the legacy news media, which
| happily censors salient stories at the request of the
| government and pushes very specific agendas that are totally
| out of touch with the average voter.
|
| I can't even count how many times I've seen literal video
| evidence for a story on X that the news media twists or refuses
| to cover.
| blitzar wrote:
| I can't even count how many times I've seen literal video
| evidence for a story on X that was from totally unrelated
| incident but claimed to be proof of a completely made up
| thing that was happening right now.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Tech has become so entrenched with Government.
|
| The Metaverse and the WFH bets made by Zuck were controversial
| but at least it was something rooted in tech and population
| habits trends and vision without any political poop attached to
| it.
|
| This one is pure political poop to please Orange Man.
|
| Also I believe that fact-checking needed to be slowly sunsetted
| after the COVID emergency was over, but the timing of this
| announcement and the binary nature of the decision means that it
| was done with intention to get in the graces of the new
| administration.
|
| If these techs executives become the American equivalent of
| Russian Oligarchs I hope that States would go after their wealth
| based on their residence and even ADS-B private jet trackers if
| they were to move to say Wyoming but partying every weekend in
| Los Angeles/NYC etc.
| matrix87 wrote:
| during the biden administration they were expected to shift their
| moderation policies to fit in with the political ideology
| currently in the white house
|
| now it's been normalized and the other party is doing it. but the
| news outlets have waited until now to start crying wolf?
| blased wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, it's because most people in the media are
| Democrats, and therefore inherently self-biased in their
| concerns and worldviews, and they have a belief that prevents
| any critical self-examination easily summed up by the Stephen
| Colbert line that: "reality has a liberal bias."
|
| You can't argue with someone who thinks their beliefs are
| merely "reality." At least the other side recognizes it as
| religion, etc.
| riffic wrote:
| More accurately, the quote is "Reality has a _well known_
| liberal bias, " and was given in the persona of a character
| Colbert played on an Comedy Central show and can be seen with
| a certain irony.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/?redirect=no&title=Reality_has_a_we.
| ..
| blased wrote:
| I think this reinforces my argument that liberals view it
| as indisputable that there is no bias in their favor in
| media and all their opinions are "merely reality."
| riffic wrote:
| well I think it's important to point out context and to
| be accurate with regard to the actual quote. imprecision
| with words leads to misinterpretation.
|
| I'm not clear what your larger point is though or why
| you're singling out my comment with your rebuttal.
| bdangubic wrote:
| there is a huge difference between a _belief_ and a _fact._
| most of the discontent in today 's world is this exact
| issue...
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| > there is a huge difference between a belief and a fact.
|
| What if a fact is disputed? Do you not have to choose which
| fact to believe?
|
| Gestalting between two disputed facts is the basis for
| scientific revolutions.
|
| Ptolemaic astronomers certainly had a belief that epicycles
| were "fact" and made every non-scientific attempt to
| destroy heliocentrism. Only when enough people didn't
| _believe_ in that "fact" did we evolve to better
| understanding.
|
| You can say "these were not facts and were just flawed
| observations", but you'll ignore that Ptolemaics _said_
| these ideas were facts and had strong evidence and a belief
| that it really was.
|
| This model can be applied over and over again to many
| domains. This isn't my idea, rather it comes from the
| seminal work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by
| TS Kuhn.
|
| So, no, there is not a bold line between belief and fact.
| We choose what facts to believe.
| bdangubic wrote:
| _we choose what facts to believe._
|
| this just might be the craziest thing I've read recently
| but given the current state of affairs not all that
| surprising...
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| I cited a major academic work to back up my position and
| gave a real world example to demonstrate the concept.
| What about Khun is crazy? You should attempt to engage in
| the topic and avoid ad hominem attacks. Or are you of the
| opinion that "we don't believe in facts"?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >they were expected to shift their moderation policies to fit
| in with the political ideology currently in the white house
|
| They were expected to? Hmm, hot take.
| matrix87 wrote:
| I mean, they were, e.g. the Twitter files. Or all of the
| handwavey threats around section 230
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The twitter files that showed that accounts of
| conservatives got special treatment that explicitly
| prevented them from facing consequences of breaking site
| rules?
| zahlman wrote:
| I have no idea how you cane to the conclusion that they
| showed any such thing. Even Wikipedia
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files) takes the
| stance that the points raised were generally showing bias
| against conservatives, and tries to downplay them.
| freejazz wrote:
| Did you actually read them or just go to wikipedia for a
| summary?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| NYTimes with more on this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/07/business/meta-fact-c...
| chillacy wrote:
| Ironic that the NYT's article here focuses on the political
| angle instead of just the "facts" so to speak...
|
| > It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| because part of reporting events is reporting the context and
| repercussions of those events
|
| that's what journalism is about; otherwise we don't need
| newspapers, all we need are company PR releases
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'm sure it's a win for Meta (less responsibility, less expense,
| potentially less criticism, potentially more ad dollars), but
| certainly a loss for users. More glad than ever that I deleted my
| FB account 10 years ago, and Twitter once it went X.
| skillpass wrote:
| Why is it "certainly a loss for users"? Many are likely to
| enjoy the ability to post without censorship on topics they
| care about.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Fact-checking and censorship are two very different things.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Deleting isn't fact-checking. Whereas "community noting"
| actually can make a case for being fact-checking.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Fact checkers weren't deleting posts and didn't even have
| the right to do so. They are separate journalistic orgs
| tagging posts. Deleting is done by Meta moderators, which
| is something else entirely.
|
| I think you also just proved my point that if HN users
| can't even get basic facts about an event right, how do
| you expect the average FB user to do so? Goes to show
| that even on HN "community noting" would be a disaster.
| efdee wrote:
| Indeed. This was more censorship than fact-checking.
| quantadev wrote:
| The problem with "fact-checking" is that if it's done by
| humans at all then it will be heavily biased.
|
| With Silicon-Valley people being in charge of "fact-
| checking" for the past decade there's been countless
| examples of them doing mass cancellations calling things
| lies that we all know ended up being true.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > countless examples of them doing mass cancellations
| calling things lies that we all know ended up being true
|
| really? like what, exactly? please give concrete examples
| or this is just hot air
| oguz-ismail wrote:
| peaceful protests?
| wyager wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-us-house-
| pan...
|
| There was a long period where people were getting banned
| from Twitter and Meta platforms for posting (true) claims
| about the Hunter Biden laptop story (which was, of
| course, extremely politically consequential)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Is that your example? It's not a very good one.
|
| If you read the article you linked to, you find that 1)
| Twitter blocked tweets about the WP story, not banned
| users, and 2) they reversed that decision and unblocked
| the tweets 24 hours later as they realized their mistake.
| quantadev wrote:
| It took the corporate media (CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, PBS,
| etc) a full 3.5 years to admit the laptop was real. It
| wasn't just some little thing like you're trying to
| portray it as. It made the difference in the 2020
| election.
| timeon wrote:
| People do not care about that laptop. They even voted for
| Felon to be president. Why is it such strong topic for
| you?
| quantadev wrote:
| People finally figured out which party's policies are
| destroying the country. That's what the election was
| about.
| nailer wrote:
| Yes, people would care that the presidents adult son is
| pointing a gun at a prostitutes head on video.
|
| Your attempt to minimise this as "people don't care about
| a laptop" is either incredibly ignorant of this matter or
| deliberately misleading framing of the question.
| quantadev wrote:
| The people saying the laptop doesn't matter are the same
| ones who believed the MSM story that it was Russian
| disinfo for 3.5 years.
|
| They won't allow themselves to think it's important
| because that's an open admission (to themselves and
| others) of how thoroughly brainwashed they've become by
| trusting the MSM left-wing perspectives on every issue.
| kiitos wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2024/oct/12/x-twitter-jd...
| kiitos wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2024/oct/12/x-twitter-jd...
| quantadev wrote:
| If you're wanting to claim that `Cancel Culture` never
| happened, then I'm afraid, at this point in history, the
| burden of proof is on you, not me. lol.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I made no claim.
|
| But the OP did make a claim that "calling things lies
| that we all know ended up being true"
|
| I challenged that with a request for actual examples.
| Feel free to link to them.
| quantadev wrote:
| No one needs proof Cancel Culture was real. Everyone
| knows at this point. So you can pretend you need proof if
| you want, but you're not fooling anyone.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Handwaving is not providing examples. Please try again.
| quantadev wrote:
| You can go to the wikipedia page. You don't need to be
| spoon-fed.
| intended wrote:
| See, thats not how it works in productive conversations.
| "Adult" so to speak conversations online, require the
| person making the claim to provide the evidence.
|
| The act of not providing the evidence, is essentially a
| sign of not having an argument, and resorting to bluffs
| in the hope that people will take the emotions as facts.
|
| But thats entirely self defeating - it reduces your
| argument to one about feels and vibes.
|
| I always find this to be annoying, because I dont think
| people are so inaccurate.
|
| You may well have evidence, and bringing it up makes the
| case.
|
| And if you dont find evidence, then you improve your own
| argument. You end up checking and figuring out what made
| you hold that position.
|
| It's just a lost chance. And if people said they dont
| care to do this, then why the heck did they make the
| effort? You just lost your peace for no reason.
| quantadev wrote:
| sorry, I only read your first sentence, but for something
| as well known as "Cancel Culture" if someone claims it
| must be proven to exist before it can be discussed then
| _that_ is the person who 's not acting in good faith, and
| has immediately discredited themselves, due to ignorance
| of very well known facts.
|
| Asking people to list evidence for well known things is a
| well known troll-tactic, and often used as a way to
| deflect and redirect a discussion into the specifics of
| specific cases, especially when the main argument has
| nothing to do with any of the specific cases.
| emmelaich wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebo
| ok-...
|
| "Facebook lifts ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-
| made (2021)"
|
| It is not known to be true of course, but it _always_
| _obviously_ a possibility.
| intended wrote:
| I mean, we can't be correct retroactively can we?? I dont
| think all the doctors that came before antibiotics should
| be blamed for not knowing Germ theory.
|
| IS this a reasonable expectation of fact checking?
|
| I'm very curious now, I actually would love takes on
| this. I feel we are implying that the standards of fact
| checking validity weren't met, but the standards haven't
| been stated.
| quantadev wrote:
| The reason censorship is generally undesirable is because
| it assumes the person doing the censoring _is_ always
| correct, and that they 're infallible perfect arbiters of
| truth incapable of letting their political motivations
| dictate their censorship decisions...which is of course
| false. They're very often wrong, and always make
| decisions based on their political leanings, even when it
| contradicts the evidence.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by heavy
| censorship of any post about it on Facebook. For
| instance.
|
| There's a high probability that heavily influenced the
| presidential 2020 election outcome.
|
| https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/facebook-
| execs...
| steveoscaro wrote:
| That sounds like a line from the CCP.
| intended wrote:
| I've seen this happen before. Back in the good ole days of
| the libertarian internet.
|
| You had subreddits which had zero moderation, because again
| "the best ideas succeed". Those places got filled with the
| hate speech, vitriol, harassment, stalking and toxicity.
|
| Minorities and women left, because they were basically
| hunted.
|
| Logical arguments dont work, because hate, harassment and
| anger are emotionally driven behaviors.
|
| This creates the toxic water cooler effect. The fact that its
| ok to say horrible things, attracts more people who are happy
| to say those things.
|
| You lose diversity of arguments, view points and chances to
| challenge ideas.
|
| You increase radicalization, dramatically speed up the
| sharing and conversion of anger into action.
|
| Eventually, the subs brought in moderation. As did every
| social media platform in existence. The people who didn't
| like it, created their own spaces.
|
| Which didn't do well. Because those positions and spaces are
| NOT popular. Facing this fact, they are now turning to shut
| off opposition and moderation, because that is necessary to
| keep the ball going.
|
| This isn't even opinion, this is the history of the past 30
| years. It's not even that old!
|
| I really do hope this time its different. Genuinely, I said
| it when the new communities were created. I meant it then, I
| mean it now.
|
| Moderation is fucking toxic and unhealthy. I rejoined
| moderation recently, and in the first 10 frikking items, I
| had to see a dead baby pic from an un covered ethnic war
| zone.
|
| I really want this to succeed, and want it to be good for
| users. I am hoping it is.
|
| But experience is clear - making space for hurtful speech,
| results in more hurtful speech and people just leaving to
| places where they dont have to be harassed.
|
| Blue sky should probably see a jump in users over time this
| year.
| coffeemug wrote:
| My twitter account wasn't big, but it was non-trivial (~30K
| followers). A post could usually get me to experts on most
| topics, find people to hang out with in most countries, etc.
| There were many benefits, so deleting was very hard.
|
| But it was eating my brain. I found myself mostly having tweet-
| shaped thoughts, there was an irresistible compulsion to check
| mentions 100 times a day, I somehow felt excluded from all the
| "cool" parts which was making me miserable. But most
| importantly, I was completely audience captured. To continue
| growing the account I had to post more and more ridiculous
| things. Saying reasonable things doesn't get you anywhere on
| Twitter, so my brain was slowly trained to have, honestly, dumb
| thoughts to please the algorithm. It also did something to
| attention. Reading a book cover to cover became impossible.
|
| There came a point when I decided I just don't want this
| anymore, but signing out didn't work-- it would always pull me
| back in. So I deleted my account. I can read books again and
| think again; it's plainly obvious to me now that I was very,
| very addicted.
|
| Multiply this by millions of people, and it feels like a
| catastrophe. I think this stuff is probably very bad for the
| world, and it's almost certainly very bad for _you_. For anyone
| thinking about deleting social media accounts, I very strongly
| encourage you to do it. Have you been able to get consumed by a
| book in the past few years? And if not, is this _really_ the
| version of yourself you really want?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Like alcohol and drugs, I think there's a certain kind of
| person that's susceptible to social media addiction. I don't
| think it's a large segment of the population but I also have
| no idea how big it is either.
|
| Plenty of people can drink or consume weed in moderation.
| Likewise I know a lot of people who mostly use socials in the
| bathroom or before bed but rarely elsewhere.
| coffeemug wrote:
| Smoking is a better analogy IMO.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| If I'm honest with myself, I too had become addicted to
| Twitter. Elon's oligarchic takeover gave me the push to not
| only stop going but eventually delete my account altogether
| (so I wouldn't be tempted to go back into the bar so to
| speak). So for that I suppose I should be grateful to our new
| Generalissimo.
| xvector wrote:
| Seconded on "tweet-shaped thoughts," Threads is doing this to
| me as well.
| avs733 wrote:
| > More glad than ever that I deleted my FB account 10 years ago
|
| I hung on to facebook largely because marketplace makes
| parenting markedtly cheaper. I've used it less and less to the
| point I forget about it. This finally inspired me to full
| delete the account.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'm certain it will make parts of the user experience worse, but
| at least for the Threads app, this seems at least a little
| necessary - if you're aiming to be the "new" twitter or whatever
| social need twitter was fulfilling, you need to break free of the
| shackles of IG/Meta moderation, which is _very_ unforgiving and
| brutal in very subtle ways that aren 't always easy to figure
| out. But basically, I find a platform like Threads/Twitter are
| probably unusable for a lot of people unless you can say "hey,
| you're an asshole" every now and then without Meta slapping you
| on the wrist or suppressing your content.
|
| One of the only visible actions Meta has taken on my account was
| once when a cousin commented on a musical opinion I had posted to
| facebook, I jokingly replied "I'll fight you" and I caught an
| instant 2 week posting ban and a flag on my account for
| "violence." Couldn't even really appeal it, or the hoops were so
| ridiculous that I didn't try. The hilarious thing is these bans
| will still let you consume the sites' content (gotta get those
| clicks), you just are unable to interact with it. This kind of
| moderation is pointless as users will always get around it anyway
| - leading to stuff like "unalive" to replace killing/suicide
| references, or "acoustic" to refer to an autistic person, etc.
| Just silliness, as you'll always be able to find a way to
| creatively convey your point such that auto-moderators don't
| catch it.
| baggachipz wrote:
| A tale as old as time. On old forums and groups: h4xor, ghey,
| etc.
| wbl wrote:
| Clbuttic
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
| circlingthesun wrote:
| I once posted a picture of an email stating my train was
| delayed in French. So the word 'retard' appeared in it.
| Instagram banned me from monetization or partnerships or
| something on my account, because the word for delay in French
| is offensive in English.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I wonder how many Spanish speakers got banned for discussing
| Vantablack at the time.
| dmd wrote:
| Pilots flying an Airbus get called a "retard" every time they
| land!
| ElectRabbit wrote:
| Even worse: they cannot get open mental healthcare for this
| without loosing their license.
|
| Loose-loose-situation.
| sowut wrote:
| retar dio
| y33t wrote:
| In Chinese there's a common word that sounds like a
| particularly offensive racial slur to the untrained American
| ear. I've seen Chinese speakers called out for this in
| person, but everything got straightened out pretty quickly.
| This was pre-social media, but it's not hard to imagine a
| social media uproar over it these days.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Enjoy the uproar then https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
| china-54107329.amp
|
| This prof lost a gig
| bear141 wrote:
| To me it feels like society is finally moving on from
| this insane over emphasis on finding things to be
| offended by and identity culture bs. I'm really hoping it
| peaked in the lockdown when people really had nothing
| better to do.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| It is quite striking and bizarre the first time you're in
| an extended conversation, and hear it over and over.
|
| Surprised someone was called out though as all the social
| cues around should be enough to sense no ill intent.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Na Ge (neige)[1]
|
| It does stick out of Mandarin speech to the US English
| speaker, but it's typically pretty obvious from context
| that it's not related to the slur. It's never been worth
| more than a giggle when growing up, I'm spending like 100x
| more time on thinking about it right now than I have
| cumulatively in my life, despite having grown up around
| Chinese people.
|
| [1]: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/T
| he_fil...
| tshaddox wrote:
| > because the word for delay in French is offensive in
| English
|
| It's also the word for delay in English.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's also not offensive in English, even though some virtue
| signalers insist on taking offense to it.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Right. I made a reference to educational development
| being retarded due to COVID restrictions and the very
| people you'd expect to be offended were of course
| offended.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Perhaps because virtually no one uses the term in that
| context anymore. It is often best to avoid ambiguity when
| posting online.
| zahlman wrote:
| My own experience is the exact opposite. Out of all the
| times in my life I can recall ever having heard the word
| "retarded" used, I cannot think of any reason to suspect
| that any of them were meant as anything other than a
| synonym for "idiotic".
|
| Which, of course, _also_ referred to clinical mental
| disability at some point in history. As did "moronic",
| "imbecilic" and others. But nowadays they're really all
| just strong forms of "stupid".
|
| Even in contexts where generic insults directed at people
| are not tolerated, it should be acceptable to recognize
| stupid ideas as such.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| I think you've misunderstood, then. The GP's comment was
| using it in the technical sense (slowed/delayed, not the
| common "that's so dumb" form you've observed).
| zahlman wrote:
| Ah. The comment was:
|
| >Right. I made a reference to educational development
| being retarded due to COVID restrictions and the very
| people you'd expect to be offended were of course
| offended.
|
| I misread that, and interpreted "retarded" as being a
| subjective judgment applied to the restrictions.
|
| That said, the reading "[the process of] educational
| development has a mental disability" is utterly
| incoherent, so I still see no reasonable justification
| for taking offense.
| gitaarik wrote:
| I think it's important to remember the real meaning of
| words. If you know language better, you can understand a
| lot more information, and you can express yourself
| better. Knowing the meaning and origin of words give you
| great insights into things.
|
| Just because some childish people are misusing the word
| for some time, we shouldn't just ditch it like that.
| Words go back a long time.
|
| We should just remove the negative use of it. And we do
| that by growing up, not by banning words.
| rascul wrote:
| Mechanics might retard or advance the ignition timing in
| an engine.
| pests wrote:
| Nah it's offensive. Just because you don't take issue
| doesn't mean it doesn't hurt others.
| not2b wrote:
| Using it as a noun or in name-calling is offensive, as a
| verb it isn't.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Oh yeah? Why?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I'm glad we're moving on from the world where everyone
| would constantly be yelling "You're hurting me! You're
| hurting me!".
| swatcoder wrote:
| They're not suggesting that _they_ don 't take issue, and
| so they don't need to take offense seriously.
|
| They're suggesting that the people who conceivably
| _might_ take issue generally don 't and are instead being
| patronized by and condescended to by privileged,
| unaffiliated outsiders who assume -- without consent --
| to speak on their behalf. And they don't take _those_
| people seriously.
|
| It's totally reasonable to disagree with that view, but
| it's the not the same view your reply tries to engage
| with.
| ksenzee wrote:
| No, you're expressing a different, more lucid point of
| view ("the people who conceivably might take issue
| generally don't"), which can be engaged with. For
| example, I would argue that it's reasonable to take
| offense on behalf of people who can't be part of the
| conversation at hand. (Otherwise it would be fine for
| whites to spew racist slurs in a group of only white
| people. If we disagree on that, we're having the wrong
| conversation.) I would also point out that taking offense
| on behalf of others is a time-honored practice ("nobody
| says that about my little brother and gets away with
| it!") But the GP (GGP?) did not say "the people who
| conceivably might take issue generally don't." They
| didn't say "no one has standing to be offended by this
| term." They just said "it's not offensive" about a term
| that is offensive enough that we're having an entire
| argument about it. That's schoolyard-level discourse.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The thing is, you wouldn't use the slur except to invoke
| the mean-spiritedness that the people who find the slur
| offensive associate with the word. If you're using it
| because you think like-minded people will find it funny
| that you're using a term other people find offensive,
| that's still precisely the same mean-spiritedness.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| An alternative is to use "on the spectrum". For example,
| your s.o. or someone else you're arguing with is getting
| on your nerves so you say: "Hey! are you on the spectrum
| today or what?"
| huijzer wrote:
| Reminds me of:
|
| Priest: "You have been found guilty by the elders of the
| town of uttering the name of our lord as so as a
| BLASPHEMER you are to be stoned to death."
|
| [...]
|
| Priest: "BLASPHEMY! He said it again!"
|
| Old man: "I don't think it ought to be blasphemy. I just
| said 'Jehova'"
|
| Priest: "You said it again! You're only making it worse!"
|
| Old man: "Making it worse!? How can I make it worse!?
| Jehova, Jehova, Jenova!"
|
| https://youtu.be/SYkbqzWVHZI
| gitaarik wrote:
| So it's not offensive. Just because it hurts you doesn't
| mean others meant it that way.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| It's widely regarded as a slur.
| bdangubic wrote:
| hi retard, good post :)
| wat10000 wrote:
| Offense is all about context. It is objectively quite
| offensive when used as a term for a person.
| ("Objectively" works here because a word being offensive
| is determined by how people view it. The views are
| subjective but the prevalence of those view is not.)
| barbazoo wrote:
| There's offensive use of that term in English, for sure:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard_(pejorative)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Have you ever seen someone use the slur _without_
| intending the same mean-spiritedness that the "virtue
| signalers" are taking offense to?
| hug wrote:
| As someone who works adjacent to rail operations, it's
| somewhat common to see used in a completely straight-
| faced and serious way.
|
| Plant failing to be properly retarded is a somewhat
| regular cause of near-miss safety incidents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retarder_(railroad)
| zahlman wrote:
| That's the thing. They aren't taking offense to mean-
| spiritedness directed at the person being referred to
| that way, except in cases where that person actually does
| have such an intellectual disability. And such language
| is normally directed at people of ordinary intelligence,
| to call them out for failing to think things through when
| they're perfectly capable of it.
|
| There are, and should be, contexts where insulting people
| is socially acceptable and where such insults should not
| be censored. And no matter what words you use
| (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill),
| it's fundamentally impossible to get rid of the idea that
| a lack of (demonstrated) intelligence is inherently
| negative.
|
| (It's noteworthy to me that the same activists don't seem
| to be able to identify any terms denoting lack of
| physical strength that are inherently offensive - except
| insofar as they invoke gender stereotypes. Why should it
| be any less objectionable to call someone a "weakling",
| for example?)
| tshaddox wrote:
| The criticism of the target's intelligence or competence
| isn't the mean-spiritedness I'm referring to. I'm
| referring to the deliberate and inherent mean-
| spiritedness towards people with intellectual
| disabilities that the slur is explicitly invoking.
| zahlman wrote:
| >I'm referring to the deliberate and inherent mean-
| spiritedness towards people with intellectual
| disabilities that the slur is explicitly invoking.
|
| I disagree that any such thing is invoked. It seems that
| you believe that when the word "retard" is used in these
| contexts, that it's meant to describe a person with an
| intellectual disability. I think it's merely intended to
| describe someone of low intelligence, which neither
| necessarily qualifies as nor is necessarily caused by a
| disability.
|
| Nor do I agree that it's mean-spirited in a way that,
| say, the word "stupid" isn't. It's just more intense.
| gitaarik wrote:
| I don't think insult should be socially accepted, it
| shouldn't, it's not a nice thing. Rudeness, impoliteness,
| offense, why would we socially accept them?
|
| Freedom and cencorship is another thing. You have the
| freedom to be rude and impolite, and it shouldn't be
| censored. But yeah you shouldn't expect people to like
| you or listen to you.
| zahlman wrote:
| >Rudeness, impoliteness, offense, why would we socially
| accept them?
|
| Because multiple kinds of social space exist, and some
| people enjoy being able to interact with each other that
| way and are happy to accept being the butt of the joke
| their fair share of the time.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Ah yeah, you are right, there are people that have been
| exposed to it so much that they think it is normal, and a
| necessary part of life.
|
| Well you know, things can change. In the past it was a
| family outing to go watch a beheading. That was normal
| for them and good entertainment. And they would have used
| the same arguments as you to somebody critical about it.
|
| And you're right, it is a valid choice, and if you really
| enjoy being humiliated, by all means, you have the
| freedom to.
|
| I do think eventually when the rest of the people have
| grown up and moved on to much more intelligent endeavors,
| that you might start to think differently too. But maybe
| not, everyone has their own interests.
| zahlman wrote:
| This sort of dismissiveness is not helpful to your cause.
| gitaarik wrote:
| What am I dismissing?
| gitaarik wrote:
| Haha, wait, are you offended? I thought you were one of
| those people who would enjoy that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sure. I have a 50 year old friend who takes care of her
| retarded brother. When describing him and what she does,
| she simply calls him retarded, because he is, and people
| know what that word means.
|
| One of the kindest women I know, but she doesn't bead
| around the bush or have time for euphemisms.
|
| Idiot, retard, mentally handicapped, ect. It is all
| doomed to be a euphemistic treadmill because they can and
| are used as an insult. The insulting part isn't the word
| used, but the comparison drawn. Give it 10 years or so
| and whatever the current word is will also be out of
| favor as a pejorative.
| jeffhuys wrote:
| Already the case - disabled is now lesser abled or
| something.
|
| It's pretty retarded.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| To be clear, I am arguing the idea that banning words
| stops people from being mean, not for using those words
| needlessly.
| gitaarik wrote:
| These words have non-offensive uses outside of schools
| and offices.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Language is what we make of it, it's not a fixed concept.
| If people take offense to it then it's offensive.
| netsharc wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzdpxKqEUAw
|
| As Stephen Fry said: "So fucking what?".
|
| A thumbs-up gesture is offensive in the Middle East,
| should it be banned world-wide?
|
| Funnily enough the original example upthread was the use
| of the word "retard" which is harmless in French, which
| ended up getting the user in trouble.
| tayo42 wrote:
| dang, can i can him a retard and not get flagged or
| banned? hah
| ben_w wrote:
| I've only ever seen it used to mean "delay" in occasional
| technical contexts, e.g. "fire retardant material", in
| practice it seems to be mostly a noun that means "stupid
| person".
| londons_explore wrote:
| The words have the same meaning - "person with slowed
| down intellectual development"
| ben_w wrote:
| "Developing intellect slowly" implies they're going to
| reach full intelligence at some point.
|
| "Retard" means "thick", in this context, not "will get
| there eventually".
|
| The technical definition is not how the euphemism is
| used.
| quesera wrote:
| It's not a euphemism. It's an epithet.
|
| There's an interesting etymology of "retarded". Also
| "idiot", "imbecile", "moron", etc.
|
| These were clinical classifications, initially used in
| the early days of psychology and sometimes overlapping
| discredited ideas like eugenics. But these were
| _diagnoses_ -- you could be determined to be an idiot,
| which was worse than being an imbecile, which was worse
| than being a moron -- by a respected doctor.
|
| Of course, schoolyard kids got a hold of the terms and
| used them to disparage their (probably cognitively
| healthy) peers. And so with "retarded" and "disabled"
| etc.
|
| But "retarded" just means "slowed or delayed".
| Developmentally speaking, especially when surrounded by
| other kids in your same age group, that's a noticeably
| difficult thing to be.
|
| It does not mean (and never meant) that you are certain
| to reach full cognitive ability eventually. Flights that
| are delayed are sometimes also cancelled.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Retarded timing is a common term in reference to a car's
| ignition. And in biology, retarded growth is often used.
| yread wrote:
| you can also retard the thrust levers
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This is different than the fact-checking, and has to do with
| automated moderation algorithms (which generally suck), which
| are continuing (because advertisers want them).
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Yes, it is, but the salient point that I felt was clear in
| that post was to demonstrate that these systems don't work
| well, and that such systems have such a poor understanding
| of context and circumventions as to be rendered ineffective
| if not totally counterproductive. I'm fully aware such
| mechanisms aren't going anywhere, right now, but at least
| Meta is acknowledging the fact that at present, they aren't
| really providing the user experience they intended.
|
| That aside, I find it offensive a little bit that Meta has
| taken it upon themselves to decide what the "right"
| discourse is that their users want to see, and would rather
| they create a mechanism to let users decide for themselves
| - which this does at least outwardly appear to be a move
| towards. They've also in the last few years toned down or
| removed some of the auto-modding in private groups, and
| shifted that responsibility towards its community members
| and moderators - which was also a similarly good step.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > auto-modding in private groups
|
| that's very different and a case where the closed
| community should bear that responsibility
|
| but as far global FB community -- which doesn't really
| exist (there is no "community", just users) -- or, more
| precisely, what ends up in people feeds, the fact
| checking was a good thing because a lot of people consume
| news that way; so this is a big step in the wrong
| direction
| ben_w wrote:
| Some time around 2011, the Apple App store was warning me
| about rude words in the app description; unfortunately it was
| warning me about the German word "Knopf" which isn't rude. I
| think what happened is the English rude word list was
| translated into German, rather than just replaced with local
| rude words.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Button?
| ben_w wrote:
| The word "knob" would also translate as "Knopf" in the
| sense of button, while also having a euphemistic meaning
| of "penis".
| froh wrote:
| German native speaker here.
|
| in no region or context does Knopf mean anything
| offensive, especially not "penis".
| ben_w wrote:
| Yes, I know. My words seem to be easily misunderstood.
| The claim is that:
|
| 1) "knob" * _in English_ * can mean "penis"
|
| 2) This is why "knob" was on the English rude words list
|
| 3) It looks like a rude word list containing "knob" was
| translated without context, so that the word "knob"
| became "Knopf" even though "Knopf" isn't rude.
|
| Ware es andersherum gewesen, ware es so, dass ,,Schlange"
| sowohl <<en:queue>> als auch <<en:penis>> bedeutet, und
| wenn ,,queue" in einer englischen Liste mit
| Schimpfwortern stunde, waren die meisten Leute sehr
| verwirrt.
| froh wrote:
| ah. das kam so nicht ruber, thanks for clarifying.
| huijzer wrote:
| Same would probably happen when talking in a video about the
| French theorem proofer called Coq.
| aimanbenbaha wrote:
| As someone who speaks French this made me chuckle
| criley2 wrote:
| For the record, Twitter currently punishes people who call
| VIP's mean names and seems to take action against all
| negativity pointed towards certain ideologies that fit with the
| owners preferences, and they're talking about some opaque
| "positivity" changes which actually sound like automating the
| current manual moderation behind their censorship of
| wrongthink.
|
| We should stop pretending that that website resembles its
| preceding namesake, because it does not.
| hbn wrote:
| Me and my friend share a joke instagram account where we'll
| randomly make stupid posts just to entertain ourselves. One
| time he posted a picture of himself holding a chair, standing
| on one foot with a goofy smile on his face, captioned "I'll hit
| you with this chair! Just kidding!"
|
| It got the account suspended until we deleted the post,
| claiming the post, and I quote, "could encourage physical
| violence and lead to a risk of physical harm, or a direct
| threat to public safety."
|
| I sent an appeal, saying it was a clear joke that isn't
| directed at anyone, but after supposed "review" they determined
| the post is indeed against ToS.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| A cynic of the large social media platforms might suspect
| they were deliberately underinvesting in their moderation
| workforce... so they could then justify doing away with the
| cost as soon as politically convenient.
|
| At its base, moderation = time = money
|
| Better quality moderation? More money.
|
| The platforms would rather not carry that cost and therefore
| be more profitable. Convenient how that worked out.
| o11c wrote:
| Frankly, if "ban people for joke violence" is the price we
| have to pay for "ban people for real violence", I'll take it.
| emmelaich wrote:
| But what if banning joke violence increases the chance of
| real violence?
| intended wrote:
| Not the person you responded to, but I assume they would
| be ok with unbanning the joke in that case.
|
| I would rather people not die.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| The only people that would say this is unnecessary are the
| people that not currently being censored, and have no concept
| that they ever would be. Because they're the Good People that
| think the Good Things.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| You're all very likely correct, but given the timing, it's
| hard to assume good intent on Meta's part. This same week,
| they've "donated" $1 million to Trump's "inauguration fund,"
| and added strong Trump ally to Meta's board. Significant
| changes to moderation might be good or might be bad, but
| given the other news, only the truly ingenuous would trust
| that it's intended to improve things.
|
| Same thing with when Bezos declared that the Washington Post
| would no longer be endorsing presidential candidates,
| claiming that it was a neutral decision about returning the
| paper to its roots with unfortunate but coincidental timing.
| Despite that potentially being a reasonable decision in a
| vacuum, only an idiot would have believed that Bezos was
| being honest about his motivation.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I think you misunderstand what Meta is doing here. They're not
| stopping moderation of posts.
|
| Meta used to pay third party company fact checking companies to
| put disclaimers on "misinformation" posts on Facebook. They're
| going to stop that now.
|
| They're still going to continue their other more traditional
| moderation where you'll be banned for making an obvious tongue
| in cheek joke or whatever.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Moving the moderation team from California to Texas is also
| noteworthy.
|
| Presumably because the political climate of California is so
| skewed from the rest of the country.
| bagels wrote:
| Probably much more to do with cost
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I don't, see my response here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42626739
| ok_dad wrote:
| > "acoustic" to refer to an autistic person
|
| Is autistic an illegal word or something? What the fuck?
| pests wrote:
| It's self-censorship, some of which I find extremely weird
| and cringe.
|
| Go on Twitter and you will see people self-censor the normal
| swear words too.
|
| Shit becomes "sht", fuck becomes "fck"
|
| Very dystopian.
| londons_explore wrote:
| X today seems to not let any posts about death, swearing,
| etc get recommended.
|
| Whereas if you replace those words with "unalive" and **'s,
| then you get far more views.
|
| I'm sure there is some kind of filter.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It's been trivially demonstrable that the use of
| "forbidden" terms or swearing can affect your ranking on
| their algorithms, whether it be displaying your comment, or
| your post on someone's feed, etc., at least on Meta's
| platforms. So no matter how "cringe" you may find it, it's
| done out of some degree of necessity and precisely because
| of these dumb moderation mechanisms, not out of any
| misguided, altruistic self censorship.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >It's been trivially demonstrable that the use of
| "forbidden" terms or swearing can affect your ranking on
| their algorithms
|
| Is it though? A lot of this self censorship seems to be a
| cargo cult thing where people just copy what they've seen
| other people do and assume it's necessary when it's
| really not.
| zahlman wrote:
| >Is it though?
|
| Yes. There are countless stories from Youtube creators
| who had their videos taken down or demonetized or had to
| edit and reupload them, because the AI detected that
| words such as "suicide" were spoken. And it's common
| knowledge that requests for review are routinely denied
| (presented as "we reviewed your case and the ruling
| stands", a judgment often received in less time than the
| runtime of the video).
| Suppafly wrote:
| >There are countless stories from Youtube creators who
| had their videos taken down or demonetized or had to edit
| and reupload them, because the AI detected that words
| such as "suicide" were spoken.
|
| I don't believe you. I've never seen any evidence of
| that.
| zahlman wrote:
| If I put "youtube creator can't say suicide in video"
| into DDG, among the top results:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/18f7mas/quest
| ion...
|
| https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802245
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/13qht
| u1/...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/youtube
| -co...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-identify-title-
| wor...
|
| And there's a clear cause for it:
|
| https://time.com/5096391/youtube-paul-logan-suicide-
| video/
| pests wrote:
| 1) Do you honestly think they would add "fuck" to a
| blocklist but then turn a blind-eye to "fck"? Basic
| profanity filters on old forum software were more strict.
|
| 2) I find it completely inane that you are willing to
| self-censor yourself for an algorithm. I guess we no
| longer need a ministry of truth if the people just
| produced censored content to begin with, right?
| emmelaich wrote:
| I don't think it's a literal blocklist; it's more an
| correlation algorithmically determined. If the four-
| letter word is correlated to hate or violence but the
| three-letter one is not then ... that's all that matters.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's very human. This is no different from people using
| terms like gosh, shucks, and darn, instead of their
| stronger relatives. It's just how profanity works, no need
| to worry about it.
| pests wrote:
| Fck is just as strong as fuck, not sure how that could be
| confused at all.
| wat10000 wrote:
| No, definitely not. It's stronger than "fudge" but not
| quite the same as the real thing.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Then you've got 'YouTube-speak', where video creators swap
| in alternatives to words suspected of making the algorithm
| downrank/demonetize videos. 'Unalived' being a particularly
| common one, to avoid mentions of killing or suicide.
| timeon wrote:
| > but at least for the Threads app
|
| Sorry for OT but what is the point of Threads? Twitter/X is
| already thing if you do not care about corporate-owned social
| media.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > corporate-owned social media
|
| In what sense do you think X is not a "corporate owned"
| company?
| kelseydh wrote:
| It's funny how facebook got so political all the normies left,
| then they downranked political content so much that the political
| people left too. Facebook is a ghost town now.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Do they still mandate using your legal name? That's the biggest
| no-go for me. It's just awful opsec.
| ziml77 wrote:
| How do they validate that? YouTube also wanted my full name
| before they finally switched back to usernames. I just made
| up a pseudonym back then.
| kelseydh wrote:
| Facebook has pretty advanced features that cross check your
| digital signatures like IP address, browser, registered
| email, etc to prevent sockpuppeting. This is especially
| true if you want to make ads with your account.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Don't know if they mandate it, but I know a few people who
| use either names that are a slight modification of their real
| name, or completely made up names.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| Surprisingly, Facebook has 2.1 billion daily active users. I
| primarily use the app for its Marketplace feature as an
| alternative to Craigslist.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| Doesn't the second sentence explain the first? I can't tell
| the number of times I've heard a variation of, "I hate
| Facebook [newsfeed]. I only use it for Messenger/ niche
| Groups/ local events/ Marketplace."
|
| Facebook has positioned itself so that it's almost a
| necessity if you want to be involved in your community,
| however you define it. You may hate Zuck, moderation, and
| 'the algo' and yet you can't get away from Meta the company.
| And millions of other users feel the same way.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > it's almost a necessity if you want to be involved in
| your community
|
| not really; I haven't had a FB account in 10 years
|
| I use Craigslist for local ads.
| Hilift wrote:
| Facebook has a net profit of $62 billion/year.
| redserk wrote:
| Going back even further, one of the initial draws of Instagram
| pre-acquisition was that you could escape the toxicity of
| trolls and other socially unproductive behavior on Facebook.
|
| Meta has a big problem coming up. They'll get to the point
| where they won't be able to hide Facebook and Instagram's
| lackluster appeal. I suspect we'll start seeing advertisers
| peel away, followed by a few savvy investors first. Let's just
| hope this doesn't trigger a market-wide correction.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Let's just hope this doesn't trigger a market-wide
| correction.
|
| My flippant, "I hate social media and think it was largely a
| mistake and needs to go away," view is to cheer for that
| correction. That said, I understand that I'm very biased here
| and might be ignorant.
|
| Is there a reason I shouldn't cheer for such a correction?
| redserk wrote:
| I'd cheer for a correction if it were limited to social
| media valuations. My fear is that social media tanks
| followed by people broadly pulling money out of the market.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Meta. Microsoft. Amazon. Google.
|
| Every one of their core user value propositions is worse now
| than it was in the 00s.
|
| And all of them by allowing revenue optimization by 1,000
| cuts to whittle away customer centricity over time.
| EasyMark wrote:
| To me facebook seems a lot quieter but instagram is as busy
| with stuff as ever. We definitely have differences of opinion
| on that. Especially if TikTok is shut down (fingers crossed)
| most people will fall back on Instagram Reels.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| They A/B test reels in facebook. My mother's facebook has
| reels in it. Not mine. Soon, the apps themselves will lose
| any sense of history and they will morph into whatever new
| content format is favourite. All you need is account with
| Meta. The content will find you. Zuck has that covered for
| you.
| redserk wrote:
| It's a different type of activity though.
|
| Facebook and Instagram's (pre-Reels) strength was that it
| was easy to have accounts of all sizes engage and be
| engaged with. Whether you have 10 or 100000
| friends/followers/etc, the barrier of entry to have some
| engagement wasn't high and it encouraged people with all
| sizes of accounts to post, comment, and "like". Social
| networking felt much more intentional with these platforms.
|
| Instagram Reels certainly has a lot of activity, but it's
| activity is driven by users passively consuming popular and
| trending media. This isn't a bad model, but it's a shift
| away from intentional social networking.
|
| Ultimately, I think Reels is more evidence that Meta has
| had a user engagement problem for a while. Their current
| strategy for Instagram seens to be to hope passive
| consumption keeps everyone in the app and fall back on the
| "town square" model for comments as a means of engagement.
| tensor wrote:
| Instagram needs a Bluesky. It's truly an awful experience,
| but the only semi-competitor is TikTok which... isn't great
| either.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Users of this site have been saying that for literal years.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Between that and people getting over constantly sharing what
| they did on vacation and what they cooked for breakfast or had
| at brunch, it is a lot quieter. At least Zuck chose to bring
| back political arguments as the mainstay right after the
| election rather than right before. It will be fairly quiet for
| a few years IF they keep up their efforts to limit Russian
| propaganda bots and don't add a bluecheck to promote them
| instead.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'd like to hear an informed take from anybody who thinks that
| Facebook's fact-checkers were a better _product feature_ than
| Community Notes.
|
| All of the articles I'm seeing about this online are ideological,
| but this feels like the kind of decision that should have been in
| the works for multiple quarters now, given how effective Notes
| have been, and how comically ineffective and off-putting fact-
| checkers have been. The user experience of fact-checkers (forget
| about people pushing bogus facts, I just mean for ordinary people
| who primarily consume content rather than producing it) is
| roughly that of a PSA ad spot series saying "this platform is
| full of junk, be on your guard".
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Generally fb has trended to worse rather than better. I already
| passed my personal tipping point years ago and quit fb.
| tptacek wrote:
| It is what it is. It's a hotspot for local politics, so
| quitting it isn't really an option for me.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| All the burning man camps I get invited to are a bunch of
| Gen X-ers conferring on Facebook groups
|
| so I wind up making a new Facebook account once a year for
| a few months
|
| although could see this moving to Discord across those same
| age ranges, I'm in some local groups there which overlap
| with festivals/events/things like the burn.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yeah younger millenials and GenZ tend to do this sort of
| conversation on Discord.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yeah exactly, its now a better platform and has enough
| critical mass. With Nitro/Discord's paid plan you can
| change your profile per server if you identify different
| ways in different groups
|
| I've seen Gen X-ers be notoriously inflexible about
| considering Discord or anything besides Facebook Groups,
| but as they say: nobody can prevent you from becoming
| like your parents
|
| I tell that cohort "you can't Google this, you have to
| join the platform and search that channel", and they balk
| as if their Facebook Group that's segregating them is any
| different
|
| back to burning man specifically, at this point it seems
| like I can get invited to different camps, so I'm excited
| about that. mixed age groups, stays fresh
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > I've seen Gen X-ers be notoriously inflexible about
| considering Discord or anything besides Facebook Groups,
| but as they say: nobody can prevent you from becoming
| like your parents
|
| Yeah I'm a millenial with older and younger friends. I
| found that around 35 +- 4 years you generally have people
| get more annoyed and flippant at change. I get it, at
| this age you're probably at the peak of both career and
| life responsibilities, and you want to focus your energy
| on your family/career/other loved ones, and the last
| thing you want to do is learn something new for doing
| what you've been doing for the last 18 years (chatting
| about something online.)
|
| But it's been pretty fascinating watching the change as
| my older millenial/young GenX friends are getting into
| Back In My Day conversations while my GenZ friends talk
| about new fashions and music.
| grahamj wrote:
| Every Xer I know left FB years ago.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's also _the_ marketplace in some countries. Wanna sell
| some furniture locally? It may be close to the only option.
| bag_boy wrote:
| Just wait until they release a job board. They'll figure
| this out soon.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| They tried this years ago, but didn't make it work.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's amazingly bad. My feed is just endless blatantly obvious
| engagement bait, interspersed with occasional posts from
| people I actually want to see.
| internet101010 wrote:
| Same. I deleted my account in like 2018.
|
| Since then Marketplace has more or less destroyed Craigslist.
| So two months ago I tried to create an account strictly for
| Marketplace. My email, phone, and location have all changed
| since 2018. Despite verifying phone and doing the most
| extreme KYC step of taking a picture of myself with my ID I
| _still_ could not make a new account. So maybe they should
| focus on that?
| tgma wrote:
| SAD! Craigslist was a much better product and community
| even without the luxury of identity verification. It had
| some obvious spam but by and large worked fine once you got
| the hang of it. Marketplace is a cesspool of lowballers and
| sex workers with some shitty ML sprinkled on it, underneath
| it all some slow and clunky RPCs that need refresh all the
| time.
|
| Forget about the sucky product. Who has Facebook been
| hiring in the past decade that built that technical
| crapshoot.
| davidw wrote:
| The ideological bits are:
|
| * Dana White added to the board.
|
| * "Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out
| of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will
| help remove the concern that biased employees are overly
| censoring content." - like people being in Texas makes them
| more objective?!
|
| The actual mechanisms of running a social media network at
| scale are tricky and I think most of us would be fine with some
| experimentation. But it looks pretty political in the broader
| context, so maybe it's just a way of saying that certain kinds
| of 'content' like attacking trans people is going to be ok now.
|
| I can't quite FB entirely, but Threads looks like a much less
| interesting option with Blue Sky being available and gaining in
| popularity.
| tptacek wrote:
| I get how the partisan story is easy to tell here, but I'm
| saying something pretty specific: I think it would have been
| product development malpractice for this decision not to have
| been in the works for many, many months, long before the GOP
| takeover of the federal government was a safe bet. Community
| Notes has been that successful, and Facebook's fact-checkers
| have been that much of a product disaster.
|
| I've never seen a _wrong_ Facebook fact-check; I am warmly
| supportive of intrusive moderation; that 's not where I'm
| coming from.
| davidw wrote:
| As a product decision taken independently, maybe. Running
| one of those things at scale with all kinds of people
| trying to subvert it for various reasons, including some
| downright evil ones, is not an easy task.
|
| Announced together with everything else and given the
| timing, I just can't help but think there's a political
| component to all of it.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't at all doubt that they're going to do whatever
| they can to cast this presumably longstanding product
| plan in the light most favorable to the governing
| majority! I just want to get the causality right.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I don't understand though: What makes you think that you
| are getting the causality right? It seems to me like
| you're asserting the causality goes one direction, when
| there doesn't seem to be any evidence (at least in
| public) for that assertion at the moment. Have I just
| missed some other information on this that you're basing
| this on?
| tcbawo wrote:
| I think he is suggesting that this move has favorable PR
| optics for the incoming administration. Making it appear
| like a conservative victory may give them some slack or
| earn them some favors.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Is it _not_ a conservative culture-war victory designed
| to earn favors? There is no external evidence of this
| having been anything other than a contingency around
| November 6 of last year, so it 's hard to definitively
| say it's one or the other.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's not really, tbh. Like the vast vast vast majority of
| content reviewers are outside California and have been
| for well over a decade.
|
| The change here is to move the people designing the
| policies to Texas (basically a stealth layoff, tbh).
|
| That being said, the moderation has been insanely bad for
| a while now, so all the model tuning seems like a
| worthwhile change to me.
|
| The Texas thing sounds like PR but isn't really given
| their huge offices in Austin.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The Texas thing sounds like PR but isn't really given
| their huge offices in Austin
|
| That distinctly smells like pork barrel politicking:
| we're moving jobs from Commiefornia to your great state,
| and if your criminal [1] state AG sues us again over this
| function, he'll be putting Texans out a job.
|
| 1. Allegedly. Meta wouldn't dare call him thar, but he
| agreed to 100 hours of community service and paying
| restitution to those he allegedly defrauded to avoid a
| trial.
| markhahn wrote:
| its called pre-conceding
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I just can't help but think there's a political
| component to all of it.
|
| I mean, of course there is. The pressure to censor that
| began once Trump started dominating the Republican
| primaries in 2015, and escalated when the government
| chose a line on covid that absolved the government from
| responsibility for covid and made dubious claims about
| it, is ending. The reason the recent censorship frenzy
| began was political (nobody was censoring flat-earthers),
| and the reason it's ending is political.
|
| Now the US can get back to just censoring Palestinians,
| like the old days.
| davidw wrote:
| Facebook is a corporation and can 'censor' whoever they
| like. They are not 'the US'.
|
| Part of the reason why they moderate content is the same
| reason that a bar owner turfs out people who are rowdy
| and threatening the other patrons: because the normies
| will leave and you're left with a bunch of nasty, loud
| people.
|
| That is, after all, why this site we're on right now is
| so heavily moderated: it makes for a better user
| experience.
| philwelch wrote:
| It turns out that "normies" were people who have the
| kinds of normal, mainstream beliefs that Facebook has
| spent the past four years censoring.
| davidw wrote:
| The only thing that "turns out" is they wish to curry
| favor with the incoming administration. FB hasn't been
| censoring much of anything as far as I can tell; there
| are all kinds of vile, nasty comments all over it. Just
| unfriendly, unkind stuff, not even political things. It's
| probably one reason it's kind of struggling as a platform
| - that kind of thing isn't much fun.
| philistine wrote:
| That's the silver lining through all of that: when right-
| wing ideologues start imposing their own groupthink model
| on social media, it stops being fun and people start to
| leave. Just look at Twitter. It's just not as fun anymore
| on there.
| jjk7 wrote:
| The parent's point, is that the incoming administration
| won the popular vote... they are the 'normies' now.
| davidw wrote:
| Most voters don't care much about any of the details of
| this. They're not terribly unhappy with FB because
| they're using to keep track of people from high school
| back in the 90ies, or their families, or local recreation
| groups or something. Or they're not using it at all
| because it's for old people like me.
|
| This is all just loud, performative subjugation to the
| incoming administration, that does take things like
| attacking trans people and immigrants as good stuff.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| I would actually offer they Facebook is changing because
| their base has grown tired of their antics. My normy
| friends and family have complained of censorship
| increasingly over the last year. When I asked why we
| still use the platform one friend replied: "birthday
| reminders." Then I thought that actually does summarize
| what I use the platform for. Not a great prospect for a
| company.
| davidw wrote:
| What sorts of conversations are you attempting to engage
| in that it is 'censoring' you? It seems pretty rare to me
| - even in heated exchanges.
| intended wrote:
| There is a campaign to capitalize on the idea that right
| wing people are censored.
|
| And therefore all Americans are censored.
|
| This fight has been fought before, at the dawn of
| moderation. It's been fought here on HN. Back when people
| used to hold libertarian beliefs openly. "The best ideas
| rise to the top". No, they frikking dont. The most viral
| ideas, the most adaptive ideas - those are the ones that
| survive.
|
| Everyone learned that moderation is needed, that hard
| moderation is the only way to prevent spaces from
| attracting emotional arguments, harassment, stalking, and
| hate speech.
|
| Maybe this time its different.
|
| Moderation is both thankless, soul crushing, and
| traumatic. Mods r/neworleans effectively became first
| responders on Jan 1st. I know mods see everything from
| dead baby pictures, burning bodies, accidental deaths, to
| worse.
|
| IF this works, and reduces the need for mods, great! My
| suspicion is that it's going to radicalize more people,
| faster. Its going to support the creation of more
| demagogues, and further reduce our ability to communicate
| with each other.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 49.8% to 48.3% of the popular vote.
|
| That's a pretty thin advantage, and still barely not an
| outright majority.
| mcherm wrote:
| Nearly all the levers of control of the US government to
| almost no control over the US government: that's a
| massive advantage. I can't help believing this, not the
| popular vote, is the motivation.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Exactly. Particularly the power of the incoming President
| to create bad PR (with 50% of the country) and the House
| to haul people into public testimony and yell at them.
|
| Not to mention the federal money spigot.
|
| Big companies aren't stupid and are largely amoral.
| usrusr wrote:
| But is it currying favor? Could just as well be "kiss the
| ring or you'll see your life's work AT&Ted into oblivion"
|
| Perhaps both: might have started as a pragmatic offer to
| bury the hatchet, then quickly turned into the never
| ending firehose of demands of an extortionist who just
| realized that he still all the cards after the extortee
| has given in.
| zblevins wrote:
| I see what you're saying, but I also think the user
| demographics of Hacker News reduce the likelihood of
| moderation to begin with.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't know if that's true. SV culture has always been a
| very big tension between monied military-industrial types
| and (eventually also monied) antiwar hippies.
|
| It's well-documented in SV's military history, as well as
| recently, where Apple wasn't involved in FAA702 illegal
| spying on americans (PRISM) until after the famously
| anti-establishment Jobs died.
|
| The SV culture seems to have shifted a bit rightward (as
| has the whole country, tbh) but the tension is still
| there, and the social conflict remains (although I think
| there are other factors, not the least of which is the
| skill and grace of @dang, that keep people on the better
| side of their behaviors here).
| zblevins wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying about SV, especially the
| military-industrial types. I'm not entirely sure what the
| makeup of HN demographics is, and would like to know. I
| have a suspicion that it's not just folks in SV. I also
| should have clarified more. In my opinion, the discourse
| here is more civil than on other platforms. I would
| suggest that has something to do with a combination of
| education and niche interests that attract a different
| user base. So maybe not in terms of factual correctness,
| but certainly in terms of the ability to have a civil
| conversation.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think you are like a fish who isn't aware of the water
| it's swimming in.
|
| HN doesn't need much moderation, because the discourse is
| so civil here [narrator voice: because of the good
| moderation].
| ethbr1 wrote:
| At scale, the long term community civility balance point
| is likely dominated by the average user's willingness to
| change their behavior as a result of peer feedback.
|
| The HN userbase, feedback tools, karma-level-locked
| tools, and new users' personalities seem to create decent
| outcomes.
|
| Which is to say, if someone acts like an asshat, folks
| let them know (either through downvotes, flags, or
| replies), and they modify their behavior to be closer to
| the community norm.
|
| That said, I'm aware I don't see a lot of the most
| egregious stuff the Good Ship Dang torpedoes. Or what I
| expect are non-zero repeat trolls.
|
| And honestly, the fact is that outside of very nerdy
| street cred, there's little incentive to actively manage
| discourse for commercial purposes on HN.*
|
| * Outside of, you know, cloudflare tailscale rust (any
| other crawler alarms I can trip)
| zblevins wrote:
| That's a rather reductionist and slightly disparaging
| point of view. Moderation has its place I never said it
| didn't, but do you really think that moderation is the
| only thing keeping this place from being 4chan? I think
| you have one deeply entrenched opinion and are ignoring
| that these are very different platforms.
| sanderjd wrote:
| HN is heavily moderated through a number of mechanisms:
| explicit community guidelines, community moderation
| (through voting), and active automated and manual
| moderation.
|
| I think all of this working in conjunction is why it has
| remained a pretty great community for almost two decades.
| And I think that's a really impressive feat. I don't
| think it was accomplished via "a combination of education
| and niche interests that attract a different user base".
|
| Indeed, I think HN has gotten _better_ over time, even
| somewhat so in absolute terms, but very starkly relative
| to the deterioration of everything else. For example,
| back in the day, when twitter was first getting big in
| tech, a lot of people felt that it was a healthier place
| to discuss those topics than HN. I was never completely
| convinced of that, and have always been more active here
| than on twitter, but it was at least a very reasonable
| thing to think for awhile, IMO. But now I think it would
| be pretty crazy to think that twitter is healthier than
| HN. Similarly with similar communities on reddit.
|
| I dunno, maybe there are some healthier spaces on
| mastodon or blue sky or threads or something now, but at
| least to me, HN has maintained a fairly stable fairly
| decent level of discourse for a very long time, and I
| don't think it is a result of luck or magic, but rather
| of hard and tireless work moderating the community.
| zblevins wrote:
| Yea, I've become more aware of this since yesterday. I
| also think I should have provided way more context to
| what I was saying. I believe I came off as being against
| moderation but I'm not, I do think there is something
| unique about the user base just from the quality of
| content I see compared to other spaces, but I digress. I
| appreciate your thoughts and it gave me something to
| think about.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yeah, and I probably should have figured out a more
| tactful way to make the point I was making. I wanted it
| to be more like a "you're one of today's lucky
| 10,000!"[0] to point out that I think you've been
| swimming in water without knowing it[1], but I think it
| ended up just being condescending.
|
| 0: https://xkcd.com/1053/
|
| 1: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
| (kind of blog spam, but this is the only place I found
| that has the full transcript, the audio, and other useful
| links)
| zblevins wrote:
| I thought that's what the reference was. I think it all
| worked out in the end.
| dang wrote:
| Last I ran the numbers, which was quite a few years ago,
| about 10% of HN posts were coming from IP addresses
| correlated to Silicon Valley (well, the Bay Area with a
| relatively wide radius). About 50% were coming from the
| US, and so on.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521 (March
| 2018)
|
| I should check again.
| zblevins wrote:
| Thanks @dang. Turned on showdead. I will say that I was
| completely unaware of the moderation efforts here and
| appreciate having this pointed out to me. I like this
| option too. As far as transparency goes I don't think it
| gets much better than this.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks for this!
| jheriko wrote:
| i'm not from silly valley, but its the dominant voice
| here.
|
| some of my downvotes are from bad tone, overreaction,
| hyperbole... some are because of the silly valley culture
| not realising they are a bunch of deluded maniacs, or
| just producing absolute garbage products.
|
| its mostly the former.
|
| as for demographics... well, i'm a single data point, but
| HN has a wide reach. its why a lot of us are here imo.
| mbreese wrote:
| Do you have showdead on? There is definite moderation
| going on, but a lot of it is collectively imposed (down
| votes, flagging). But, if you have your HN account set to
| show dead posts, you'll see that even with this
| demographic there are still a good number of low quality
| posts.
| labster wrote:
| That user has six karma and therefore does not have
| showdead on.
| dang wrote:
| There's no karma threshold for turning showdead on.
| zblevins wrote:
| That is correct. Possibly would change my perspective.
| Honestly a lot of these comments have and I do appreciate
| the input.
| asveikau wrote:
| I read with showdead on. I feel like people don't get
| modded for opinions here. Usually if the comments are
| dead it's because something is perceived as ad hominem,
| hostile, aggressive, violent, etc. It's usually the tone
| that gets them modded out and the content of the message,
| and a polite version of the same statement would stand.
|
| There are outliers of course, but that's the general
| vibe.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> I feel like people don 't get modded for opinions
| here._
|
| Agreed. That's why I used the term "low quality". The
| comments that get downvoted or flagged are usually either
| blatant spam/trolling or rude. If someone makes a quality
| argument, regardless of the opinion, it generally sticks
| around. I'll even up-vote comments I disagree with, if
| the author is making a good-faith effort. Not everyone
| does that, but enough people do and do so often enough
| that it helps to keep a complete hive-mind at bay (about
| most topics...).
|
| But, I think that it's that simple level of moderation
| (which, I consider to still be moderation) that helps to
| keep discourse around here civil and interesting...
|
| Yes, there are some threads that start where you just
| know nothing good will come from it, and in those cases
| we do see some admin moderation (hi @dang!). But, even
| then, I think the idea is that when discussing some
| topics, the thread will invariably end up going sideways.
| Those are the topics that end to get immediately flagged.
| And that's okay with me, because who has time for that,
| when we have so many other, more interesting things to
| argue (civilly) about?
| zblevins wrote:
| I do now. Good point. I haven't been on here very long
| and should have been more aware before saying something
| thats incorrect.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Facebook has said it was pressured by the Biden
| administration to censor topic like covid. This is as
| clear cut first amendment case as you will ever find.
| RansomStark wrote:
| Your being down voted is amazingly ironic for a topic on
| the politicization of fact checking. There are hundreds
| of comments here talking about how objective facts exists
| and the correctness of fact-checking. You reiterate the
| statement of the Facebook CEO and what that statement
| entails and you are moderated.
|
| But facts are facts right?
|
| Zuckerberg did say Facebook was pressured by the Biden
| administration to censor covid misinformation, and the
| Hunter Biden laptop story [0], [1], [2] (multiple left-
| wing references for good measure). If Zuckerberg is
| telling the truth, that is a clear cut first amendment
| violation.
|
| A private company can censor whatever it wants (mostly)
| but not at the behest of the government, there's law
| against that.
|
| [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-
| says-the-wh...
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxlpjlgdzjo
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/a
| ug/27/m...
| NCFZ wrote:
| If it's so clear cut then why did SCOTUS throw that case
| out?
| immibis wrote:
| And we all know that the first amendment can never be
| immoral, not even when a tidal wave of deliberate
| propaganda is causing millions of people to die.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Fact checking, Community Notes, whatever you want to call
| it, is inherently political.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Only if everything you don't agree with is "political"
| jimbokun wrote:
| Censorship, moderation, what kind of speech is
| acceptable, what does or doesn't constitute a "fact", are
| all political topics.
| jjav wrote:
| > what does or doesn't constitute a "fact", are all
| political topics.
|
| It clearly is not. A fact is a fact by definition,
| regardless of what anyone happens to feel about it. There
| are facts that are known to be true beyond all possible
| doubt.
|
| If it is uncertain or in doubt, then it's not a fact and
| shouldn't be corrected by fact checkers.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I disagree with gravity though. It makes life a lot
| easier when you can fly.
| ikiris wrote:
| It's just intelligent falling. They want to keep you in
| the dark.
| sampo wrote:
| > There are facts that are known to be true beyond all
| possible doubt.
|
| The problem is that some people believe a fact is one way
| beyond doubt, and other way believe it is the other way.
|
| Epidemiology: Respirator masks help prevent infectious
| diseases
|
| Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea
| somenameforme wrote:
| The way Community Notes usually end up working in
| practice is comments that provide sourced context that
| may be [arguably intentionally] omitted in a topic. For
| instance if it happens to be that there have been 27
| different studies showing no statistically significant
| reduction in spread of infectious diseases with healthy
| individuals wearing masks, then that would likely be a
| community note on the first one. And vice versa if rent
| has been demonstrated to keep rents below the surrounding
| means in the cities of Blah, Bleh, and Bluh, then that
| would often end up a community note on the second.
|
| It basically helps reduce the hyperbole/echo chamber
| effect of such comments/topics. Vice/versa if those
| topics were "Respirator masks are useless." and "Rent
| control is always good." then the community notes would
| tend to go in the opposite direction. It's just a really
| good idea. For that matter I think a similar algorithm
| would also work well on general upvote systems at large.
|
| I'd also add that one of the biggest issues with "fact
| checkers" was not only sometimes questionable checking,
| but also a selection bias - where the ideological bias
| becomes rather overt in both directions. Whether that be
| in deciding to "fact check" the Babylon Bee (in an overt
| effort to get it deranked), or in choosing not to not
| fact check statements from the lying politicians that one
| happens to like.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Those aren't good candidates for fact checking really.
| They are beliefs really, just very widespread ones with
| lots of support.
|
| A good candidate for fact checking is something that is
| well documented objectively verifiable. Politician X said
| Y on TV the other day.
| computably wrote:
| Your example is a false equivalence. Economics does not
| define "good ideas" and "bad ideas," it only attempts to
| model resource dynamics. Whereas the spread of infectious
| disease is clearly quantifiable regardless of value
| assignment.
| shakes_mcjunkie wrote:
| Economics is inherently a political venture. Organizing
| markets is political and obviously impacts politics.
| computably wrote:
| Partly true, but besides the point. Making a blanket
| statement like "economics says rent control is bad," is
| only marginally better than saying "physics says nuclear
| weapons are bad." There is a critical assumption of
| values which is totally outside the objective of study.
| Aunche wrote:
| The presumed goal of rent control is to prevent rents
| from rising. If they actually cause rents to rise even
| more quickly then they are indeed "bad" (at achieving
| this goal).
| computably wrote:
| The goal of rent control, as I infer from the mechanism,
| is to prevent existing tenants from being priced out of
| their current homes (eventually leading to eviction) - at
| least as I have seen in the US.
|
| If the goal were to prevent rents from rising, the
| mechanism would do so directly, ie. regulate _all_ rent,
| rather than limiting to continued rentals on certain
| types of property. Which would by definition prevent
| rents from rising, presumably along with other
| undesirable effects.
|
| Anyways, the whole issue with conflating "bad" with
| objective consequences is the "presumed goal," which is
| of course totally subjective.
| starspangled wrote:
| Here's another one - "Trump colluded with Putin to hack
| the election in 2016".
|
| I have never seen an accepted fact checking site answer
| this, which is very strange since it is such an enormous
| and grave conspiracy theory if it were true. The Mueller
| report is extensive and quite conclusive in stating that
| no such evidence of collusion (conspiracy) was not found.
| Yet fact checkers are happy to check peripheral and far
| less consequential claims around the case for some reason
| (e.g., https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mueller-report-
| no-obstruct...), but are strangely hesitant to address
| the elephant in the room.
|
| Or for another example, there were many false or poorly
| substantiated claims made about covid and vaccines during
| the pandemic. I saw "reputable" fact checkers address a
| certain set of those claims about the virus and drugs,
| but were strangely silent when it came to a different set
| of claims.
|
| So fact checkers don't even need to provide false content
| at all, they can be very political and biased simply by
| carefully choosing exactly what "facts" or claims that
| they address.
| rayiner wrote:
| Another example: fact-checking prominent race activists
| in 2020. The public was grossly misinformed about the
| scale of police violence against black Americans:
| https://manhattan.institute/article/perceptions-are-not-
| real...
|
| But even straightforward stuff goes unchallenged. Jada
| Pinkett Smith released a movie trailer claiming Cleopatra
| was black. When NBC covered the issue, they couldn't even
| bring themselves to fact check her. They did a "he said,
| she said" article asserting that _Egypt_ contested
| whether Cleopatra was black:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/queen-cleopatra-black-
| egy....
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Economics: Rent control is always a bad idea
|
| Well this is definitely false. If you're a politician who
| can afford a nice place then rent control is a great
| idea: it gets you elected (look, I made things cheap for
| you) and keeps you elected (look, I will solve all the
| problems underpriced rent brings).
| tptacek wrote:
| You're reading them as saying that moderation is suspect
| because it's political, and all I read them to be saying
| is that political considerations are unavoidable when you
| moderate, in a manner distinctive to moderation.
| emmelaich wrote:
| .. from lawdictionary.org :
|
| > _2 : any of the circumstances of a case that exist or
| are alleged to exist in reality : a thing whose actual
| occurrence or existence is to be determined by the
| evidence presented at trial see also finding of fact at
| finding, judicial notice question of fact at question,
| trier of fact compare law, opinion_
| jimbokun wrote:
| Well yes.
|
| But how do we distinguish facts from non facts?
|
| That is a dilemma humanity has struggled with for
| millennia. Humans are very bad at recognizing their own
| biases and admitting to themselves they were wrong about
| something.
| jjav wrote:
| > But how do we distinguish facts from non facts?
|
| What do you mean how? Science. The process of science.
|
| There might be people who want to believe gravity on
| Earth accelerates objects at 1m/s^2, but we can trivially
| establish through countless experiments repeatable by
| anyone who wants to try that this is not true.
|
| If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it then
| it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a fact
| and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe something
| else can make it not a fact.
| tgma wrote:
| The irony is that the example you cite, i.e. F = G * m1 *
| m2 / r^2 is demonstrably _not_ the correct formula for
| gravity.
|
| Science, the process of science, does not prove something
| as fact. It can only eliminate non-facts, and even then,
| the experiments may be flawed in their recognition.
|
| > If you can't measure it or repeatably demonstrate it
| then it's probably not a fact. If it can, then it is a
| fact and no amount of emotionally wanting to believe
| something else can make it not a fact.
|
| This is demonstrably false. If you witness an event once,
| you cannot necessarily repeat it, but you know for a fact
| that it happened. Unless you redefine the term "fact"
| narrowly, what you suggested is an ideology.
|
| See how even the definition of "fact" is up for debate.
| computably wrote:
| You missed a basic element of what they said: " _can 't_
| measure it _or_ repeatably demonstrate it "; seeing a
| non-reproducible event with your eyes is a form of
| measurement, and that measurement could in principle be
| done by an objective machine (recorded by a camera). The
| potential for objective evidence is what distinguishes a
| matter of fact from a matter of opinion.
|
| As to the "correct formula for gravity" - that's just bad
| faith nitpicking. "Newtonian gravitation is a fact" is
| both a strawman and completely irrelevant when it comes
| to social media fact checkers.
| tgma wrote:
| > You missed a basic element of what they said: "can't
| measure it or repeatably demonstrate it"; seeing a non-
| reproducible event with your eyes is a form of
| measurement, and that measurement could in principle be
| done by an objective machine (recorded by a camera). The
| potential for objective evidence is what distinguishes a
| matter of fact from a matter of opinion.
|
| No. Recording an experiment does not constitute
| scientific repeatability of an experiment. (Not to
| mention Quantum Mechanics explicitly rejects your claim
| as a universal principle at the micro level.)
|
| > As to the "correct formula for gravity" - that's just
| bad faith nitpicking. "Newtonian gravitation is a fact"
| is both a strawman and completely irrelevant when it
| comes to social media fact checkers.
|
| No, it is not a strawman at all. It clearly illustrates
| via an example of something we have known to be false for
| about a century, yet not only we do not censor it on
| social media, we teach it to kids, and almost no one
| would object to it.
|
| So, where do you draw the line?
|
| I posit there exists facts that are unknowable by the
| scientific method. The GP claimed science as the end-all-
| be-all method to fact-check. My statement is that it's
| not sound, nor complete, in its ability to fact-check.
| jjav wrote:
| > Science, the process of science, does not prove
| something as fact.
|
| I intentionally picked a wrong value for Earth gravity
| instead of the correct one to avoid nitpickery on
| precision, location, yada yada.
|
| If someone has a feeling that Earth's gravity accelerates
| at 1m/s^2, they're just flat out wrong full stop. This is
| the problem with the anti-intellectual crowd who believes
| everyone's opinion has equal weight. No, it doesn't. If
| someone wants to believe Earth's gravity accelerates at
| 1m/s^2, then their opinion ( _on that topic_ ) is
| worthless because it is known to be false and they don't
| deserve any recognition for the nonsense. Facts are
| facts, beliefs don't make them go away.
|
| > This is demonstrably false. If you witness an event
| once, you cannot necessarily repeat it, but you know for
| a fact that it happened.
|
| Not at all. Human memory is fallible so if you are the
| only one who saw that event and swear it is true that
| does _not_ make it a fact no matter how hard you believe
| it.
|
| That's why scientific process requires repeatable results
| that anyone can (re)validate over and over, not one-off
| recollections.
| tgma wrote:
| > Earth's gravity accelerates at 1m/s^2, they're just
| flat out wrong full stop
|
| You do realize it depends on the distance of the object
| to Earth? So perhaps you are wrong not them depending on
| the context.
|
| Now someone comes up and says I am nitpicking blah
| blah... well, the author should have been clear and not
| stating falsehood as fact! This is just your belief which
| does not change the incompleteness/incorrectness of the
| statement (as per the original post).
|
| And this is the whole goddamn point. What's "fact" to
| someone can be incorrect, half-correct, wrong with
| completely good faith, or wrong with intent to mislead,
| etc. Who gets to decide all this is not as simple as "I
| am ScienceTM" Dr Fauci style.
| fragmede wrote:
| And if I take a ballon, fill it with the right helium/air
| ratio so it sinks at exactly 1m/s2? It's a provable
| scientific fact that it's falling at 1m/s2. Even if I
| leave off the part that it's a balloon, and talk
| antigravity fields or aliens or some crap, and "let you
| draw your own conclusions", the fact that the ballon fell
| at that rate would still be demonstrably true.
|
| People want to sell you lies and get you to believe them,
| and they'll give all the half truths they can to support
| their version of the truth. they'll use misleading graphs
| with real numbers, so you can fact check the numbers on
| the graph and come away thinking the graph represents the
| truth of the matter. But X axis that don't start at zero,
| logarithmic Y axis that don't say they're logarithmic, Or
| pie graphs viewed from a funny angle, with slices that
| don't represent the percentage they're labeled by, or
| with percentages that add up to greater than 100%.
|
| If all we wanted to run were trivial physics experiments,
| we'd be golden. The real world of social media facts
| include things we can't run science experiments for, or
| go back in time to redo, like economic stats that use a
| different formula today and there's not enough
| information to see what it was in the distant past. So we
| get these narratives from people who are trying to
| convince us to believe theirs by leaving off important
| context. Which is totally dishonest of them, but they
| have a vested interest in us believing a particular
| narrative.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The scientific process works amazingly well for
| repeatable experiments, but it doesn't do anything at all
| for non-repeatable events. You can't use the scientific
| method to figure out who blew up the Nordstream pipeline,
| just for a relatively recent and hotly debated political
| fact.
| claytongulick wrote:
| For most of my life, I would have agreed with you.
|
| As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly skeptical
| of the idea of a "fact".
|
| There's no way to separate information from human
| context. Even seemingly obvious things like "that shirt
| is blue". To who? My wife sees it as green, frequently.
|
| Or things are reduced to tautological nonsense like
| "gravity keeps us on the ground". Hard fact, right? But
| define gravity. A physicist will give you an answer, that
| may or may not mean much. A layman's definition might be
| something like "it's the thing that keeps us stuck to the
| ground", and now we're back to tautological nonsense. The
| entire "water is wet" class of "facts".
|
| Anything less trite instantly becomes less fact-like the
| more humans are involved.
|
| "Trump is a criminal" many people would argue
| passionately that this is a hard, incontrovertible fact.
|
| Nearly as many, (or maybe more?) would argue the
| opposite.
|
| I like the approach of the Fair Witness in Stranger In A
| Strange Land: "What color is that house?" "It's yellow on
| this side."
|
| I'm increasingly convinced that the belief in "facts" is
| more about the desire to be right and know things than
| anything to do with objective reality.
| DaftDank wrote:
| Subjective interpretation is very fundamental to being
| human and the way our minds work, but the underlying
| physical reality -- the wavelengths of light reflecting
| off the shirt -- can be measured objectively. A physicist
| might say that gravity is the curvature of spacetime
| caused by mass, which can be measured and tested.
|
| Trump being a criminal is based on a shared legal and
| societal context. As a society, we accept that if you are
| convicted before a jury of your peers, you are guilty and
| have been convicted of a crime. Jury's get it wrong and
| the justice system is flawed and has made mistakes. A
| black man in the 1920s (or even the 1960s for that
| matter) being tried for murder with absolutely no
| evidence and sentenced to death is a clear miscarriage
| and corruption of justice. The testimony of Trump's
| employees during the trial, who all said they loved
| working there (most of them still worked there), but
| weren't willing to lie on the stand about checks and
| phone calls they participated in, was pretty clear cut.
| This wasn't random people off the street of [insert
| preferred liberal enclave here] testifying against him:
| it was his own people who still work for him.
|
| Some people prioritize political allegiance over legal
| judgments when it suits them.
|
| If we dismissed facts entirely, science, medicine, and
| countless other fields reliant on objective reality would
| collapse.
|
| This exchange is a great example of the subjective nature
| of our experiences: as I've gotten older -- 38 now --
| I've come to accept more and more that some things are
| objective reality, whereas in my teens and 20s, I
| questioned reality and society on the structural level,
| torn down to the studs. From Plato's cave, to brain in
| the vat, Kant, the Hindu Brahman and Maya, Buddhism, etc.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I take the "this seems to be true, based on what I know,
| subject to more information" approach.
|
| I'm ok with not knowing things.
|
| We can measure all sorts of things, and put them in a
| human context, which is very reassuring. What's a wave?
| What's a wavelength? What's a unit of measure? These are
| not universal truths, these are human inventions. Things
| we've created in order to communicate a shared
| understanding with each other of things we've observed.
| It makes us feel knowledgeable, lets us build cool
| things, and that's a good thing!
|
| It also interferes with learning, and that's a bad thing.
| For example, (and I'm not taking a position on this
| either way, because _I don 't know_) I think it's very
| unlikely, based on your comment, that it would be easy to
| convince you that Trump is not a criminal. Or, to pick a
| less controversial topic, to convince the early Catholic
| church of the heliocentric model of the solar system.
| Because they already had the "facts."
|
| It's a comfortable position to _know_ things.
|
| It's uncomfortable to not know. As I've gotten older,
| I've become more comfortable with being uncomfortable.
| DaftDank wrote:
| It would indeed be hard to convince me Trump has not
| committed crimes, considering a jury found that he had
| and the whole, "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck,"
| thing. Tony Accardo ran the Chicago Outfit for 4-5
| decades and never spent a single day in jail. I don't
| think most people would agree that because he was never
| convicted (or even charged), he was not committing
| crimes.
|
| If you read a story about a drug kingpin being convicted
| at trial, do you assume that he might be innocent?
| rayiner wrote:
| Your Trump trial example actually proves the opposite of
| the point you're making. CNN's legal analyst of all
| people wrote an article explaining why the prosecutors
| "contorted the law" in pursing Trump's conviction:
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-
| convicted-.... Remember, the prosecutor initially
| declined to bring the case. And those problems with the
| underlying legal theory are still subject to review on
| appeal, which very well may result in the conviction
| being overturned. There's actually a lot to debate there!
| Including whether the "shared context" you mention still
| holds in the circumstance of a blue-state jury trying
| Donald Trump. And I'd certainly not trust anyone--
| especially people without a legal background--to moderate
| people's statements about Trump's trial and conviction.
|
| Heck, even lawyers don't treat legal judgments as god-
| given "facts" except in specific legal circumstances. The
| questions at the back of every chapter in a law school
| textbook will ask the student whether a particular case
| was rightly decided or wrongly decided and why.
|
| The better way to think about legal judgments is not in
| terms of "facts" but rather "process." Even a final
| decision by the U.S. Supreme Court does not establish god
| given facts. It merely is the end of the line in a set of
| procedures that lead to a particular result in a
| particular case. But even judgments of the Supreme Court
| are second-guessed every day by 20-somethings in law
| schools around the country!
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| But, respectfully, even you, in your quest to cite facts
| require pointing out that your "facts" are not facts at
| all. The person in question, Trump, was not sentenced and
| therefore not "convicted" of anything. But this false
| claim is repeated a lot even by supposed "fact-checkers".
| Even the rest of that same paragraph is not made up of
| facts but you are trying to support some vague claim with
| appeals to things like "his own people wouldn't lie for
| him even though they loved him" or some such; you're
| bolstering a negative sentiment but not really clearly
| delineating anything resembling "facts". That's the issue
| that is being discussed and addressed by Meta at this
| point. Sure, we can call high schools physics problems as
| reflecting facts of nature, that's nice, but this is not
| what all the fuss is about.
| petersellers wrote:
| > The person in question, Trump, was not sentenced and
| therefore not "convicted" of anything.
|
| Sentencing != conviction. Conviction is the legal finding
| of guilt, sentencing is the appropriation of punishment.
|
| Given your excessive use of scarequotes around "facts",
| getting this simple fact wrong is ironic.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| That's a neat story.
|
| "in United States practice, conviction means a finding of
| guilt (i.e., a jury verdict or finding of fact by the
| judge) and imposition of sentence. If the defendant fled
| after the verdict but before sentencing, he or she has
| not been convicted,"
|
| https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/106159/if-
| someone-ha...
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| This is an instance where semantics are nothing more
| than, well, semantics.
|
| The people who say that Trump has been "convicted but not
| sentenced" actually _mean_ that he's been "found guilty
| but not sentenced", they just aren't intimately familiar
| with legal terms of art.
|
| If they simply say "Donald Trump was found guilty but not
| sentenced" instead, they've silenced the nitpickers while
| still conveying the exact same message they intended to
| in the first place.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > This is an instance where semantics are nothing more
| than, well, semantics.
|
| I'm hard pressed to think of an example of a fact that
| your statement wouldn't apply to.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| Sometimes when people complain "you're just arguing
| semantics!", the semantics do in fact need to be cleared
| up, because the words being used are confusing, or wrong
| in a way that's preventing participants in the discussion
| from getting on the same page.
|
| Here, no one is actually confused. Everyone knows and
| agrees that Trump was found guilty, but that he hasn't
| been sentenced. The only sticking point is whether you
| can use the word "convicted" to describe someone who is
| in that situation, and whether or not that's the case
| doesn't have any material effect on people's
| understanding of reality. It's just a matter of arguing
| over which words should be used, i.e. it's _just_
| semantics.
| petersellers wrote:
| Not true in New York, where this particular trial took
| place. From your own link: S 380.30 Time
| for pronouncing sentence. In general. Sentence
| must be pronounced without unreasonable delay.
| Court to fix time. Upon entering a conviction the court
| must: (a) Fix a date for pronouncing sentence; or
| (b) Fix a date for one of the pre-sentence proceedings
| specified in article four hundred; or (c) Pronounce
| sentence on the date the conviction is entered in
| accordance with the provisions of subdivision three.
|
| So not only is sentencing distinct from conviction
| semantically, it's also distinct legally in the state of
| New York.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Trump being a criminal is based on a shared legal and
| societal context.
|
| To think that someone is a criminal, you have to believe
| they committed a crime. A trial is one way of
| establishing whether they did with certain standards of
| evidence and process. But it is _very_ far from the be-
| all-end-all of the matter.
|
| For example, virtually everyone believes OJ Simpson is a
| criminal, even though he was found not guilty at trial,
| and even though plenty of biases worked against him in
| that trial, theoretically.
|
| For myself, I do believe that Trump was rightfully
| convicted and is a criminal. But that doesn't mean that
| "he was convicted" should force anyone else to believe
| this. It only means that a particular group of jurors
| believed it given the evidence that a judge found
| correctly collected and presented to them.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Facts exist. Your first sentence has 11 words. Easy to
| verify, right? Doesn't matter who's counting.
|
| May I suggest that your confusion comes from a conflation
| between facts and generalizations. Hard facts exist in
| strictly defined contexts. Relax the context, and you
| need to eventually reach for generalizations that less
| precise and potentially ambiguous.
|
| If somebidy asked me whether the cup in you hand would
| fall and and shatter when they release it from their
| grip, my answer would of course depend on a few things I
| pick up from the context: what gravitational attraction
| would the cup experience in your current location? What
| material is the cup made of (porcelain, metal...)? So if
| we're standing on earth and the cup was made of
| porcelain, I'd answer that it would fall and likely
| shatter. Doesn't mean that any cup would shatter. Metal
| cups doesn't. But that's a different fact. So there is no
| generalized fact that all cups shatter when they fall.
| Some do, some don't. We can play the same game with
| gravity. The cup wouldn't fall if we were floating on the
| ISS. So the same cup doesn't fall in all locations it
| might conceivably be.
|
| Many people don't want to deal with the level of
| precision that hard facts require. They get sloppy and
| then start these endless discussions of "this isn't true
| because..." etc. and everyone gets gradually more
| confused because nothing seems to be entirely true or
| false. The fundamental counter here is to dig in and
| tease the generalizations apart until they become sets of
| constrained hard facts.
| claytongulick wrote:
| While I get your point, and I think it's strong, I'm
| entirely unconvinced.
|
| Everything we see, do and understand exists in a context
| window of an individual. We have a shared language, with
| which we can inexpertly communicate shared concepts. That
| language is terrible at communicating certain concepts,
| so we've invented things like math and counting to try to
| become more precise. It doesn't make those things "true"
| universally. It makes them consistent within a certain
| context.
|
| How far it it from Dallas to Houston? On a paper map, it
| might be a few inches. True, within that context. Or you
| might get an answer for road miles. Or as the crow flies.
| In miles? Kilometers? It's only fairly recently (in human
| history) that we've even had somewhat consistent units of
| measure. And that whole conversation presupposes an
| enormous amount of culture knowledge and context - would
| that question mean anything to a native tribesman in
| Africa without an enormous amount of inculturation? Are
| their facts the same?
|
| I'm not trying to make a "nothing is true, we can't know
| anything" kind of argument, that's lazy thinking.
|
| I'm making an argument for maintaining skepticism in
| _everything_ , even (especially?) things that you _know
| for sure_.
| gmueckl wrote:
| You still have to distinguish between hard, absolute
| facts which definitely exist and representations thereof
| in human language. The facts never change (the distance
| between Dallas and Houstom doesn't change while we are
| having this conversation), but accurate descriptions
| require additional concepts and now we get into the
| imprecise world of human communication. Doubting the
| precision and accuracy of human language is a fair point,
| but that doesn't make facts themselves subjective.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > hard, absolute facts which definitely exist and
| representations thereof in human language
|
| It's the distinction that you're drawing between those
| things that I'm skeptical of.
| brookst wrote:
| I admire the conviction that things become absolutely
| true at a sufficient level of specification.
|
| So long as facts are represented in language, they are
| subject to language's imprecision and subjectivity. And I
| don't think that platonic ideals of facts, independent of
| representstion, have much utility.
| jachee wrote:
| > How far it it from Dallas to Houston? On a paper map,
| it might be a few inches. True, within that context. Or
| you might get an answer for road miles. Or as the crow
| flies. In miles? Kilometers? It's only fairly recently
| (in human history) that we've even had somewhat
| consistent units of measure.
|
| No one's opinion is going to make them closer together or
| farther apart, though. The distance (in whatever context)
| can be known. Can be objectively measured. That makes it
| a fact.
|
| > I'm making an argument for maintaining skepticism in
| everything, even (especially?) things that you know for
| sure.
|
| Are you skeptical about which way to put your feet when
| you get out of bed? Do you check to make sure every
| single time?
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| I think you are trying hard and writing a lot to miss the
| parent's point. You're thing about the number of words in
| the sentence is like what the parent is mistakenly
| calling "tautological;" another way to say it is
| blatantly obvious and a banal observation. This is not
| the type of thing we are talking about here. This is
| entire post is about "facts" and "fact checking" in the
| case of socio-political issues, the kinds of things for
| which there are fact checkers. The parent is obviously
| correct. Just look at the state of actual "fact checking"
| of this variety in the real world. There is a lot of
| controversy and a lot of words are used in a very loose
| way, these are not simple physics problems that you can
| punch into a TI-86. The issue is clearly about "who are
| the fact checkers" or put another way "who decides the
| facts." In a court of the law in the US, the judge is
| only arbiter of facts, these can not even be appealed.
| intended wrote:
| Everything is political, which is one of the statements
| made above.
|
| Facts are political. Because facts actively change how
| you live your life.
|
| The playwright who created the "kill all climate
| denialists" talks about how it took years for the play to
| get onto stage.
|
| And then how he began to see the truth of climate
| denialists positions. That climate denialists believed
| the facts, and realized it meant their whole way of life
| was over. So they had to do something about it. They
| responded with denial. In a very real way, they lived
| their beliefs.
|
| The fact of climate change IS political.
|
| EVERYTHING is political, there is no fact that I cannot
| convert into a weapon, through some means or the other.
| Blaming fact checkers, is simply trying not to blame
| humans.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| No, whether a coffee cup will break when you drop it or
| whatever that was is not a political thing. I'm not sure
| what the rest is about. To deny that there is a lot of
| subjectivity in the kinds of "facts" we are talking about
| her is just to deny reality.
| claytongulick wrote:
| How was I mistaken in my use of tautology?
|
| My understanding is that it's supposed to be a reduction
| of a logical argument into the form A = A, or true =
| true.
|
| When the words are different, but essentially mean the
| same thing, and used as a flawed proposition.
|
| Am I wrong about that? I certainly don't want to bandy
| the word about incorrectly.
| brookst wrote:
| "Facts is facts" works for counting words in a sentence.
|
| It does not work for anything with nuance or context, or
| for unprovable propositions. It is a fact that there is
| no elephant in my house. But if you want to doubt that
| fact for the lulz or for profit, I will be hard pressed
| to prove it.
|
| That's where our modern populist / fascists have
| weaponized disingenuousness to prove that "up is down" is
| just as valid a statement as "up is up".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Your first sentence has 11 words.
|
| It's, I think, quite relevant here to note that "word" is
| a famously hard to define concept in linguistics. That
| is, there is no generalized definition of the concept
| "word" that works across languages, writing systems (e.g.
| Chinese and Japanese writing don't traditionally use
| spaces to separate words), and ways of analyzing language
| (phonological words are different from grammatical
| words).
|
| So to make your sentence more accurate, you'd have to say
| "there are 11 groups of letters separated by whitespace
| characters or punctuation before your first period".
| rayiner wrote:
| I'd respectfully submit that:
|
| 1) While "facts" undisputed exist, there are vanishingly
| few people sufficiently versed in both epistemology and
| myriad substantive areas for "fact checking" to make
| sense. In particular, domain experts are rarely
| sufficiently versed in epistemology to distinguish
| between facts they know by virtue of their expertise, and
| other things they also believe that aren't really facts.
|
| Moreover, the folks employed checking facts for companies
| like Facebook typically don't have any expertise in
| either epistemology or the range of substantive areas in
| which they perform fact checking.
|
| 2) In practice, the issue in society isn't "facts" but
| "trust." You can build trust by being consistently
| correct about facts in a visible way. But you can't beat
| people over the head with putative facts if they don't
| trust you.
| spinnn wrote:
| It sounds like you may be heading in the direction of
| postmodernism, and/or post-Marxist Critical Theory
| claytongulick wrote:
| I certainly hope not.
|
| My intent isn't to devolve into some sort of bastardized
| nihilism, it's to inject skepticism into anything that I
| can be bothered to think about.
|
| I find it useful as a tool for critical analysis. To
| question a premise, to poke at the facts, especially the
| inarguable, indisputable ones.
|
| There seems to be an inverse relationship between the
| accuracy of a fact and the amount of trouble you get in
| for questioning it.
| motorest wrote:
| > As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly
| skeptical of the idea of a "fact".
|
| I think the problem actually lies in your personal
| interpretation of what a "fact" should be, and how it
| contrasts with what facts actually are.
|
| The definition of "fact" is "things that are known or
| proven to be true". Consequently, if you can prove that
| an assertion is not true then you prove it is not a fact.
| If your wife claims your shirt is green and not blue,
| does that refute the fact that your shirt is actually
| blue? No. Can you prove your shirt is blue? Can she prove
| your shirt is green? That is the critical aspect.
|
| Just because someone disagrees with you, that does not
| mean either if you is right or wrong. You can both be
| stating facts if it just so happens you're presuming
| definitions that don't match exactly in specific critical
| aspects.
|
| If your shirt is cyan, you can argue it's a fact the
| shirt is blue and argue it's a fact the shirt is green,
| because in RGB space both the blue channel and green
| channel is saturated. You can also state that it's a fact
| that your shirt is neither blue or green because there's
| a specific definition for that color and this one is in
| fact cyan, not blue or green.
|
| If you can prove your assertion, it's a fact. If you're
| making claims you cannot prove or even support, they are
| not facts.
|
| And more importantly, the problem tackled by fact
| checking is people making claims that are patently and
| ostentatiously false and fabricated in order to
| manipulate public perception and opinions. Does anyone
| care if your shirt is blue or green? No. Does anyone care
| if, say, Haitians are eating your pets? Yes.
| astrange wrote:
| Answering this question has to be a political topic,
| because there's an infinite stream of people asking you
| the question (by posting things that may need to be fact
| checked), and you have to decide which ones to
| prioritize.
| intended wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| This is the line in the sand that makes sense in the pre
| internet era.
|
| Online, EVERYTHING is political speech, because
| moderation is the only effective action we can take, and
| moderation is currently conflated with censorship. Even
| though it's on a private platform.
|
| I was working towards researching this and building the
| case out fully - but online speech efficacy is not served
| by the blunt measures of physical spaces, where the
| ability to speak is not as mediated.
|
| Online, diversity of voices, capability of users to
| interact safely, resolution of conflicts, these are
| better measures of how healthy the _market of ideas_ is.
|
| The point of free speech is to have an effective exchange
| of ideas, even difficult ones. The idea of free speech is
| not in service of itself, its in service of a greater
| good.
| boxed wrote:
| 1+1=2 is not a political statement
| lazide wrote:
| Apparently, it is now.
| portaouflop wrote:
| There are few things that aren't political regardless how
| you feel about them
| adamredwoods wrote:
| The earth is "round" can be made political, but there is
| a factual consensus.
|
| Therefore, we rely on experts that decipher information
| to transcend political opinions. It saddens me when
| scientists become political, only to add confusion to the
| consensus, in an attempt to weaken it.
|
| Long live Wikipedia.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The US is going to endure four more years of post-truth
| governance. It isn't in Zuckerberg's interest to have his
| organization pointing out that the emperor is unclothed
| when there is real risk of blowback in round 2.
| tptacek wrote:
| To be clear: I absolutely do not dispute this. But in
| 2025 it seems pretty clear that you cannot run a
| mainstream large-scale social network without some kind
| of moderation, so every platform is going to do
| _something_. And all I 'm saying is: what Facebook was
| doing before was _bad_ , just as a product experience.
| Just wretched. Solved no problems, mostly surfaced stuff
| I wouldn't have paid attention to in the first place.
| oraphalous wrote:
| How does an average joe evaluate the claim that their
| content moderation was bad? Cause folks on the left seem
| very upset that it's being replaced by notes, and folks
| on the right seem very glad that it's going. How do I
| judge this for myself?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Not a huge problem so long it remains a means to indicate
| that the post is hallucinatory. Content of checks/notes
| don't matter, it's tone policing.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| People are going to believe it is political whether or
| not it is. I've been working at hard at talking about
| difficult issues in a depoliticized frame. It's hard.
|
| Lately I've been talking with a lot of people trying to
| help find answers and something I am learning is to
| delete all the duckspeak from my vocabulary (there was an
| otherwise good article about "placement poverty" in
| medical education that I didn't post last weekend because
| but "X poverty" is duckspeak)
|
| If I say anything at all to anyone about this or that and
| get a negative response about the words I use I take it
| very seriously and most of the time resolve to use
| different words in future.
| seadan83 wrote:
| What are more examples of duckspeak and is it context
| dependent?
| lodovic wrote:
| Orwell defined it as thoughtless or formulaic speech.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is an essay at the end of Orwell's 1984
|
| https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
|
| called "The Principles of Newspeak" that coins the word.
|
| The slogan "My Body My Choice" has some of this
| character. It rolls off the tongue and stops thought.
| There is no nuance: the rights of the mother are
| inalienable. Opponents will talk about the inalienable
| rights of the fetus. There is no room for compromise but
| setting some temporal point in the pregnancy is a
| compromise like Solomon's that makes sense to the
| disengaged but gives no satisfaction to people who see it
| as moral issue. [1]
|
| Note that this phrase turned out to be content-free and
| perfectly portable when it got picked up by anti-vaccine
| activists.
|
| "Illegal Alien" is a masterpiece of language engineering
| that stands on its own for effectiveness. I mean, we all
| follow laws that we don't agree with or live with the
| threat of arrest and imprisonment if we don't. It's easy
| to see somebody breaking the law and not getting caught
| as a threat to the legitimacy of the system.
| "Undocumented Migrant" has been introduced as an
| alternative but it just doesn't roll off the tongue in
| the same way and since it is not so entrenched it comes
| across more as language engineering.
|
| (Practically as opposed to morally: Americans would
| rather work at Burger King rather than get a few more $
| per hour to get up early for difficult and dirty work
| which might have you toiling in the hot or the cold. An
| American would see a farmhand job at a dairy farm as a
| dead end job. A Mexican is an experienced ag worker who
| might want to save up money to buy his own farm. Which
| one does the dairy farmer want to have handling his
| cows?)
|
| My son bristles at "healthcare" as a word consistently
| used for abortion and transgender medicine to the point
| where he shows microexpressions when reading discussions
| about access to healthcare in general.
|
| This poster burns me up
|
| https://www.pinterest.com/pin/741405157385448245/
|
| in that teaching small children the alleged difference
| between two words will make a difference in the very
| difficult problems that (say) black [2] people have in
| America trivializes those problems. It trains them to
| become the kind of people who will trade memes online as
| opposed to facing those problems. In the meantime I've
| heard so many right wingers repetitively talk about
| "Equality of opportunity" vs "Equality of outcomes" which
| is a real point but reduces a complex and fraught problem
| to a single axis.
|
| [1] There's a great discussion of this
| https://www.amazon.com/Rights-Talk-Impoverishment-
| Political-... although that book has a discussion of the
| Americans with Disabilities Act that hasn't aged well
|
| [2] Bloomberg Businessweek has a policy to always say
| capital B when they talk about "Black" people. Do black
| people care? Does it really help them? What side of the
| barricades are they on when they write gushing articles
| about Bernard Arnault and review $250 bottles of booze
| and $3000/night hotel rooms.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| Crossing the border is fine, unless it's a state line.
|
| Then you cannot cross it or the intent is murder.
|
| Unless your intent is to murder, than you can cross it -
| that's Healthcare.
|
| Healthcare is a right. In fact, it's an societal
| obligation. Trust the Science(TM).
|
| Your body, the state's choice.
|
| Are you a racist, or a communist?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > "Undocumented Migrant" has been introduced as an
| alternative but it just doesn't roll off the tongue in
| the same way and since it is not so entrenched it comes
| across more as language engineering.
|
| It definitely comes across as language engineering. It's
| a legitimate category ("I'm an asylum seeker directly on
| my way to claim asylum from the nearest office") but
| expanded to include people who are just in the country
| illegally. It's too obvious to convince many people for
| very long.
| pyrale wrote:
| > My son bristles at "healthcare" as a word consistently
| used for abortion and transgender medicine
|
| In terms of cost, the items you cite are vanishingly
| small, and to conflate the two, one must have no
| experience of the medical system beyond twitter.
|
| Is your son on his own? Did he have to pay the cost for a
| broken limb or a child's disease, or has he seen a family
| member go through a cancer? Maybe he would have a better
| sense of what "healthcare" means if he had actually been
| facing these situations.
| shakes_mcjunkie wrote:
| I think you'll find basically everything is political. Do
| you have a fear of debate or criticism?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| No. I can't stand it that so many Americans have fallen
| under the spell of a fraudster while others are sharing
| hateful memes online and think it is activism. I need
| stronger language, not weaker language.
|
| I don't like the word "debate" because it makes me think
| of a high school debate where you are assigned which side
| of the issue and it is about to winning or losing.
|
| https://depts.washington.edu/fammed/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/...
|
| in the current situation people feel they have exactly
| one candidate to vote for every time and thus we have no
| ability to vote out corrupt politicians. The political
| class wins and the rest of us lose.
|
| (I am so concerned about people's inability or reluctant
| to change that I've experienced a call to the ministry
| and I'm working to use practices that I developed for
| selfish ends in the past to help others. Ideally when I
| offend you I want to strike you at the core and leave you
| haunted for months and not be able to think about the
| issue the same way ever again. If you're reacting to bits
| of trash somebody else stuck on me that I'm not aware of,
| I'm not going to get that strike in.)
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Actually very few things _have_ to be political.
| Politicising, that is rendering the concept to decision
| by a "body politic" is a choice that we're making right
| now, and we could choose to not do that. In fact, we have
| done that throughout our nation's history, and it's only
| in the last 20 years that I've seen the rise of
| "everything is political speech" to the degree that the
| brand of beans you buy in a store signals something to
| some group.
|
| To wit there are a lot of totalitarians out there, and
| just because some group claims to be on your side or
| looking out for your interests versus some other group it
| doesn't mean they don't want your mind, body, and soul
| for their own purposes. We must take it upon ourselves to
| think for ourselves and to hold our own interests rather
| than to adopt the interests of the group we're in. Humans
| can engage in enterprise as a group for their own
| reasons, and we ought to embrace that instead of seeking
| to identify so wholly with the group that we lose
| ourselves.
| khafra wrote:
| What I've read of the Community Notes algorithm casts it
| as far more neutral than any hiring decisions about
| professional content moderators could possibly be. If
| it's "political," it's in a similar way to comparing the
| GDP of various countries is political--reality gives the
| verdict, the politics is in whether that verdict was the
| optimal one to ask reality for.
| toasteros wrote:
| > I just can't help but think there's a political
| component to all of it.
|
| "We're moving to Texas to eliminate perceptions of bias"
| is the biggest giveaway of this.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Austin is very left of center. If they end up there, they
| will have ideologically strayed in California while
| geographically moving to Texas.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Stayed not strayed.
| shakes_mcjunkie wrote:
| Infowars was based in Austin. Joe Rogan is in Austin. How
| does moving to Austin mean they are "ideologically" in
| California?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Joe Rogan also moved from California.
| tough wrote:
| Elon too, isnt it cheaper taxes for business there?
|
| i mean they can just pretend and get paid
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Visit Texas. Then visit Austin. You'll know what I mean.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presiden
| tia...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People move to other states due to state laws. City laws
| can easily be avoided by living and/or working just
| outside the city limits. Or more likely, state laws will
| preempt city laws that go against state level politics.
| gadders wrote:
| There was always a political component to it. The Twitter
| files told us this. It's just the political component is
| going the other way.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| what are the twitter files?
| gadders wrote:
| The documents provided by Elon Musk to Bari Weiss, Matt
| Taibbi etc when he took over Twitter.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I expect it was an easy bone to throw the incoming
| administration, which the tech world learned from v1 is
| placatable by giving them PR / sound bite wins.
|
| To the broader concern, this feels like Facebook making
| their original sin again.
|
| Namely defunding and destroying revenue for a task that
| takes money (fact checking) and then expecting a free,
| community-driven approach to replace it.
|
| Turns out, hot takes for clicks are a lot cheaper than
| journalism.
|
| In this case, where is the funding to support nuanced,
| accurate fact checking at scale from?
|
| Because it sure seems like Facebook isn't going to pay.
|
| > _I 've never seen a wrong Facebook fact-check_
|
| Did you mean to say Note here?
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I meant to say Facebook fact-check.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Facebook 's fact-checkers have been that much of a
| product disaster._
|
| > _I 've never seen a wrong Facebook fact-check_
|
| Confused between these two statements, then.
| tptacek wrote:
| Do you believe the success or failure of these moderating
| features comes down to how _accurate_ they are? People
| actually like Community Notes; they 're part of the
| discourse on Twitter (even if most of them are pretty
| bad, some of them are timely and sharp). Meanwhile:
| Facebook's fact-checking features really do work sort of
| like PSA's for trolls. All the while, fact-checks barely
| scratch the surface of the conversations happening on the
| platform.
|
| Facebook and Twitter are also unalike in their social
| dynamics. It makes sense to think of individual major
| trending stories on Twitter, which can be "Noted", in a
| way it doesn't make sense on Meta, which is atomized;
| people spreading bullshit on Meta are carpet bombing the
| site with individual hits each hoping to get just a
| couple eyeballs, rather than a single monster thread
| everyone sees.
|
| (This may be different on Threads, I don't use Threads or
| know anybody who does).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Success in what definition?
|
| PR/political success is certainly not correlated with
| accuracy, given the very act of telling a group they're
| wrong tends to piss them off.
|
| In terms of encouraging discourse that maximizes user
| enjoyment of the platform? That's a difficult one.
| Accuracy probably doesn't do a whole lot there either: HN
| knows the people love someone being confidently wrong.
|
| Success in terms of society? Probably more yes, albeit
| with the caveat that only a correction that someone feels
| good about actually wins hearts and minds. Otherwise they
| spiral off into conspiracies about "the man" keeping them
| down. (Read: conservative reality)
|
| It's also important to remember that Zuckerberg only
| tacked into moderation in the first place due to
| prevailing political winds -- he openly espoused
| absolutist views about free speech originally, before
| some PR black eyes made that untenable.
|
| To me, both approaches to moderation at scale (admins
| moderating or users moderating) are band-aids.
|
| The underlying problem is algorithmic promotion.
|
| The platforms need to be more curious about the type of
| content their algorithms are selecting for promotion, the
| characteristics incentivized, and the net experience
| result.
|
| Rage-driven virality shouldn't be an organizational end
| unto itself to juice engagement KPIs and revenue. User
| enjoyment of the platform should be.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > he openly espoused absolutist views about free speech
| originally, before some PR black eyes made that
| untenable.
|
| Note that openly espousing absolutist views about free
| speech means less than nothing. Elon Musk and Donald
| Trump openly profess such views, while constantly
| shouting down, blocking, or even suing anyone who dares
| speak against them with any amount of popularity.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Do you believe the success or failure of these
| moderating features comes down to how accurate they are?
| People actually like Community Notes; they're part of the
| discourse on Twitter (even if most of them are pretty
| bad, some of them are timely and sharp). Meanwhile:
| Facebook's fact-checking features really do work sort of
| like PSA's for trolls. All the while, fact-checks barely
| scratch the surface of the conversations happening on the
| platform.
|
| You're making a whole host of assumptions and opinions
| about this, with little in the way of data (I get it, you
| don't work at FB, how much data could you have?), just
| making blanket statements: "People hate Fact Checks",
| "People actually like Community Notes" and accepting them
| as accurate.
| tptacek wrote:
| I use Facebook, a lot (again: all the politics in my town
| happens there), and almost nothing is fact-checked; I see
| one fact-check notice for every 1,000 bad posts I see. I
| feel like I'm on pretty solid ground saying that what
| they're doing today isn't working.
|
| Meanwhile: Community Notes have become part of the
| discourse on Twitter; getting Noted is the new Ratio'd.
|
| Accuracy has nothing to do with any of this. I don't
| think either Notes or Warnings actually solves
| "misinformation". I'm saying one is a good product
| design, and the other is not.
| psyklic wrote:
| Not seeing fact checks likely means it's working: "Once
| third-party fact-checkers have fact-checked a piece of
| Meta content and found it to be misleading or false, Meta
| reduces the content's distribution "so that fewer people
| see it.""
|
| The issue with Community Notes is that if enough people
| believe a lie, it will not be noted. This lends further
| credence to a certain set of "official" lies.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I feel like I'm on pretty solid ground saying that what
| they're doing today isn't working
|
| How does that follow at all?
| curtisblaine wrote:
| It's not that they're inaccurate, it's just that they
| cherry-pick the topics to fact-check and their choice (in
| my limited experience) is always biased leftwards. You
| can be absolutely correct and absolutely malicious at the
| same time.
| energy123 wrote:
| Obeying in advance, especially the Dana White
| appointment. Not that this move to community notes wasn't
| also a good product decision.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >I think it would have been product development malpractice
|
| the thing is both community notes and top down moderation,
| if they have any purpose at all, are product malpractice.
| If they work, they are always going to be intrusive because
| that's what they're supposed to do, correct factually wrong
| information. Community notes is the neighborhood police,
| top down moderation is the feds but if they do their job
| either one is going to be annoying by definition.
|
| If they're not intrusive they don't perform a corrective
| function and that's what largely happened to community
| notes. As time goes on they're more and more snarky and
| sarcastic meta comments rather than corrections.
| tptacek wrote:
| It seems pretty clear to me that one of these features
| generally makes users happy and, at the same time, does
| correct some misinformation, and the other catches about
| 0.0001% of the bad stuff and turns it into advertisements
| for how bad the site is.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| How can you possibly call community notes on Twitter a
| "success" when they demonstrably have not reduced the
| amount of actively made up shit on the site, and the same
| people who complain about a fact checker saying "no,
| vaccines do not change your DNA" are just as upset when
| that info comes from the community notes box, and the
| only reason there hasn't been widescale anger about them
| is because Elon wants to pretend it was his idea.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not saying Twitter it is good. It is demonstrably
| not. But you're kidding yourself if you thought Facebook
| fact checking was suppressing the antivaxers and flat-
| earthers.
| freejazz wrote:
| Oh, so community notes on twitter are actually _not_
| good, but its good that Facebook is implementing them
| anyway? You make no sense and are constantly equivocating
| back and forth in all your different posts.
| melodyogonna wrote:
| They're not there to eliminate made up shit, they're the
| to add context - e.g "this post is made up and
| demonstrably false".
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| But because they are community driven, they are snarky in
| a way that represents the community, which makes me
| question if they are intrusive at all. They are what the
| community grows them into.
| rwmj wrote:
| Clegg left a few days ago, and the Oversight Board issued a
| statement which sounds like they were in the dark:
|
| _> "We look forward to working with Meta in the coming
| weeks to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring
| its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as
| possible."_ [1]
|
| So is it possible this was only announced recently. It
| might have been "in the works" in the C-suite for a bit
| longer, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence it was
| widely known before very recently.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/meta-
| face...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| As a product decision, I agree.
|
| But I think that can still be addressed separately from the
| fact that all the tech leaders in Silicon Valley are
| bending the knee to Trump (e.g. the Mar-a-Lago visits, the
| "donations" to his inauguration, etc.)
|
| I'll give you an example I find analogous. When Bezos
| forbid the Washington Post from giving a presidential
| endorsement, he wrote an op-ed,
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-
| bezo.... I pretty much agreed with the vast majority of
| what he wrote there. What I think is total BS, though, is
| his purported rationale and the timing of the decision. I
| think it's absolutely clear he did it because he didn't
| want to piss off Trump should he win (the "obeying in
| advance" part), which he did. The reason I believe this is
| because he made this decision so close to the election, and
| he apparently didn't feel the need to do this in previous
| years, or even the fact that WaPo made other political
| endorsements (e.g. Senate races in Maryland and VA) just
| before the presidential endorsement was banned. Bezos
| subsequent Mar-a-Lago visits and Amazon's inauguration
| "donation" pretty much confirm my view in my opinion.
|
| In Zuckerberg's announcement, I thought the part he put in
| about fact checkers being "politically biased" was
| unnecessary (not to mention dubious IMO), and cleared
| seemed done to curry favor with the current powers that be.
| tptacek wrote:
| As someone active in "resistance"-type organization from
| 2017-2021, with fundamentally the same politics now as I
| had then: I think all this "bend the knees" shit is
| mostly working to the benefit of the GOP, and I wish
| people would stop it. We lost an election, in part
| because we bet that the median voter was prepared to
| disqualify MAGA Republicans. They are not. Find a new
| angle, so we can win in the midterms. This isn't working.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm not trying to convince other voters. The "bend the
| knee" shit is not something I'm saying to try to change
| opinions. Like you say, clearly the majority of Americans
| don't care.
|
| But it I'm pretty surprised at the outright transparent
| speed with which all these business leaders were willing
| to pay these naked fealty bribes, especially since for so
| long so many of them talked about these lofty goals
| besides just making money.
|
| Italians in the 1930s didn't care either when Mussolini
| made corporations an arm of the state. But that doesn't
| mean what is happening now is any different.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they do this every cycle no matter who
| wins, but Democrats notice and recoil when it happens
| after a Republican win, and vice versa. There's also a
| titration of the news media mining clicks from a framing
| that de-"normalizes" the Trump administration. But that
| ship has sailed: you could say "This Is Not Normal" in
| 2017, which was a fluke nobody saw coming, but Trump won
| decisively this cycle, and absolutely everybody knew what
| we were getting into. It's time for the media to retire
| the schtick.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Is it a "schtick" to report such brazen cronyism?
|
| I agree with the parent that Americans in general seem
| not to mind corruption, but we can't become so jaded as
| to think that it's not even worth mentioning that this is
| a problem.
| tptacek wrote:
| Referring to public company CEOs warmly greeting the
| newly elected president as "brazen cronyism" is a
| schtick, yes.
|
| It annoys me a lot that I have to point things like this
| out, because I think Trump is a grave problem for the
| country, but you have to beat him at the ballot box, and
| the schtick obviously isn't working there.
| xorcist wrote:
| Moving employee jurisdiction to suit the incoming
| administration is hardly the same as a warm greeting
| though, is it?
|
| In my country we have a different word for people giving
| large sums of money as gifts to incoming politicians, yet
| we seldom impose that definition on others. US politics
| is different and affects the climate here too, even
| though that population is around 20% or less of all
| Facebook users.
| mythrwy wrote:
| The way to win is with a more appealing set of policy
| proposals.
|
| More centralized government control, "Karen" style
| moralizing, DEI, gun banning, global warming, more
| bureaucratic (and ineffective) regulation, abortions
| everywhere and the entire "woke" platform apparently
| isn't it.
|
| I'd suggest defocusing on those and instead return to
| being the party of the "working man" and a stable
| economy.
|
| "Wealthy corporations want to force you to work 80 hours
| a week to enjoy unfair profits or they will replace you
| with immigrant labor" should be the vibe while never once
| speaking about things like systemic racism or climate
| change. Also "the rent is too damn high!". Definitely
| don't have the party fronted by people who appear
| airheaded or unintelligent.
|
| You have to speak to the concerns of the voter which I
| think are individual freedom and economic prosperity.
|
| Once in power you can do whatever you like of course, as
| is traditional in politics and Trump won't be any
| exception.
| smolder wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no party of "the working man"
| since the citizens united ruling opened the floodgates
| for legal & private bribery, and arguably before that.
| Bernie Sanders, whatever you think of his proposals and
| views generally, is the rare exception who stands against
| the bribery and acts as a true populist, and for that he
| was undermined and defeated as a presidential candidate.
| People know the democratic party is two-faced, and I
| don't see how that can ever change, with money being so
| essential to US politics now.
| mythrwy wrote:
| MAGA didn't win with money. The democrats spent far more.
| They won with a message.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I'm fairly sure this is either untrue or unknowable. If
| the official "Harris campaign" spent more than the "Trump
| campaign" that doesn't actually mean much, considering
| how many other avenues exist to spend money that escape
| public scrutiny.
|
| Even if you could account for all the dark money, that
| still leaves you with leveraging soft power - e.g. Musk
| using X as a de facto propaganda arm of the Republican
| party, which doesn't show up on any books.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it is knowable. The democrats spent far
| more.
|
| Musk and X propaganda helped. Also Rogan and other
| podcasters, but look at how much propaganda the democrat
| side has/had. All the major media outlets. Reddit, etc
| etc. Plus the power of the federal government in
| censorship, courts and the like.
|
| Look, I don't really care and don't trust anyone running
| for office much. I'm just pointing out what a winning
| platform would look like. MAGA won because they were
| speaking to things that more people found important. When
| the Democrats figure this out, they will be in the
| winning seat again. If they don't, then they will not
| win.
| freejazz wrote:
| Wow what brilliant political insight - this place is
| shocking sometimes.
| smolder wrote:
| I'm saying that the democrats lost because they keep
| taking corporate/oligarch money and are at odds with the
| values of the people who would otherwise support them.
| They aren't the party that supports the little guy
| anymore, so they're basically without an argument aside
| from "not Trump". I don't think you understood my
| previous post, which was a critique of the democrats,
| which _used to_ have "the working man"'s back.
|
| Republicans have always been and continue to be pro-
| elite, pro-oligarchy, and against the economic interests
| anyone outside the upper class. They still have a better
| message than the democrats at the moment.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Ah gotcha. I misread and agree completely with what you
| state. That does appear (to me anyway) exactly what
| happened.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > More centralized government control, "Karen" style
| moralizing, DEI, gun banning, global warming, more
| bureaucratic (and ineffective) regulation, abortions
| everywhere and the entire "woke" platform apparently
| isn't it.
|
| I totally agree with that.
|
| > The way to win is with a more appealing set of policy
| proposals.
|
| I completely disagree with that. At this point I think
| it's a bit laughable to think that the majority of
| Americans care about policy proposals. Trump's appeal, I
| believe, is that he gave a voice and an outlet for anger
| to large swaths of people who felt they had been ignored
| (which they largely had) and talked down to for years.
| The "elites" (often of both parties) had basically told
| people in hollowed-out communities and those with failing
| economic prospects that it was their fault - you just
| should have gotten a college education, or retrained for
| the new economy. The Democratic messaging made things
| worse by also saying "Hey, you know those social
| standards that were the norm up until the mid 90s? Well,
| if you believe those, you're a knuckle dragging bigot."
|
| When people have simmering anger and rage, a "nice guy"
| approach isn't going to cut it. That's why so many people
| vote for Trump _even when_ they find so many aspects of
| his personality distasteful.
|
| I'm baffled why a politician hasn't taken more of the
| lead with the rage that has exploded since the CEO
| murder. Some elites on the right are trying to frame this
| as "The crazy Left condones murder!", while I see some
| elites on the left doing their usual useless finger
| wagging against insurance companies (see Elizabeth
| Warren). I just don't understand why a politician hasn't
| taken this torch and gone into "We're going to tear it
| all down" mode. I mean, of course there's Bernie, but at
| this point it needs a younger and more "firebrand" type
| of person.
| toss1 wrote:
| If it was in the works for a long time, then Zuckerberg has
| been planning to bend the knee to Trump for a long time.
|
| Today, Trump in press conference (video at [0]:
|
| Q: "Do you think Zuckerberg is responding to the threats
| you've made to him in the past?"
|
| TRUMP: "Probably. Yeah. Probably."
|
| This tells us all we need to know. It has nothing to do
| with facts and _everything_ to do with yielding to
| political pressure to bend the media to his whims.
|
| This is just the most standard and basic elements of
| autocracy, the autocrat must make all the institutions
| serve him, not the people. This includes not only the
| branches of government, but also of society, starting with
| the press, but also the corporate world, the academy,
| social groups, and everything else.
|
| This is bog-standard autocracy, not democracy.
|
| [0] https://x.com/atrupar/status/1876683641113248036
| emmelaich wrote:
| Bending left and right according to the government of the
| day doesn't tell you where the true center is.
| toss1 wrote:
| Autocracy is not Left or Right. It is corrupting all the
| institutions to serve the will of the autocrat, not the
| will of the people.
|
| Bending the knee to the autocrat, in this case explicitly
| changing your rules and operations to enable the autocrat
| and his followers to more easily spread their lies and
| intimidation is not political flexibility, it is obeying
| in advance to be complicit in implementing the autocracy.
|
| It would be better if you didn't have to learn that the
| hard way, but our educational system and information
| distribution system has failed. This is just a more
| advanced and accelerated example of that failure.
|
| [Edit: yes, my mistake to phrase it as political pressure
| -- it was nothing of the sort -- it was authoritarian
| extortion. Note Zuck has a case before the FTC.]
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Autocracts doesn't get democratically elected, as far as
| I understand. Trump is a democratically elected leader
| who will end his term at most in 2028. Autocracts tend to
| not be democratically elected (or to change the rules
| once they're elected to never be deposed). Zuckerberg
| will bend his knee to the Democrats if they win next
| term. This is not autocracy, this is just knowing where
| the wind blows.
| xorcist wrote:
| That doesn't make sense with the common use of the word.
| Autocracy is a much wider term than a militia style
| dictatorship, and is mostly used in the context of
| democracy.
|
| Most, if not all, autocrats _are_ democratically elected
| (with some wildly varying definition of democracy of
| course).
| toss1 wrote:
| In current times, democratically elected autocrats
| include Putin of Russia, Orban of Hungary, Erdogan of
| Turkey, Chavez/Maduro of Venezuela, Bukele of El
| Slavador, and more. Jumping back a most notorious
| autocrat, Hitler was democratically elected.
|
| Autocracy is not typically imposed by conquest, it is
| mostly created by corruption of institutions. It is not
| binary, it is on a scale.
|
| In full democracies, all the institutions of government,
| legislative, executive, and judicial, are independent and
| serve as checks & balances against each other. And the
| institutions of society, industry, trade, press,
| academic, sport, social, etc. are also fully independent.
|
| Under autocracy, all of these governmental and societal
| institutions are corrupted to bend to the will of the
| autocrat, often by his using force of government to his
| corrupt ends.
|
| This is _exactly_ what Trump just admitted to and
| Zuckerberg just did -- he threatened Zuckerberg with
| unfair government actions, and Zuckerberg is now
| converting Facebook to work to further Trump 's goals
| instead of remaining an independent institution.
|
| Here's just a few resources on elected autocrats [0]
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-new-
| auto...
|
| [1] https://nps.edu/-/nps-professor-takes-a-deep-dive-
| into-elect...
|
| [2]
| https://academy.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/democrats-
| and...
|
| [3] https://press.umich.edu/Blog/2022/07/Elections-in-
| Modern-Dic...
| motorest wrote:
| > I get how the partisan story is easy to tell here, but
| I'm saying something pretty specific: I think it would have
| been product development malpractice for this decision not
| to have been in the works for many, many months, long
| before the GOP takeover of the federal government was a
| safe bet.
|
| You're just stating that, in your personal opinion, a
| scenario would be bad. That says nothing about it actually
| taking place.
|
| You're expressing your personal opinion in response to a
| message listing facts supporting the belief the scenario is
| actually taking place.
|
| Meaning, it's still plausible this is what is actually
| happening.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't understand your point at all. Community Notes on
| E(x) has been ineffective, because ultimately the point of
| moderation is to _delete posts which aren 't true_ so they
| receive no reach and spread no disinformation.
|
| Not to turn them into a public debate which might as well
| continue in the posts themselves.
|
| Meta's political history has consistently been shady. Meta
| patented behavioural targeting technology in 2012 and was
| fined $5bn for its "accidental" links to anti-democratic
| election-fixers Cambridge Analytica/SCL, who have ties to
| far-right oligarchs in the US and the UK.
|
| If you're looking for an ideological position, look there.
| The historical record is absolutely clear.
|
| And then there are comments from Meta insiders, who -
| perhaps - have a clearer picture of what's going on than
| outsiders do.
|
| As for malpractice, consider the recent AI rollout and
| rollback. It was an absolute fiasco for all kinds of
| reasons, PR and technical, not least of which was the way
| the bots themselves turned on the company.
|
| Threads has already had a mini-exodus because of slanted
| moderation.
|
| Meta is simply not a trustworthy company. So "Oh, let's
| scrap our moderation and do community notes" is hardly an
| isolated slip-up on an otherwise unblemished record of
| noble public service.
|
| https://fortune.com/2025/01/04/meta-ai-accounts-bots-
| false-r...
|
| https://www.platformer.news/meta-fact-checking-free-
| speech-s...
| RansomStark wrote:
| > ultimately the point of moderation is to delete posts
| which aren't true so they receive no reach and spread no
| disinformation.
|
| That assumes that the correct amount of disinformation is
| zero, personally I wish to maintain my right to be wrong,
| and my right to tell others of my wrong ideas, and I hope
| they maintain the right to tell me I'm full of it.
|
| Your position on censorship, moderation, as you call it,
| is your opinion, and your opinion only, and it is at odds
| with the position of X, and now Meta, who are taking the
| position that the point of moderation is to respect
| everyone's right to speech, while making it very obvious
| to those that care, that the speech may be less than
| truthful. Essentially everyone gets to speak, and
| everyone gets to make up their own mind. What a concept!
|
| I also maintain a position of truth dies in the dark, and
| lies die in the light.
|
| Most people aren't stupid, community notes breaks the
| echo chamber and provides a counterpoint.
|
| That debate of free ideas has been working pretty well so
| far. So much so that we can usually tell who the bad guys
| are by how much the create darkness; how much they take
| on the role of arbiters of truth, how much they silence
| critics, think Soviet Russia, or North Korea for some
| good examples.
| freejazz wrote:
| I don't think the point of the fact-checkers is so that
| facebook users like them, and it seems odd to pretend that
| was ever the point.
| panarky wrote:
| Both professional fact-checkers and Community Notes have a
| pretty low false-positive rate.
|
| It's the false negatives that are the differentiator, but
| false negatives are by definition invisible to the user.
|
| When you evaluate moderation as a "product" you place more
| weight on factors that are mostly losers for third-party
| fact checkers and winners for Community Notes: speed and
| annoying tone.
|
| But since false negatives are never seen, there's no
| visible "product" to be annoyed by. Sure, the platform
| fills up with even more disinfo, but users blame that on
| other user, not the moderation "product".
|
| And this is where Community Notes fails. Because Notes
| require consensus from multiple groups with histories of
| diverse ideological perspectives, when one perspective has
| an interest in propagating disinfo, no Community Note
| appears.
|
| Some studies show something like 75% of clear disinfo
| doesn't get a Community Note on X when it involves a hot
| partisan shibboleth.
|
| False negatives are mostly invisible failures that make the
| entire platform worse, but the user can't blame it on a
| "product" because it's really the absence of a product
| that's the problem.
| philwelch wrote:
| Austin is much closer to the center of mainstream American
| sentiment than the SF Bay Area, but it's still to the left of
| center.
| davidw wrote:
| And Redding, California is far to the right of it.
|
| It's just coded language for who they're going to favor,
| otherwise it makes no sense at all, as it's possible to
| find people of all political stripes in both states, as
| well as employees who would take their duty to stick to the
| facts very seriously.
| intended wrote:
| It's a Cost reduction garbed in PR.
|
| They have teams in Austin already.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| [flagged]
| pesus wrote:
| You're generally correct, but I imagine you won't get a
| good reaction on HN to this viewpoint. Most people on
| here unfortunately don't really an understanding of
| politics beyond a very surface level one.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| HN is not a political site and Deng doesn't allow much
| politics. Your generalization is based purely on only the
| surface level discussion allowed.
|
| Maybe it's you that doesn't have nuanced 'understanding'?
| pesus wrote:
| I'm certainly no expert, I just wish we could at least
| use the surface level terms correctly.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| I'd be thrilled to have the right correctly differentiate
| between the democrats and leftists. Using the right terms
| would be a useful start to having some dialogs.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Burlington, Vermont.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Burlington Vermont might be close.
| rcpt wrote:
| Rutland
| netbioserror wrote:
| This is a statement about yourself, not the US.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Not really? The democratic and republican parties are
| both classical liberal parties, invested in business and
| capital as _the_ standard and correct way to organize a
| society. Classical liberalism is a center-right ideology,
| globally.
|
| Show me the party in the U.S. that wants to abolish
| private property, wants to provide food, healthcare, and
| housing to all, that wants to nationalize key industries,
| that wants to govern from a standpoint of "wellbeing for
| all". If you can point me to a place where that's the
| prevailing ideology, I'll gladly recant the idea that no
| place like that exists here.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Just where exactly do you think the centre of the
| political spectrum is if anything left of it means full-
| on Marxist-Leninist communism?
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Social democrats (e.g. Nordic model) are left of center,
| but aren't MLs or communists. Anarchists (e.g. Kropotkin)
| are left of center but aren't MLs or communists.
|
| There's plenty of room between the center and Marxist
| Leninism.
|
| I would say many labor politicians are centrist. Some
| democrats are center, some are center-left. Some are
| center-right.
|
| Some members of Liberal parties are centrist.
|
| The center has tons of parties in it.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| You are not using the term "left of center" how most
| people do. Which is fine if you want to but then don't
| get surprised when you have to explain yourself every
| single time.
|
| BTW as an actual "classical liberal" I find it hilarious
| you describe the two parties that way.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Which of the two isn't a classical liberal party?
| philwelch wrote:
| You could just as easily say that the Republicans and
| Democrats are both left of center because neither party
| wants to restore a politically active monarchy, establish
| a national church and reform law and government under
| explicitly religious lines, restrict and revoke
| citizenship based on ethnicity, or install a military
| government. You might say, "but those are all crazy far-
| right things that no sane developed country would do",
| but I think nationalizing industries and abolishing
| private property are crazy far-left things that no sane
| developed country would do, either.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Canadian potash corporation, Chilean mining, French
| financial sector, gazprom in Germany, Indian fossil
| fuels, railways around the globe, Amtrak here in the U.S.
|
| Many many nations are nationalizing things historically
| and through today.
|
| Nationalization isn't a litmus test for if you are a
| leftist though, it's an example of one leftist policy.
|
| In general, the left seeks social justice through
| redistributive social and economic policies, while the
| right defends private property and capitalism.
| philwelch wrote:
| > In general, the left seeks social justice through
| redistributive social and economic policies, while the
| right defends private property and capitalism.
|
| That's an extremely left-skewed framing that leaves out a
| lot of important cultural issues. For instance, the
| leftists during the Spanish Civil War massacred Catholic
| priests and nuns and burned down churches while many on
| the right sought to protect the church and restore the
| Spanish monarchy.
|
| It's more correct to say that the right defends
| traditional institutions, which might include capitalism,
| but even these vary widely from country to country. For
| instance the United States never had a monarchy or an
| established religion; most of the American Founding
| Fathers would have sat somewhere left of center in the
| Estates General during the French Revolution, which is
| where we get the terms "left" and "right" from in the
| first place. But in an American context, the republic and
| the constitution are the traditional institutions that
| the American right has traditionally defended, even
| though they were established by the 18th century left.
|
| Even when it comes to capitalism it's not as clear cut.
| Prior to the American Civil War, the north was capitalist
| but the south had a precapitalist agrarian economy based
| on slave labor. The northern liberals, abolitionists, and
| capitalists formed a coalition to the left of the
| southern planters. Outside of areas that had widespread
| slavery, there's also a long tradition of right wing
| critiques of capitalism as a destructive change to the
| traditional patterns of society, and there are many on
| the far right who seek to return to much older ways that
| are now lost.
| amalcon wrote:
| Parent obviously meant "center" to be the political
| center of the U.S. given the previous sentence. I'm not
| sure they're _correct_ in either statement (not having
| investigated in any way), or that this is a reasonable
| thing to consider for a global platform (to the extent
| that Facebook is one).
|
| Nonetheless, it's trivially true that _somewhere_ in the
| US must be to the left of the political center of the
| U.S.
| lobf wrote:
| ...how do you mean? What are you defining 'left of
| center' as?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Parent was making an observation that the entire US
| political discourse, including both sides, tends to be
| right of _global_ center.
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| Why would the political leanings of other countries
| matter in a discussion about the US?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Because the US is part of the world.
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| Not a discussion about "the world."
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being obtuse or obstinant.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| The Left Right dichotomy is a fairly broad set of
| political ideas, especially globally. The Left typically
| includes socialists, communists, anarchists, labor
| movements, syndicalists, and social democrats. Typically,
| these movements are collectivist, whether that's
| collectivist in a big government or collectivist in small
| local communities.
|
| Classical liberal policies, looks those of the Democrats
| and Republicans, are right of center.
|
| An example, when was the last time the Democratic Party
| pushed for nationalization of a whole industry? Eg
| aerospace, rail, or energy? What about offering food and
| housing for everyone? Abolishing private property?
| _Those_ are leftist policies.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| > _" Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams
| out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This
| will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly
| censoring content." - like people being in Texas makes them
| more objective?!_
|
| The FB office in Austin, Texas is a moderately left-leaning
| area. Their office in Silicon Valley is about the most
| extreme left-wing place in the country. At the very least,
| teams at their Texas offices will have _more_ overlap with
| the median voter than the ones in California. If their Texas
| offices were in rural rancher country, then I 'd agree with
| your concern that it would just be swapping one bias for
| another.
| davidw wrote:
| It's not about actual employees, it's about signalling
| "Texas - yay!" and "California - booooo!" in order to make
| good with the incoming administration.
| tptacek wrote:
| Well, that and moderators being able to afford 1-bedroom
| apartments.
| asdff wrote:
| Says more about fb being penny pinching than anything.
| The kid working the panda express in california can
| afford a 1br apartment, why not a fb moderator?
| davidw wrote:
| > The kid working the panda express in california can
| afford a 1br apartment
|
| A lot of them can't, actually, but that's really a
| different problem.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Have you ever been to or lived in Austin? Are you aware
| of how high the cost of rent is there now?
| adolph wrote:
| Every day "Austin" refers to a larger and larger part of
| the earth so maybe specifying where in Austin is
| appropriate?
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/report-austin-
| top...
|
| https://www.kut.org/austin/2024-06-13/austin-texas-rent-
| pric...
|
| https://austin.urbanize.city/post/austin-rent-drops-
| december...
|
| https://therealdeal.com/texas/austin/2024/05/01/apartment
| -re...
| cloverich wrote:
| Actually the cost of rent and housing has dropped there
| the last few years, because they are doing a good job
| building. Not so great for my SFH's value, but its
| definitely dropping from "WTF" to "Seems more normal"
| pricing.
| encoderer wrote:
| Grew up in Ohio. Always wanted to live in Silicon Valley.
| Been here 14 years now. Not leaving. But this is
| happening because of how terrible the California _brand_
| has become. Pretending our prestige and brand is the same
| as it was 20 (or even 10) years ago is not the answer.
| davidw wrote:
| That's a complicated topic, but part of that is because
| California has become a target for a number of people
| with money, influence and media outlets.
|
| Not to say it doesn't have problems - like housing - that
| are self-inflicted. Just that a big part of the 'brand'
| problem is people targeting the state.
| encoderer wrote:
| Yes there is a lot of "unfair competition" but ultimately
| you build a brand by demonstrating your positive
| qualities and making it clear what you stand for.
|
| This is an us problem not a them problem.
| davidw wrote:
| How can you build that brand if someone is determined to
| tear it down for ideological reasons?
| encoderer wrote:
| People care less about ideology than they do about their
| own lives and prosperity.
|
| It used to be clear: you can make a better life in
| California. It was a land of growth, prosperity, and
| wealth. Growing families moving into golden cul-de-sacs.
|
| We should actually make those things true again. Houses
| don't need to be affordable in Palo Alto but not being
| affordable anywhere is a problem. We don't need to
| develop Big Sur but not being able to develop any costal
| property is a problem. We don't need to deport law
| abiding citizens because they fail an ICE sweep but not
| being able to deport career criminals is a problem.
| davidw wrote:
| Oh, I'm 100% on board with the housing stuff. That's what
| I do in terms of local politics here in Oregon.
|
| But by and large, the 'branding' is places like Fox News
| crapping on California.
| encoderer wrote:
| No that's just talking heads carping on cable tv.
|
| The problem is that we have lost any ability to make a
| positive case for California outside of niche political
| interests and very specific career paths.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Techbros are pretty toxic, and that culture was very much
| SV 10-20 years ago.
|
| That said, most of them have since (loudly) decamped the
| state.
| tptacek wrote:
| Well, that, but also the worst housing markets in the
| country.
| fooker wrote:
| Yeah I was recently given the choice to move for RTO to
| the bay area versus pacific northwest, and everyone I
| asked about this expressed their dissatisfaction with
| California.
| zahlman wrote:
| By the same - entirely unevidenced - reasoning, your
| posts ITT are about signalling the reverse in order to
| make good with sympathetic readers on HN.
|
| See how that works?
|
| The specific places in California where Facebook had
| "trust and safety and content moderation teams" were
| places that very much don't reflect the average politics
| of the US. That is naturally going to reflect itself in
| the ideological composition of employees, and therefore
| in political bias in the fact-checking process.
|
| We've already seen harm from this. For example, Facebook
| suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story
| (https://www.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-admits-facebook-
| suppre...), even though:
|
| * there has never been any evidence provided to link the
| story to supposed Russian disinformation;
|
| * The FBI (i.e., the agency supposedly telling Facebook
| and other social media companies to be on the lookout for
| such disinformation) acknowledged that they did in fact
| seize the laptop from the computer shop owner in 2019
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-
| biden-...) and verified that it was Hunter Biden's -
| which later came up in a criminal case against him in mid
| 2024 (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-
| news/live-blog/hun...
|
| * there is no good reason _a priori_ , outside of
| political bias, to suspect the New York Post (founded
| 1801 by Alexander Hamilton) of spreading such
| disinformation.
| pesus wrote:
| Thinking Menlo Park (or any of Silicon Valley, really) is
| in any way "extreme left-wing" is a sure indication you
| haven't spent any time there and are basing your viewpoints
| off of what others have said on social media. Billion
| dollar corporations by definition do not support anything
| remotely "extreme left-wing".
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I've lived in SF, Mountain View and also the east bay and
| I've worked at a billion dollar company that did indeed
| support some very left-wing causes.
|
| Despite having grown up in a light blue state, the
| difference in politics was very noticeable when I got to
| SF/SV. This isn't a value judgement, just my observation.
| pesus wrote:
| That's why I was talking about Silicon Valley, not SF or
| east bay. They're much different places. Besides that, a
| corporation giving lip service to diversity =/= "extreme
| left-wing" views. These billion dollar corporations are
| still capitalist, through and through. Actual extreme
| left-wing views are staunchly opposed to capitalism.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Talking about "actual extreme left-wing views" is
| something that only really works in internet arguments
| where everything eventually trends into Communism vs
| Capitalism (TM).
|
| In reality, every country has their own set of issues.
| Every democracy has their set of parties that exist
| somewhere in the policy space of issues relevant to them.
| In the US, we generally think of socially progressive
| policies as "left" along with non-market views of the
| economy. As such, the SFBA is generally much closer to
| the American "left" edge than the right.
|
| I agree that South Bay and the Peninsula are less "left"
| than SF or Oakland, but I think this sort of argument is
| sophistry. That said, I don't really think moving hiring
| to Texas will change anything ideologically among
| employees and instead is just a way to signal to the new
| administration that they're Friends (TM) and on the
| backside a way to cost cut so they can pay less in
| Austin.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's a funny way to say "I'm sorry, I should not have
| assumed you were unfamiliar with the region, when it has
| instead become clear that you live out there".
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| Actual extreme left-wing views are those that the average
| San Franciscan holds. Economics isn't everything.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Very few, if any, billion-dollar corporations are in any
| way "extreme left wing".
|
| But that is not "by definition". The definition of a
| "billion-dollar company" is that it is valued by
| investors at a billion dollars. That definition has
| absolutely nothing to do with its political leanings.
|
| "Vanishingly unlikely" sure. But not by definition.
| pesus wrote:
| What I mean is an extreme left-wing views would advocate
| for the nationalization or abolition of all private
| companies, so a corporation couldn't fit into that.
| paxys wrote:
| You forgot the biggest one - replacing Nick Clegg as their
| global policy chief with Joel Kaplan, a Republican lobbyist.
| tptacek wrote:
| Seems like not the biggest one? That seems like the kind of
| role you take knowing you're going to hold it only so long
| as you have a rapport with the current governing
| majorities.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| This is on par for Meta. Don't forget that Cheryl Sandberg
| was their Democratic Party liaison.
| cryptonector wrote:
| GP was asking about how fact checking is better than
| community notes, but you're saying that Meta's community
| notes will be worse than fact checking, which may be but
| which is not responsive to GP's question.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I can't help but roll my eyes at mindless euphemisms like
| "attacking trans people."
|
| There are very serious issues involving trans people with no
| easy answers. Like allowing minors access to irreversible
| treatments. Like women's sports. Like the safety of women
| only spaces.
|
| I bring this up because on so many questions like these, the
| progressive reaction is to shut down any discussion and
| isolate themselves from exposure to any ideas different from
| their own.
|
| It doesn't work. And it doesn't help anyone.
|
| And maybe this has something to do with why Facebook is
| migrating to a "Community Notes" model.
| eynsham wrote:
| Is it not possible that 'attacking trans people' is both
| (sometimes) a euphemism for criticism of maximalist
| positions and (at other times) a perfectly normal term that
| designates approximately what 'attacking x' generally
| means? There is such a thing as an unsubstantive and
| utterly unpleasant insult explicitly motivated by the fact
| that its target is trans. Many trans people say that there
| are many such, and one does not need to believe everything
| that trans people say (surely with the result of
| inconsistency!) to think that the evidence they present is
| not wholly concocted.
|
| Others may misidentify respectable, good, or correct
| arguments as 'attacks' in narrower senses, but that no more
| makes the underlying categories meaningless than the
| misapplication of such descriptions as 'true', 'valid',
| 'scientifically established', or 'by definition'. I have no
| general pithy answer to what one should do about the sorts
| of attack I have described, but I venture that it is
| reasonable to talk or attempt to do something about them.
| What term would you prefer?
| jimbokun wrote:
| It's possible theoretically.
|
| In practice people complaining about attacks on trans
| people almost always want to shut down discussion about
| related topics all together.
| irisgrunn wrote:
| Yes because it has no real life consequences like
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01979-5.epdf
| or https://goodlawproject.org/rise-of-deaths-young-trans-
| people...
| eynsham wrote:
| I think that it would help if you were to suggest a term
| people who don't want to 'shut down discussion about
| related topics all together' should use. Otherwise, the
| effect (although perhaps not the intention) of
| deprecating the term 'attacks on trans people' is that
| the sort of discussion you admit is possible
| theoretically will be impossible for want of a suitable
| term to designate the sorts of attacks it concerns.
| irisgrunn wrote:
| >There are very serious issues involving trans people with
| no easy answers.
|
| Wait what?
|
| > Like allowing minors access to irreversible treatments.
|
| According to the standards of care, minors should only get
| puberty blocker, which are totally reversible. A new study
| been released a few weeks ago, actually based on facts: htt
| ps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929693X2..
| .
|
| > Like women's sports. Well, when a trans woman is on HRT
| for a few years, she has a muscle mass that's been totally
| grown under estrogen. This causes a of muscle atrophy and a
| massive drop in strength. That's why trans woman have been
| allowed to compete with cis woman for the last 25 years.
|
| > Like the safety of women only spaces.
|
| How's that even remotely relevant to transgender people?
| Are you really calling all trans woman perverts or simply
| afraid that men pretend to be trans? Because it's a lot
| easier to pretend to be a janitor.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The reversibility of puberty blockers is highly disputed.
|
| Whether and under what circumstances trans women have no
| advantage over cos women is a highly complex question.
|
| We already have men who freely admitted to claiming to be
| trans solely for the purpose of accessing women's locker
| rooms.
| irisgrunn wrote:
| > The reversibility of puberty blockers is highly
| disputed.
|
| Not really, for more information about that read the
| study I posted.
|
| > Whether and under what circumstances trans women have
| no advantage over cos women is a highly complex question.
|
| Again, not really, except for all the misinformation
| online. If trans woman have such an high advantage, why
| haven't they dominated the Olympics for the last 20
| years?
|
| > We already have men who freely admitted to claiming to
| be trans solely for the purpose of accessing women's
| locker rooms.
|
| So? This happened maybe once or twice in the entire
| world, where pretending to be a janitor is something
| that's being done in every spy movie. Should we also ban
| janitors?
| ongy wrote:
| > > Whether and under what circumstances trans women have
| no advantage over cos women is a highly complex question.
|
| > Again, not really, except for all the misinformation
| online. If trans woman have such an high advantage, why
| haven't they dominated the Olympics for the last 20
| years?
|
| Not really sure why you specify 20 years, but I'm too
| lazy to go through the history of IOC positions to figure
| out the one 20 years ago.
|
| Because looking at the current one already provides the
| answer. The IOC doesn't take the position that it is a
| simple topic.
|
| The wording in https://olympics.com/ioc/human-
| rights/fairness-inclusion-non... (and click through) is
| quite clear that they see a tension between inclusion
| along the axis of sexual identity and a continuation (or
| successor) or male/female category split.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Disputed by the disingenuous. Notice who they always
| exclude from the restrictions from those "dangerous
| drugs"? Cis children. Magically _that_ 0.01% of the
| population faces absolutely zero issues.
| sanktanglia wrote:
| I can't help but roll my eyes at "serious issues" you know
| in most states these anti trans laws were passes targeting
| handfuls of children in each state, sometimes a single
| child. But oh yes that's a serious issue for sure right now
| lr1970 wrote:
| > The ideological bits are: ...
|
| Should we expect Meta doing 180 degrees u-turns every 4 years
| when another party wins US Presidential elections?
| matwood wrote:
| Only when the incoming party has threatened going after
| anyone who was against them with criminal charges.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| this sort of applies to both parties you need to be more
| specific
| rcpt wrote:
| No it doesn't
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I expect over time they'll gradually settle into an
| equilibrium that works in both sets of circumstances.
| intended wrote:
| Given the extremes of presidential candidates, I think the
| answer is Yes, since there exists no middle ground between
| fact and fiction.
|
| Or I guess you can just capitulate and leave it all to
| users to handle on their own, and wash your hands of the
| whole thing.
| adolph wrote:
| > "Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out
| of California, and our US content review to Texas.
|
| Prediction: it'll be cali-expats in Austin and nothing
| changes.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They'll be inside the jurisdiction of whatever rules Texas
| feels like making.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Nah, loads of the current staff will leave, but they'll
| hire equivalent people in Austin.
| andrepd wrote:
| The whole thing is ideological. Trump and Musk are
| undertaking their takeover on government, and so the trillion
| dollar companies which control the rules of the spaces in
| which the vast majority of our discourse today happens, do
| their thing and kiss the ring.
|
| We can debate the merits of notes vs factcheck. But it's hard
| to see the bullshit about freedom of speech as anything other
| than that: you are now allowed to express opinions that the
| new regime shares. Long live the king.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Blue Sky is what mastodon was when musk bought Twitter now X.
|
| Also currently in the App Store (iPhone) bluesky sits at 167
| .. Musk's X at 46 and Facebook at 19.
| immibis wrote:
| BlueSky is what Twitter was some time before Musk bought
| it. Given time, it will become what Twitter is now, too.
| It's just too profitable. Mastodon was its own thing and
| remains its own thing.
| j45 wrote:
| Perhaps part of it is the optics that California is
| interpreting it for other places?
| harimau777 wrote:
| How is it any better for Texas to interpret it for other
| places?
| deadbabe wrote:
| Because liberals in Austin Texas have far more experience
| in what it means for liberal and conservative opinions to
| coexist together in one place, vs California where
| liberal opinions are the default and everything else must
| be shunned.
| j45 wrote:
| Not saying it's better for anywhere, only how California
| might be seen.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Well, it's _Austin_ , TX.
|
| Travis County was blue 69-29.
|
| Hardly a politically conservative place.
| nailer wrote:
| Those ideological changes are corrective though. California
| is obviously very far in one direction politically, and
| presumably the existing Meta board members are not right
| wing.
| devvvvvvv wrote:
| >like people being in Texas makes them more objective
|
| When the dominant ideology in Texas supports freedom of
| speech more than the dominant ideology in California: yes.
| sterlind wrote:
| except when it comes to banning books in schools. and
| prohibiting classroom discussions on race or LGBT topics.
|
| somehow free speech never seems to cut both ways with these
| people.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "maybe it 's just a way of saying that certain kinds of
| 'content' like attacking trans people is going to be ok now"_
|
| The new policy explicitly says that allegations of mental
| illness are not allowed _except_ if the target is gay or
| trans, so, yeah...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/meta-immigration-gender-
| policies...
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > _it allows "allegations of mental illness or abnormality,
| based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and
| religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality
| and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"_
|
| I think you misread that: it allows allegations of mental
| illness _even_ on the basis of gender and religion, which
| before weren 't allowed. It _still_ allows allegations of
| mental illness based on other factors, because they were
| never disallowed in the first place.
| pavlov wrote:
| No, it's explicitly so that allegations of mental illness
| are forbidden except if the target is gay or trans.
|
| Here's another source:
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-new-hate-
| spee...
|
| And the original document:
|
| https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/policies/community-
| stand...
|
| Tier 2 forbids insults based on:
|
| _Mental characteristics, including but not limited to
| allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and
| mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC
| groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We
| do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality
| when based on gender or sexual orientation, given
| political and religious discourse about transgenderism
| and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words
| like "weird."_
|
| There's no ambiguity. Allegations of mental illness or
| abnormality are explicitly allowed based on gender or
| sexual orientation, but no other reason.
| lupire wrote:
| There is ambiguity, insofar as the whole document is a
| word salad of sentence fragments and rambling sentences
| that branch off in different directions without logical
| coherence.
|
| It takes quite some effort to discern the intended
| meaning, which I agree matches your interpretation.
|
| Even the tier system is declare but it's meaning never
| explained.
|
| Calling out "weird" and no other word is hilarious,
| suggesting that Team MAGA is still sore over how much
| people enjoyed using that term to describe the bizarre
| behavior of of Trump and company.
| tgma wrote:
| > like people being in Texas makes them more objective?!
|
| This is the least charitable interpretation. Obviously, it is
| not talking about a single person moving to Texas suddenly
| changing colors like a chameleon (although I suspect there is
| quite a bit of merit to that due to groupthink and community
| speech policing in BayArea/LA).
|
| And yes, I think it won't be a stretch to think Texas would
| be more objective representation of general US PoV and less
| of a monoculture than FB sites in California. This is not a
| value judgement, just a natural function of the distribution
| of people.
| pavlov wrote:
| Is the distribution of people in Austin so very different
| from the Bay Area?
|
| Both states are internally diverse. And it's just silly to
| suggest that "groupthink and community speech policing" is
| something that exists in California but not Texas.
| tgma wrote:
| > Is the distribution of people in Austin so very
| different from the Bay Area?
|
| If we just go by presidential election, Travis County's
| result is more balanced than SF and San Mateo, almost on
| par with Alameda county, so the answer is "slightly."
| However, the moment you get exposed outside the core
| Austin area, you deal with predominantly red areas. To
| get the same effect you have to go as far as Placer
| County or Sonoma, so I don't think the FB workers in Bay
| Area (SF/Menlo Park) have quite the same level of
| exposure.
| cloverich wrote:
| Its slightly but consistently different. I moved from
| Austin (after 30+ years in TX) to the west coast, and the
| group think / speech policing is extremely noticeable to
| me (spend most of my time in Portland and SF), even
| though its not extremely different.
|
| That being said I think a more nuanced but still
| political take on the move is, having moderators is
| important, and its less likely those moderation will be
| pressured to shut down if the moderators are actual jobs
| in a red state. Further the jobs are low skill jobs so
| they can be moved back (or elsewhere) as needed. Easy
| move even if the political capital is minor.
| grahamj wrote:
| I don't see how it matters where the mods are located when
| their instructions still come from California.
| tgma wrote:
| Of course it matters. Have you seen the emotional
| reaction people get to Trump/Kamala posts?
| grahamj wrote:
| No because I don't use these shit platforms. But the
| point is if policy says to moderate content of type ABC
| then I don't see why someone in TX would do something
| different than someone in CA. It's the same policy.
| tgma wrote:
| If the policy were that precise you would not need
| humans.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Isn't it a bit of a stereo type prejudgement to say all
| Texans are like that?
| rcpt wrote:
| Threads is confusing as all hell. Who are these random
| people? Which post am I replying to? Does this appear on my
| Instagram?
| verdverm wrote:
| > most of us would be fine with some experimentation
|
| This is why ATProto is a great foundation for to the next
| generation of social media applications. It makes
| experimentation easier and open for all. It removes the cost
| of switching to the better alternatives. ATProto enables real
| competition on a single, common social media fabric.
| nunobrito wrote:
| No it isn't. The only implementation of ATProto so far has
| been heavily criticized for immediately blocking anyone
| with wrong opinions, while at the same permitting
| pedolovers post without much trouble (that butterfly logo
| is a well-known pedophile logo).
|
| More reports about the awful actions of bluesky/ATProto:
| https://www.newsweek.com/conservatives-join-bluesky-face-
| abu...
| verdverm wrote:
| The Bluesky pedo trope is a right wing falsehood, yet
| another piece of their misinformation agenda
|
| ATProto is an open protocol, anyone can add content to
| the network. Bluesky is a company that operates the most
| used application, a micro logging platform like Twitter.
|
| Musk Social has far more awful actions and far more awful
| personal posts by the oligarch himself. The "awful" thing
| of blocking trolls on Bluesky is what makes it a place
| with more and better engagement. We don't all need to
| read all the awful shit people write online in the name
| of "free speech". I have every right to ignore or remove
| content I don't like from my information diet. The
| benefit of ATProto is that if you don't agree with the
| content moderation policies of Bluesky, you can write
| just a different client (many already exist) and
| subscribe to different moderation providers (many already
| exist), all without having to rebuild your social
| followings
| raxxor wrote:
| I don't know Dana White and I don't know any predecessor. It
| isn't really relevant though apart from which actions they
| indeed did take in their approach.
|
| Your second point about why people in Texas might be less
| biased is the distance to primary locations of tech companies
| perhaps? I don't think that it is convincing, but a lack of
| trust is the most severe problem of fact checkers.
|
| I believe the concept cannot work though, especially if I
| look at the broader context.
|
| No, user feedback is the better control mechanism. Also these
| fact checkers would never be independent and they would
| develop their own interest for even more moderation. They
| would never report that there isn't any more controversial
| content to be checked, because that is their raison d'etre
| from day one.
| freejazz wrote:
| > I don't know Dana White
|
| Oh, he runs the UFC and also the new slap fighting league.
| What that has to do with Facebook? I have no idea.
| lupire wrote:
| Facebook is a rhetorical slap fighting league.
| billy99k wrote:
| "Dana White added to the board."
|
| Almost anyone added to the board will have some kind of
| political leaning. Why no mention of this when hard-left
| leaning people were added to the board?
|
| "attacking trans people is going to be ok now."
|
| This was never okay (and I don't think it's going to change).
| If you mean something like an opinion on child gender
| surgeries, this should have always been allowed and you can
| ignore if you don't agree and community notes will certainly
| have more information on it.
|
| "Blue Sky being available and gaining in popularity."
|
| So you dislike bias, but mention one of the most biased
| social media platforms on the Internet?
|
| Zuckerberg just admit in his video that the Biden
| administration was working with Facebook to censor users. Why
| no mention of this? Isn't this also political bias that needs
| to be stopped?
|
| It has nothing to do with 'bias' or protecting anyone and
| everything to do with authoritarians banning and silencing
| people they don't like, which is exactly what Blue Sky has
| done from day one and everyone against this change truly
| wants.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Time to go NOSTR.
|
| Less drama, full speed.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Moving the moderation teams to Texas may be a way to induce a
| lot of the people working there to quit.
|
| Texas is of course also an easier place to run a business.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Yeah I'd like to hear this too. I use both and I love community
| notes. People are pretending like this is some big culture war
| issue and a win for the right but I've seen community notes
| call out Elon for retweeting bullshit more times than I count.
| (As well as calling Jacobin our on there's)
|
| I also appreciate that if I liked a post that community notes
| called out and I'm getting a notification that was
| misinformation.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Well the presidential election was a win for the right. FB
| and Meta have always complied with and often been an arm of
| the US govt regarding regulating speech on social media, and
| they are not really changing that. It's the gov't that's
| changing.
| aimazon wrote:
| Fact checkers are the technocratic solution, they're a panel of
| experts to Community Note's jury of our peers. Fact checkers
| are a much better product feature than community notes if we
| want a feature that best serves people who care about facts.
| That's not our world, though. People don't care about facts, we
| are humans, our lives are lived based on vibes. The average
| person would rather listen to their idiot friend's uneducated
| thoughts about transgender women in sport than listen to a
| lecture from an expert. Community notes is probably a better
| feature for the real world, but it's still junk, "effective" is
| not a label the feature deserves, because the majority of
| misinformation on X goes un-noted.
| mhh__ wrote:
| "People don't care about facts" is such an asinine
| reactionary way of thinking about macro dynamics in the
| world. It has no predictive power at all.
| aimazon wrote:
| We don't. People are social. We care about what the people
| in our community think, whether it's factually accurate or
| not is inconsequential. Those of us wasting our lives
| arguing on the internet in the pursuit of truth are a tiny
| minority of atypical people. People yearn for the warm
| embrace of affirmation, not the cold hard truth challenging
| them at every turn.
| encoderer wrote:
| You have too many abstractions between you and
| understanding other people.
|
| Most people in your country are actually not that
| different from you.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It resembles Objectivism. "The facts are the facts and you
| should see them the same way I do or else!!"
| kergonath wrote:
| More like "the facts are the facts and reality does not
| care if you don't believe in it". It's a special kind of
| nihilism to want to stick it to the universe and insist
| on one's own alternative reality like an overgrown angry
| teenager edgelord.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Ayn Rand was pretty insistent that we should be able to
| objectively ascertain the facts. Objectivism failed
| precisely because we're not really all that rational, and
| because apart from the irrational part of us there's also
| the fact that we can manipulate perception and gaslight
| others. If you're a newcomer to a pair of groups that
| vehemently disagree as to the facts you might soon find
| that you have to make a choice yourself as to which group
| to join, and suddenly you have to deal with social
| pressures not just facts. Do you want to be in the in-
| group or in the out-group? Can you deal with the shaming
| that goes with being in the out-group? Etc.
|
| It's all so tedious, but this is what we humans are like.
| freshpots wrote:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-
| hap...
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Well first you've got to define what is meant by "facts".
| Most people presume the word refers to some kind of
| community consensus, and then they immediately gatekeep
| what counts as the "community" among which the consensus is
| shared.
|
| However the basis for fact _is_ precisely predictive power,
| so it 's actually more like the battle between science and
| superstition. Information that can directly empower a
| person is not necessarily information that will help them
| to feel more comfortable or confirm their biases.
| intended wrote:
| It's true. Fact checking was found to scarcely impact
| misinfo.
|
| I'm in the field and I am thinking of how to work without
| focusing on truth, because that's how most humans work!
| aredox wrote:
| _Americans_ don 't care about facts.
|
| There's a reason why you have Creationists at the highest
| levels of government.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Unnecessary attacks like this don't help your cause and
| part of what has driven the other side to the point they
| are at.
| mindslight wrote:
| Do you mean that OP is incorrect, or just impertinent?
| Just because you have to use a light touch does not mean
| your friend does not have a Problem. (And I'm speaking as
| an American)
| mhh__ wrote:
| Europeans are just as silly but mistake failure for
| sincerity. As a sad fantasist I'm immensely fond of Anglo
| culture but many brits are totally misaligned and insane.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Do you have some kind of analysis demonstrating Facebook fact
| checkers are more accurate than X's Community Notes?
| voskresenie wrote:
| Breaking: Leading Fact Checkers Investigate, Find Leading
| Fact Checkers More Accurate Than Community Notes.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Indeed, how to fact check the fact checkers?
|
| If we could have legitimate fact checking that really
| works, then I guess we wouldn't need any politics at all.
| ad_hockey wrote:
| > Indeed, how to fact check the fact checkers?
|
| Like any other work, it can be reviewed by supervisors
| within the company and/or the client (Meta). If a sample
| of an employee's work shows that they often hide content
| that isn't factually false, they are performing their job
| poorly. If Meta doesn't like the job the company is
| doing, the contract can be cancelled.
|
| > If we could have legitimate fact checking that really
| works, then I guess we wouldn't need any politics at all.
|
| You absolutely need both. Politics is about which
| decisions to make within the context of shared facts. The
| amount of the US national debt, the number of people
| caught crossing the border illegally in 2024, or the
| number of people sleeping on the streets in San Francisco
| are all matters of fact. What to do about them is
| politics.
| gitaarik wrote:
| It are also facts that many politicians are corrupt and
| are fooling us. But they arranged it nicely so that they
| aren't being fact checked.
|
| And the ones in power and with money can decide who the
| fact checkers will be. And the ones in power and with
| money can help and support each other. Because we want to
| keep the money inside the family, to protect the facts
| you know.
|
| When you grow up you start to understand that you can't
| trust all authority all the time.
| ad_hockey wrote:
| I was answering your question. You asked how fact
| checkers can be fact checked and the answer is like any
| other job. Fact checking isn't magic, and it's existed
| for a long time. It's basically what newspaper sub-
| editors do.
|
| > When you grow up you start to understand that you can't
| trust all authority all the time.
|
| I think you know I'm not arguing for this. Don't
| misrepresent my position, please.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Well I think what you are calling fact checking is
| actually journalism.
|
| The concept of fact checking is a very recent movement,
| with the idea that we could filter out the "fake news" on
| the internet, which is also a recent concept.
|
| But it turned out that the so called "fake news" wans't
| always so fake, and that the fact checkers weren't always
| so factual.
|
| So it turns out that you can't trust any group to
| determine what the facts are for the rest of the people.
|
| You can fact-check for yourself, but don't put your
| "facts" on other people like they're real facts. Leave
| other people in their respect, and let them think for
| themselves. You can of course share your knowledge, but
| you should let the other person ultimately decide what
| they believe for themselves.
| ad_hockey wrote:
| It sounds like you are disagreeing with the concept of
| facts, but facts do exist. If someone claims that a
| politician said a particular thing in a speech yesterday,
| and the politician gave no speech yesterday, then the
| claim is factually false. It's not a matter of respect or
| disrespect to say so, and it doesn't matter what you
| choose to believe on that topic.
|
| > The concept of fact checking is a very recent movement,
| with the idea that we could filter out the "fake news" on
| the internet, which is also a recent concept.
|
| Again, this is not accurate. Look at the job sub-editors
| have been doing for a century or more. Their main role is
| to save the newspaper from getting sued or looking silly
| by striking out or questioning any claim that can't be
| proven to be true, or corroborated by multiple sources.
| Fact checking is not a new discipline.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Well it has a lot to do also with the way you say things,
| how you interpret the words. Maybe the politician did
| give some kind of speech, but maybe it wasn't an official
| speech. There's always more to the story, and multiple
| ways of interpreting things.
|
| Of course some facts are less flexible than others. Like
| most people wouldn't argue whether a football is round.
| Although it matters if you're talking about an American
| football or a soccer football. So context also matters,
| and that can be confusing sometimes.
|
| So the facts that the fact checkers were called in to
| tackle, were so flexible that it turns out it's not
| doable in a secure way.
|
| And newspapers also don't always have the correct facts.
| Often things in the newspapers are wrong. And no they are
| not always being sued for that.
|
| Again, you can fact-check for yourself, that is totally
| fine, and I would even encourage it. Then you make up
| your own mind and you are more independent and less
| shapable by others.
| comex wrote:
| I don't use either Facebook or X so I have no personal
| experience. But the New York Times cited this meta-analysis for
| the proposition that they're not ineffective:
|
| Fact-checker warning labels are effective even for those who
| distrust fact-checkers
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01973-x
|
| They also cited this paper for the proposition that Community
| Notes doesn't work well because it takes too long for the notes
| to appear (though I don't know whether centralized fact checks
| are any better on this front, and they might easily be worse):
|
| Future Challenges for Online, Crowdsourced Content Moderation:
| Evidence from Twitter's Community Notes
|
| https://tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/139/57
| nomel wrote:
| Here's the Community Notes whitepaper [1], for how it all
| works. Previous discussion [2].
|
| [1] Birdwatch: Crowd Wisdom and Bridging Algorithms can
| Inform Understanding and Reduce the Spread of Misinformation,
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.15723
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33478845
| tootie wrote:
| Notably Zuckerberg did not cite any data for his assertions
| that community notes are effective.
| nomel wrote:
| A way to quantify this doesn't immediately come to my mind.
| Maybe reasonable metrics would be:
|
| 1. What % misleading/false posts are flagged
|
| 2. What % of those flagged are given meaningful
| context/corrections that are accurate.
|
| It seems there's circular logic of first determining truth
| with 1, and then maybe something to do with a
| "trust"/quality poll with 2. I suspect a good measurement
| would be very similar to the actual community notes
| implementation, since both of those are the goal of the
| system [1].
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.15723
| tptacek wrote:
| Thanks for pushing for clarity here. So: I'm not saying that
| fact-checker warnings are ineffective because people just
| click through and ignore them. I doubt that they do; I assume
| the warnings "work". The problem is, only a tiny, tiny
| fraction of bogus Facebook posts get the warnings in the
| first place. To make matters worse, on Facebook, unlike on
| Twitter, a huge amount of communication happens inside (often
| very large) private groups, where fact-checker warnings have
| no hope of penetrating.
|
| The end-user experience of Facebook's moderation is that
| amidst a sea of advertisements, AI slop, the rare update from
| a distant acquaintance, and other engagement-bait, you get
| sporadic warnings that Facebook is about to show you
| something that it thinks you shouldn't see. It's like they're
| going out of their way to make the user experience worse.
|
| A lot of us here probably have the experience of reporting
| posts to Facebook for violating this or that clearly-stated
| rule. By contrast, I think very few of us have the experience
| of Facebook actually taking any of them down. But they'll
| still flash weird fact-checker posts. It's all very silly.
| braiamp wrote:
| So, why wasn't a mixed approach taken? That's the obvious
| question you should be asking. Paid fact checkers are leaps
| in quality and depth of research, meanwhile Jonny Twoblokes
| doesn't have the willingness to research such topic, nor
| the means to provide a nuanced context to the information.
| You are saying that the impact was limited, but it was not
| because it was low quality. If you do both, where the first
| draft id done by crowdsource with the professional fact
| checker to give the final version, I don't think you would
| have a good reason to not do it.
| tptacek wrote:
| I've answered elsewhere on the thread why I think the
| warning-label approach Facebook took was doomed to
| failure, as a result of the social dynamics of Facebook.
| nailer wrote:
| > Fact-checker warning labels are effective even for those
| who distrust fact-checkers
|
| Yes, but are they true?
| gitaarik wrote:
| Haha yeah indeed, I was also reading this thinking: "uhm,
| ok, how can they be 'effective' if they're false in the
| first place?"
|
| Lol sometimes people just have no logic
| kace91 wrote:
| I don't care about the fact checking part but I do care about
| the "removing the limits on political content on feeds".
|
| I think everyone can agree that polarizing content being pushed
| into people's feed for engagement is a very very bad mix with
| politics. There is no benefit for anyone in doing this, except
| for meta's metrics and propaganda outlets.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Also it benefits the extremists that Zuck (and others) are
| cozying up to. I mean... pretty obvious not to mention that.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Didn't they get in trouble with lawmakers and / or
| advertisers for that in the first place?
| aimanbenbaha wrote:
| Also didn't know Meta was outsourcing fact-checkers which is a
| very terrible idea that sponsored a shady economy of ghost
| workers that were paid pennies for reviewing gore content.
|
| It'll really take a special mind to think Community Notes
| wasn't a positive feature added to the social network sphere.
| Musk despite his schtick did very bold things that other
| platforms wouldn't think of doing, such as open-sourcing the
| recommendation system or recently suggesting the idea of
| optimising content with unregretted time spent that will reward
| healthy content and punish toxic content even if the two had
| the same number of impressions.
|
| The overtone window is shifting towards a more open speech and
| less of self-gratifying echo chambers that promoted the toxic
| cancel culture.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Facebook's approach to fact checking has always been cost-
| optimization.
|
| It would have been a drag on profits to hire professionals to
| fact check and provide them enough time to do their job, at
| scale.
|
| They quote numbers about how much they're spending as proof
| they're doing something, but that spend isn't normalized
| against the scale of their platform.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It'll really take a special mind to think Community Notes
| wasn't a positive feature added to the social network sphere.
|
| Attributing it to Musk, though, would require a time machine.
|
| > recently suggesting the idea of optimising content with
| unregretted time spent that will reward healthy content and
| punish toxic content even if the two had the same number of
| impressions
|
| The precise sort of censorship and "cancel culture" he
| decried upon purchase.
| abtinf wrote:
| I think both are atrocious features. It would be useful to know
| _facts_ about a site or article: this is a new domain, this is
| a state-run outlet, etc.
|
| But other than that, how about I get to use my critical
| thinking to evaluate the content I access without my "betters"
| trying to color it first?
|
| Any day now, I'm sure Gmail will introduce a feature where
| Gemini will warn you that the article your grumpy uncle sent
| you is not nuanced enough. Or your cell provider will monitor
| your texts and inject warnings that the meme you shared doesn't
| tell the whole story.
| threeseed wrote:
| > how about I get to use my critical thinking
|
| Because no-one, including you, is an expert on everything.
|
| So there will be many topics for which you will not be able
| to make an informed judgement about the accuracy of the
| content. And on a social network centred around sharing it
| can be very easy for inaccuracies to spread.
| abtinf wrote:
| > Because no-one, including you, is an expert on
| everything.
|
| As I said, god forbid I forget my place and use my mind in
| the domain of my betters.
| threeseed wrote:
| You can continue to use your mind.
|
| Pretend that the Community Notes are a conspiracy to rob
| you of your free will and ignore them.
| brigandish wrote:
| <country hick accent>Looks like we got ourselves a
| _reader_ ...
|
| Yep, reading, researching, considering what things matter
| given your own life experience and situation, these are
| all meaningless in the face of THE EXPERTS!
|
| /s
|
| When J.S. Mill wrote about infallibility[1], I can't
| remember if he wrote about outsourcing that infallibility
| belief to others, but if he did, he predicted the last 5
| years of pro-censorship arguments perfectly.
|
| [1] https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/on-liberty/chapter-
| ii-of-th...
| rolandog wrote:
| I'm no expert in this domain, but the larger issue at
| play here is that:
|
| 1. certain groups are arguing for assigning trust to a
| group to perform case-by-case censorship as a
| countermeasure to propaganda and disinformation,
|
| 2. other groups (sometimes purposefully) misinterpreting
| this as blanket censorship and conjure up several
| slippery-slope warnings.
|
| When talking about general things, it sounds very noble
| to talk about protecting every budding idea... therefore
| group #2 gets to trot around the higher moral ground when
| arguing in this way.
|
| When talking about the specific ideas being "censored"
| (e.g. "immigrants eating dogs"), group #1 gets to claim
| group #2 is some flavor of crazy.
|
| What both miss is that they have been pitted against each
| other by so many interest groups: nation-state and
| corporate.
|
| This is happening all around the globe.
| lossolo wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they were better or worse, it's all
| relative. It depends on who you ask, everyone will give a
| different answer. You are looking at this from a technological
| and problem solving perspective, while the people who made the
| decision prioritized these much lower on their list. You need
| to think like a politician and consider the PR side of things.
| This is not about solving the problem, it's about perception,
| only perception.
|
| By implementing community notes, Facebook is shifting
| responsibility. Previously, the perception was that Facebook
| was doing fact checking (and no one really cared about the
| third parties). Now, the responsibility moves to the community.
| Not only does this shift responsibility, but it also makes
| Facebook appear politically neutral to Republicans, because
| they can say, "Hey, we did exactly what Musk did, and you liked
| it. We are politically neutral".
| bag_boy wrote:
| It also gives Facebook a new product feature that encourages
| user activity.
|
| It was the correct chess move given the current board.
| bombcar wrote:
| The most useful result of Community Notes I've seen is when
| someone posts something Y, and then a few hours later it comes
| out that actually it was Z, community notes have been able to
| attach "actually it was Z" to the original viral post, still
| being shared.
|
| I don't know if anyone cared much about fact checker reports
| (or if anyone even bothered to track how often they ended up
| being wrong when looking back in review).
| wilde wrote:
| The deep irony is that some of the original contributors to
| Birdwatch were working on this stuff at Facebook before being
| blocked for various reasons and leaving to work at Twitter.
|
| To steelman this a bit, early versions of Birdwatch had
| problems with unsourced notes and speed of note display.
| There's a bunch of research that shows that 1st impressions of
| info tend to dominate, so speed matters a lot.
|
| In practice FB's program was poorly resourced and overly
| complex so I'm not sure it ever achieved its theoretically
| lower latency.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I don't really mind how they police things and it's not the
| point of this announcement. The technology firms think Trump
| could be so dangerous to their businesses that they are willing
| to completely give in pre-emptively to this threat. What else
| are they willing to do given this, interfere in elections for
| example? Promote misinformation that benefits Trump? Undermine
| truth about vaccines and safety in our health system? The list
| of potential problems is quite long.
| datascientist wrote:
| https://gradientflow.com/the-moderation-dilemma-a-balanced-l...
| jacksnipe wrote:
| I'm not sure about better, but I'm concerned about a second
| Rohingya genocide.
|
| There was a lot wrong with Facebook's moderation system. Spend
| any time in any politically active groups -- or groups that
| like to discuss politics -- and you'll quickly find people
| complaining about deranking. Based on both the extreme
| frequency with which it's reported and my own experiences with
| Meta, I believe that they're not making it up.
|
| But Meta's moderation tools don't primarily exist -- as I
| understand it -- to keep discourse informative. They exist so
| that Meta doesn't accidentally become somewhat responsible for
| another genocide.
|
| I think that community notes may be a better move for public
| discourse, but most conversations on Facebook itself happen in
| groups, and in groups nobody is going to be posting Community
| Notes that go against the trend of the group -- even if they
| might be useful for totally public discourse.
| xvector wrote:
| I tend to blame the people actually doing the genocide for
| genocide, rather than a social media network. Ultimately I
| think one can clearly draw the line for personal
| responsibility well before literal murder.
|
| Tens of thousands of have been raped, entire towns have been
| destroyed, around 50k killed and 700k forced to flee.
|
| If Western countries _actually_ cared about the human cost of
| this genocide, it would be almost a trivial matter to stop it
| overnight with a few well placed missiles against Myanmar 's
| military, which continues to perpetrate the genocide even
| today.
|
| Instead, no real action is taken and it's just a talking
| point for "Facebook bad." Blaming Facebook for a genocide is
| like blaming videogames for an active mass shooter w/o
| actually doing anything to stop them.
| 2flex wrote:
| We can look at precedent here. RTLM's involvement in the
| Rwandan genocide for example would be a good place to
| start. There's a pretty explicit connection between the
| radio propaganda (RTLM furthered the Hutu Power ideology)
| and the actual violence. We should be able to draw a
| distinction between Jack Thompson and Tipper Gore
| fearmongering versus explicitly violent rhetoric designed
| to dehumanize people and promote the eradication of those
| people.
|
| The actions taken by the US in response to the genocide in
| Myanmar were largely economic because, I would think, their
| proximity to China. Can't imagine direct intervention would
| have gone smoothly.
|
| For the record, I don't think our response in Myanmar or
| Rwanda were good, not trying to dispute or downplay that.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| Eh, I don't think that lens is useful. It appears to me
| that the genocide very likely may not have occurred -- and
| certainly would have harmed fewer people -- if Facebook
| didn't exist.
|
| It is not simply a matter of it happening elsewhere on the
| internet -- Myanmar is one of the countries that Facebook
| provided its Free Basics package to.
|
| Of course, I think the bulk of the blame lays on those
| actively perpetrating the genocide. But I'm concerned
| mostly with outcomes, and it seems that with different
| behavior from Facebook, there would have been a different
| outcome in Myanmar.
| xvector wrote:
| The genocide also wouldn't have occurred if the internet
| wasn't available, or if air/water didn't exist, etc
|
| I think blaming the medium for communication is a bit
| silly. That is just the substrate. The responsibility
| solely lies with the murderers.
| benzible wrote:
| How about the fact that Meta killing their fact-checking
| feature will have a very direct impact on the quality of
| Community Notes? Per today's Platformer:
|
| "Another wrinkle: many Community Notes current cite as evidence
| fact-checks created by the fact-checking organizations that
| Meta just canceled all funding for."
| (https://www.platformer.news/meta-fact-checking-free-
| speech-s...)
| paulddraper wrote:
| I assume these businesses are ad supported.
|
| Does Facebook's patronage constitute a significant % of the
| industry?
| BryantD wrote:
| I don't think the fact-checkers were a better product feature
| in the current environment. I do think that the reasons they
| aren't a good product feature are linked to a concerted effort
| to convince people to distrust fact-checkers. I recognize that
| many people would say the distrust arose from the way fact-
| checkers behaved; I don't think that's true.
|
| From a product perspective, once it's accepted that Community
| Notes go through an algorithmic filtering process (which they
| must), you have to accept that you've lost most potential for
| third party viewpoints. There is nothing stopping ideological
| companies from putting their thumbs on the scale.
|
| Back to product perspective: that means there's no barrier
| preventing Notes from losing trust in the same way fact
| checkers have. The playing field is not static.
|
| I think the speed of the rollout will tell us a lot about how
| long this has been in the works. It's not a one week feature,
| although I will remember that Meta produced Threads very
| quickly.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> but this feels like the kind of decision that should have
| been in the works for multiple quarters now_
|
| My take is that while it must have been a potential plan for
| some time and switching to this plan can't have just been an
| "overnight" decision since the election, the timing suggests
| that either they were waiting for the outcome of the election
| and using that result in the decision-making process, or that
| the election result pulled the decision1 forward.
|
| ----
|
| [1] Or the implementation, if the decision had already been
| made. They may have already moving towards this happening,
| purely as a business decision based on internal effectiveness
| studies, no matter who was in power, but given the election
| result there are some political benefits to rolling the plan
| out now instead of in Q2 or Q3.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I'd like to hear an informed take from anybody who thinks
| that Facebook's fact-checkers were a better product feature
| than Community Notes.
|
| Zuckerberg's framing of this as being about "fact checking" is
| intentional misdirection. Very little checking of facts was
| actually happening.
|
| This is about _moderation_. Specifically, reducing the
| obstacles to posting racist /misogynist/political abuse amd
| threats. The objective is to make Facebook acceptable as a
| platform for the incoming US administration and its supporters,
| while simultaneously increasing engagement with more
| inflammatory user-generated content.
|
| So its primarily a demonstration of fealty to Trump and co,
| with upsides.
|
| Trump and Zuck recently met privately. I do wonder if these
| changes are, in part, also a quid pro quo for Trump undertaking
| to continue with the ban on TikTok in the US.
| freejazz wrote:
| Ah right, because calling it a product feature suddenly makes
| the assessment of it objective and non-political
| lisp2240 wrote:
| Facebook has a long, bloody history of expanding their services
| into areas without investing in content moderation first.
| Sometimes they don't have a single employee who can speak the
| language of their users. As a result, tens of thousands of
| people have died in genocide.
|
| You can't have community notes if you don't already have a
| community established. Community notes won't help if the
| community's behavior is the problem.
|
| Many people will die as a result of this decision.
| scop wrote:
| This is unequivocally good. That's it. That's the comment.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I know there has been a lot of ink spilled trying to persuade
| that Technology can't solve our deeper problems and Technologists
| are too optimistic about having real-world impact etc. etc.
|
| But I think community notes (the model, not necessarily the
| specific implementation of one company or another) _is_ one of
| those algorithms that truly solve a messy messy sticky problem.
|
| Fact-checking and other "Big J Journalist" attempts to suppress
| "misinformation" is a very broken model.
|
| 1) It leads to less and less trust in the fact checkers which
| drives more people to fringe outlets etc.
|
| 2) They also are in fact quite biased (as are all humans, but
| it's less important if your electrician has
| socialist/MAGA/Libertarian biases)
|
| 3) The absolute firehose of online content means fact
| checkers/media etc. can't actually fact check everything and end
| up fact checking old fake news while the new stuff is spreading
|
| The community notes model is inherently more democratic,
| decentralized and actually fair. and this is the big one _it
| works!_ unlike many of the other "tech will save us" (e.g. web3
| ideas) It is extremely effective and even-handed.
|
| I recommend reading the Birdwatch paper [0], it's quite
| heartening and I'm happy more tech companies are moving in that
| direction
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/twitter/communitynotes/blob/main/birdwatc...
| qingcharles wrote:
| Agreed. I think people are looking at CN/Birdwatch being from
| Twitter and seeing red without looking at the details.
|
| CN predates Musk burning Twitter to the ground, and CN is
| actually a decent product that can only get better as it is
| honed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But community notes have been around since before Musk bought
| twitter and they have not had any effect at reducing the
| amount of outright falsehoods passed off as "news" on that
| hellscape. Why do people keep championing it as a success
| story when it demonstrably hasn't helped?
|
| Frankly, if it worked, it would have been removed by now.
| It's "controlled opposition" basically.
| guybedo wrote:
| It's a welcome move as this "fact checkers" thing was doomed to
| fail, mostly because "who decides what the truth is, and who fact
| checks the fact checkers?".
|
| Sad thing is, this move isn't motivated by Mark Zuckerberg having
| a eureka moment and now trying to seek out the truth to build a
| better product for human kind.
|
| This move is motivated by Mark's realizing he is on the wrong
| side of American politics now, being left behind by the
| Trump/Musk duo.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The moderation tools were themselves offensive and abusive. I use
| FB to read what my friends and relatives have to say. I don't
| want FB to interfere with their posts under any normal
| circumstance, but somehow, they felt like they should do this.
|
| But the real reason I can't use FB much any more is that the feed
| is stuffed full of crap I didn't ask for, like Far Side cartoons
| etc.
| freshnode wrote:
| Polarization drives ad revenue. $10 says Zuck is going to start
| throwing grenades at the UK and EU soon too.
|
| We're entering a dangerous period, and it's not for anything as
| noble as the virtues of absolute free speech
| autoexec wrote:
| > Once the program is up and running, Meta won't write Community
| Notes or decide which ones show up. They are written and rated by
| contributing users.
|
| Sure "Meta" won't, but I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of
| "contributing users" end up being facebook's AI accounts
| elorant wrote:
| My gut feeling is that this will be accompanied by a relaxed
| policy on fake profiles too.
| EasyMark wrote:
| It would have been a perfect opportunity to -add- community notes
| and study which worked side by side and choose the better of the
| two, instead evidently Musk and Drump pulled Zuck aside and told
| him to shape up and join the billionaire oligarchs club or face
| the consequences of a partisan DoJ and SEC.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Great news. It's further evidence that the zeitgeist has shifted
| against the idea that platforms have a "responsibility" to do
| "good" and make the world "better" through censorship. Tech
| companies like Meta have done incalculable damage to the public
| by arrogating the power to determine what's true, good, and
| beautiful.
|
| Across the industry, tech companies are rejecting this framework.
| Only epistemic and moral humility can lead to good outcomes for
| society. It's going to take a long time to rebuild public trust.
| lakomen wrote:
| My door to Meta is closed and will never reopen, no matter what.
| Facebook has cost me all my friends. WhatsApp sells my phone
| number. Threads banned me for commenting too much without giving
| it my phone number. Facebook keeps or kept censoring my posts.
| Fuck Meta forever.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| It's just cheaper. That's the most important thing for
| corporations. It's also harder to accuse them of bias.
| Personally, I'm a little dubious about the effectiveness of fact
| checkers on people's opinions. If someone is a dullard who is
| willing to believe the most absurd propaganda or every conspiracy
| theory that exists, a fact checker won't solve the problem. They
| are used to being told that they are wrong. Of course they just
| can shadowban this content but in the end they profit from that.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| "Our fact checking wasn't good enough, so we're outsourcing it to
| the public."
|
| This is insane and clearly a political move. Maybe we just don't
| require social media as a species. That might be nice.
| Animats wrote:
| News story about Zuckerberg sucking up to Trump.[1]
|
| News story about other CEOs sucking up to Trump.[2]
|
| News story about Bezos stucking up to Trump.[3]
|
| "The Fuhrer is always right" [4]
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/business/zuckerberg-trump-
| mus...
|
| [2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/kevin-oleary-explains-
| why-...
|
| [3] https://newrepublic.com/article/188170/jeff-bezoss-
| shocking-...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
| zahlman wrote:
| I've only been here about 1/30th as long as you, so I fully
| accept that I could be wrong here; but this _really_ doesn 't
| seem to measure up the standard of discourse that I understood
| to be expected on HN.
| Animats wrote:
| It's not great, but it's unfortunately relevant to the
| article topic.
| ozten wrote:
| Facebook is virtual reality, whereas VRChat is inhabited by
| humans.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The fact-checking that Meta is ending, which put "misinformation"
| disclaimers on posts, is NOT the same as content moderation,
| which will continue.
|
| A lot of comments in this thread reflect a conflation of these
| two, with stuff like "great! no more censorship!" or "I was once
| banned because I made a joke on my IG post", which don't relate
| to fact-checking.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The piece on Axios:
|
| # Meta eliminating fact-checking to combat "censorship"
|
| https://www.axios.com/2025/01/07/meta-ends-fact-checking-zuc...
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Regardless of what you think about this step I find it
| disconcerting that we can now disagree on facts.
|
| For example:
|
| - whether crime is up or down
|
| - whether the earth is warming or not
|
| - how many people live in poverty
|
| - what the rate of inflation is
|
| - how much social security or healthcare costs
|
| - etc
|
| These are all verifiable, measurable facts, and yet, we somehow
| manage to disagree.
|
| We always used to disagree and that is healthy, we avoid missing
| something. But in the past we could agree on some basic facts and
| then have a discussion. Now we just end a discussion with an
| easy: "Your facts are wrong." And that leads to an total
| inability of having any discussion at all.
|
| Fact checking is not censorship. Imagine math if we'd question
| the basic axioms.
| jjulius wrote:
| Because social media has virtually eliminated peoples general
| ability to have constructive, level-headed conversations that
| take nuance into account.
| sneak wrote:
| I think the idea that a) people lack nuance now or b) that
| it's simply social media's fault is the exact same kind of
| lack of nuance that you seem to be objecting to.
|
| Nothing I've seen suggests that mass media or mass propaganda
| contains less nuance now versus any other time. Propaganda of
| all forms (regardless of whether delivered by newspaper,
| radio, tv, or facebook) has always been a blunt instrument.
| jjulius wrote:
| I'm talking less about propaganda and more about the
| average person's ability to discuss the merits of climate
| change with one another online.
| sneak wrote:
| The average person doesn't discuss, they repost. The
| things they repost are propaganda (be it true or untrue).
| jjulius wrote:
| >The average person doesn't discuss...
|
| Exactly. We aren't capable of discussing shit online,
| which is unfortunately where the bulk of our culture's
| negative discourse is occurring. It's not the posts, even
| - it's the comment sections.
|
| I don't care if someone shares propaganda, I care about
| the discussion that happens after they share it, in the
| comments. When was the last time on FB/IG that you saw
| someone share some propaganda (true or untrue, doesn't
| matter), and looked in the comments to find someone
| correct them, and then the two had a reasoned
| conversation wherein they traded perspectives and
| ultimately came to a healthy understanding of one another
| even if they disagreed?
|
| Do you see that sort of conversation, or do you just see
| a shitload of people yelling at each other?
| jimbokun wrote:
| The issue is that before social media nobody took the guy
| bullshitting at the end of the bar seriously.
|
| But with social media, his bullshit post looks just as
| authoritative as an expert who's been studying the topic
| for decades.
| mhh__ wrote:
| With the exception of fiscal cost and global warming those are
| all quite subtle, actually. $Employer spends rather a lot of
| time replicating official inflation numbers, it's not trivial.
| gruez wrote:
| >$Employer spends rather a lot of time replicating official
| inflation numbers
|
| Well? Does it match?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Yes (any more detail would be telling), ahead of time even,
| but my point is that we're mimicking the governments
| numbers not actually estimating a "true" value.
| krcz wrote:
| > Imagine math if we'd question the basic axioms.
|
| No need to imagine, it's enough to look into non-Euclidean
| geometry (obtained by excluding Euclid's fifth axiom), non-
| standard models of geometry, or reverse mathematics (studying
| which axioms are necessary for a specific theorem to be
| provable).
| kiney wrote:
| most of those things are actually not verifiable measurable
| facts within any useful definition
| gruez wrote:
| ???
|
| Aside from maybe "whether crime is up or down" (because of
| under-reporting), everything else can be objectively
| measured. The measurements might not fit with everyone's
| specific circumstance (eg. earth is warming as a whole but
| it's unseasonably cold where you live), but that's not a
| reason to throw up our hands and say "those things are
| actually not verifiable measurable facts within any useful
| definition".
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I strongly disagree that the rate of inflation is a fact,
| nor un-debatable. The mechanism for calculating it
| officially has changed drastically over the decades, and
| always in ways that reduce the official rate. It's a
| politicized metric.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > - whether the earth is warming or not
|
| The Earth is warming, but how much of it is caused by
| humans is under debate. The Earth is still coming out of an
| ice age, so it would be warming even without humans.
|
| Also, the more important question is: how much will it
| accelerate based on our emissions? If there are no positive
| feedback loops, it would only warm up 1C maximum, no matter
| how much more CO2 we will emit. But because of the positive
| feedback loops (warmer earth -> more water evaporating ->
| more warming), this warming can trigger a 4-5C further
| warming. The feedback loops are just theoretical(you can't
| measure them empirically) and the quality of the
| estimations is based on our understanding and modelling of
| the climate.
| orblivion wrote:
| To be fair, the cause of the warming wasn't given as an
| example of indisputable fact.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
|
| We've had in the last 100 years a temperature swing that
| usually takes a thousand years or more. We've already
| seen greater than +1C of temperature increase compared to
| before widespread use of fossil fuels.
|
| Is that caused by humans? Sure that's up for debate, in
| the same way whether tobacco causes cancer is. People are
| willing to be wrong when being wrong gives them
| money/status/utility.
| miramba wrote:
| > We've had in the last 100 years a temperature swing
| that usually takes a thousand years or more.
|
| A cute xkcd is not a time machine. You rely here on
| indirect measurements of tree ring measurements or ocean
| sediments. You can't verify if there were any other
| factors at play over the millennia, and I seriously doubt
| that these methods can even be theoretically +/- 0.5
| degree C accurate. You may believe that, but you can't
| verify unless you travel into the past. Besides, 1000
| years are NOTHING on the scale we are looking at. If you
| live anywhere north of the 40th degree, the place you now
| sit was probably covered by an ice sheet without a living
| thing in sight, only 10000 years ago. _And_ a 100000
| years ago. There is no way that you can divide that
| timescale into thousands and measure every one of them
| with a high enough precision to compare it with the
| present. The bold claims of climate science have lost any
| scientific humility.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > You may believe that, but you can't verify unless you
| travel into the past.
|
| Do you believe in the method of radiocarbon dating? What
| about dinosaurs?
| miramba wrote:
| What about them, and how was your debate class? Can you
| measure the time of day an organism died with radiocarbon
| dating? This rhethorical question is meant as a hint. Did
| you know how they calibrated radiocarbon at first? They
| used wine bottles from french cellars, because they have
| a year printed on them. That's scientific verification,
| because believe doesn't do it.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > If there are no positive feedback loops, it would only
| warm up 1C maximum, no matter how much more CO2 we will
| emit.
|
| GHG emissions are still increasing. If we assume that
| temperature increase is only linear in the amount of
| atmospheric GHGs, that means temperature will continue to
| increase, not remain flat.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Little known fact (I am still amazed how people don't
| know the mechanics of global warming...): CO2 effect in
| the atmosphere is logarithmic, increasing with
| concentration. That is because CO2 can only block one
| band of light, so at one point, you're approaching
| asymptotic effect. That's why we keep talking about
| "doubling of CO2", because it's a logarithmic
| function....
|
| But yes, the temperature will increase slightly because
| of CO2 emissions. That triggers more warming due to
| feedback effects though, and those are hard to quantify,
| and more scary.
| pintxo wrote:
| There are rarely any two people experiencing the same
| inflation rate. As it heavily depends on any one buyers
| buying basket. Sure, you could, in theory, measure each
| persons inflation rate, but what for?
| foxglacier wrote:
| The earth _has been_ warming. It 's not a verifiable fact
| that it's still doing that today (you used present tense)
| or will continue into the future until the future comes and
| we've measured it. By the way, warming over what time
| period? It's colder now that it was at some times in its
| past so you could say we're in the middle of a longer term
| global cooling.
|
| And of course you have to incorporate of the Earth's
| interior which is cooling. Are you sure that "fact" doesn't
| silently ignore almost all of the Earth?
| ramblenode wrote:
| The only items in the list that look reasonably easily
| answerable are how much social security costs and whether
| the earth is warming. Even the last one wouldn't be
| considered a good question to an actual scientist because
| of how vaguely it is phrased.
| ianferrel wrote:
| Exactly. Supplying some context to support this:
|
| The level of crime is pretty hard to measure. You can measure
| reported crime, but crimes are reported at different rates in
| response to complicated incentives.
|
| How much the earth is warming depends on what you measure. Do
| you measure atmospheric temperature? Ocean temperature? And
| of course how much the world _will warm_ is dependent on
| complicated models with tons of inputs.
|
| How many people live in poverty depends on what your
| threshold for poverty is. There's a "Federal Poverty Level",
| but cost of living varies by significant amounts across the
| country.
|
| The rate of inflation is highly dependent on the basket of
| goods measured and how improvements in goods are measured and
| so on. There are easily a dozen different measures of
| "inflation" and they're all _reasonable_ and carefully
| considered, but none of them is the ground truth.
|
| It is of course relatively easy to measure Social Security
| inflows and outflows, but usually when we talk about the
| "cost" of programs like this, we mean something like the net
| cost, which incorporates lots of societal effects. Also the
| interpretation of the accounting concept of the Social
| Security Trust Fund, despite being a fairly simple concept,
| has significant camps with diametrically opposed views.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| The amount of crime is dependent on the police department
| reporting, which we know has been cut back
| chrisco255 wrote:
| What you're talking about is statistics. Statistics are not
| irrefutable facts. They're data points from a report, and they
| are often incredibly easy to manipulate depending on how the
| macro is assessed. Usually it's impossible to gather stats over
| large, complex, chaotic populations. Instead samples are taken
| and applied to the whole and interpolated in-between. And in
| that interpolation an incredible amount of manipulation and
| even pure laziness is possible. It's possible to misrepresent
| the error bars of your conclusion. It's possible to leave out
| important details. It's possible to be selective about your
| time frame. There are a myriad of ways to mess up or screw up
| statistics. The more chaotic the system, the more difficult it
| is.
| ttoinou wrote:
| Fully agree. Statistics are not global irrefutable facts
| about society, it's literally just one or a group of person
| computing something random and claiming it is representing
| society as a whole, or a journalist saying he/she read that
| figure in a reputable source. Even from a mathematical point
| of view statistics are incredibly hard to manipulate, but
| even before that, reality cannot be really measured and put
| into numbers.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| If, in an argument, you want to go back to the data and do
| different or better statistics on it then by all means. I
| would _love_ to have a disagreement with someone that went in
| that direction and we could discuss the intricacies of how to
| interpret the information that we have. I have my own gripes
| about the statistics done by various groups, with changing
| the inflation calculation being a recent example of the bad
| side of this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/technology/inflation-
| meas...
|
| However, I think the key point here still stands. Most
| disagreements (at least in my experience) are not reaching
| this level, and are instead diving towards anti-
| intellectualism and dismissing statistics and data
| interpretation wholesale.
| abtinf wrote:
| It's much worse than that.
|
| Every single example mentioned by the GP isn't just a
| statistical measure, they measure of a wildly political (as
| in, defined by humans in a deeply imprecise manner) issues:
|
| > - whether crime is up or down
|
| Which kinds of crimes? In which political boundaries? In
| which reporting period? Did definitions change? Is reporting
| down because of ineffective policing? Is reporting up because
| of effective policing? That statistical games played with
| crime stats are criminal.
|
| > - whether the earth is warming or not
|
| There is a reason the phrase "global warming" went out of
| fashion in preference of "climate change". Warming up how
| much? Over what time period? With what error bounds? Assuming
| which runaway processes? In which areas? Due to which causes?
| What are the error bounds around the sign of the change?
|
| > - how many people live in poverty
|
| The government literally draws a line in the sand and
| declares anyone below a certain income level is living in
| poverty. Who set the level? Why did they set it there? What
| is the standard of living at that income level? In which
| areas? How long do people live in poverty? What, if anything,
| prevents them from moving upward? What is there effective
| standard of living after government programs and charitable
| giving is taken into account?
|
| > - what the rate of inflation is
|
| This is literally defined by bureaucrats at central banks.
| Inflation according to which index? How were the index
| components chosen? How are the index components weighted?
| Over what time period? In which areas? Even the concept of
| "inflation" is highly suspect and basically incoherent.
|
| - how much social security or healthcare costs
|
| Over what time period? How did the demographics change? How
| about inflation? Where did the cash flows go and how did they
| net out? Which purchasing regimes were in place? How did the
| programs change? What was the quality of the services?
| nomel wrote:
| The problem I have with fact checkers, rather than "context
| expanders" is that their end product is a simple answer for
| things that may not be trivial. There _may not be_ a clear
| binary answer.
|
| > whether crime is up or down
|
| Was the reporting consistent between the two timeframes
| (apathy, directions from police station, etc)? Was the
| reporting system fully operational both timeframes being
| compared? Is the reported vs actual crime ratio the same
| between the two timeframes?
|
| > how many people live in poverty
|
| > what the rate of inflation is
|
| Is the metric calculated the same way between the two
| timeframes? If not, what's the justification for the new
| metrics? Is the answer the same if the old and new metric is
| used with the same data?
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's not realistic, or IMO necessary, to put more into it
| than the original claim does, besides bringing actual sources
| to the table.
|
| If the original claim is that crime is really up but it
| doesn't show in the official figures because of subtle
| factors X Y and Z, then sure, a fact check saying this is
| wrong needs to dive in and explain why those factors don't
| account for it.
|
| But if it's just "crime is up 87% since Biden took office"
| then "actually, crime is down N% in that period, see link
| from relevant stats agency here" is fine.
|
| The latter is about a million times more common.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Only one of those questions (earth warming rate) is clearly
| defined and scientifically addressable, as all the others have
| fairly subjective definitions (what is poverty? what is crime?
| how do we measure inflation objectively? etc.)
|
| Even with warming, a 'fact' would be a data point at a
| particular time and location, assuming your sensor was
| correctly calibrated. You have to look at millions of data
| points across the entire globe for decades to get a sense of
| the current warming rate (which could be negative, flat, or
| positive). You have to do complicated statistics on all those
| data points to get a warming rate, and you'll have error bars
| on that, and the end result is not a 'fact' so much as a
| bounded estimate (+0.1 C / decade +/- 10% is plausible for the
| average surface temperature change averaged over the entire
| planet).
|
| We can't even say with real certainty that 2100 will be warmer
| than today, as a supervolcano, asteroid impact, or global
| nuclear war could reverse the trend.
| chillacy wrote:
| I think prediction markets (polymarket et al) get this right.
| Every question as vague as "is the earth warming" has
| resolution details which define some way to resolve the
| question such that all parties (even those with economic
| interest to disagree) have trouble disputing the outcome.
|
| For a question like the earth warming, it would usually be
| something like "according to ___.org website on Y date",
| which in that case the final prediction becomes: will the
| average temperature in the period from 2016-2026 be greater
| than Y on ___.org, which is a bit different than the original
| but easier to arbitrate.
| miramba wrote:
| Every single one of your points is not boolean and depends on
| the definition and the data you include and exclude. For each
| you could easily find studies and statistics in either
| direction. The fact that this is apparently not obvious to you
| proves the point that all fact-checking is inherently biased
| and depends on the subjective opinions of the checking person.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| People who study statistics are pretty good at saying "look,
| that data set was probably gamed, I would have done it
| <different way>", or "that conclusion does not follow from
| the data presented".
|
| It's no different to someone claiming on twitter that they
| are a great programmer who can fix twitter's search in a
| weekend who then has to tweet for suggestions on how to write
| a search feature in javascript. People familiar with the
| subject matter can see right through your bravado.
|
| I'm so tired of people with no expertise on anything
| insisting that people who have clear expertise "didn't think
| of trivial point A that just came to mind" as if some of
| these fields aren't centuries old and have been around the
| block a few times.
|
| It's similar to the teenager insisting "you just don't get it
| mom", but like, mom totally gets it, she was a teenager once
| too. And while there are occasions when mom might not get it,
| like how she didn't grow up in a world with social media so
| she might not be able to help you through that, but she
| ABSOLUTELY gets that it feels like your world is ending when
| your first love leaves you, and in fact it is YOU who does
| not "get it" that you will move on eventually.
| ramblenode wrote:
| Most experts will not give simple answers to simple
| questions because they see the question itself as ill-
| posed. Theses could be written about "Is crime up or down?"
| GP's claim is that this has a simple answer that can be
| checked. The bigger issue isn't whether a dataset is
| statistically valid but which data would even be relevant
| to a particular underspecified and vague question.
| miramba wrote:
| Not sure what you are trying to say - my point was that ie
| the question "is crime up or down" is not a yes/no answer.
| Depending on the input, you can easily create a statistic
| pointing in any direction. I think abtinf elaborated better
| on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42628198
| My personal highpoint in using statistical methods was
| probably implementing an analysis of variance for thousands
| of lab values
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_variance).
| pintxo wrote:
| Could it be that nowadays we have so much more access to
| information that where we maybe agreed on facts in the past,
| they where really coarse and we did not really have much
| details on them, so it was maybe easier to agree?
| viraptor wrote:
| Nuance is dead with the short posts. "whether crime is up or
| down" may not be possible to post about realistically. On what
| timescale, which crime, has the reporting about this crime
| changed, has the classification changed, is it about confirmed
| crime or reports, etc. etc.
|
| Specific crime is such a complex system now that we can (both
| accidentally and maliciously) post factual information that
| presents a small fragment of the issue, sometimes helpful,
| sometimes misinforming for the context we're talking about.
| greenchair wrote:
| No we don't have verifieable measurable facts for those areas.
| Standards and definitions vary by location and change over
| time. Don't forget the corruption and manipulation of numbers
| to achieve desired outcomes.
| caseyy wrote:
| This is because we have started accepting kritik-style debates
| as serious in the last two decades. Kritik used to be
| considered a bad faith technique but nowadays it's considered a
| smart "trick" to win arguments. It's when a debate participant
| doesn't engage in debating the subject on its own merits, but
| instead challenges the premise of the question or a premise of
| the opponent's position.
|
| Crude example:
|
| - I believe climate change is exaggerated because the Summers
| haven't gotten notably hotter.
|
| - If you say that, then you are unaware and uninformed. You
| must be watching Fox News.
|
| Another:
|
| - I think we are in a cost of living crisis, because every
| year, more US men are in crippling debt.
|
| - Wow, look at your use of ableist misogynist language! Way to
| pretend women don't suffer with debt 13% more than men!
|
| Another:
|
| - As society, we should be respectful of others online, because
| internet is an important (and sometimes only) social network
| some people have.
|
| - Social media is unnatural, harmful and should be banned.
|
| These are three failed debates, in each there is no clash of
| opinions, and no side provided meaningfully stronger arguments
| to win the debate. In fact, the two debate opponents stated
| opinions on different subjects entirely. And yet nowadays, this
| is how most people debate, it is considered appropriate, even
| in academia. In politics, this technique is considered a total
| winner.
|
| So it is a bit like refusing to engage with the basic axioms
| when arguing mathematical proofs and just saying "math is for
| nerds". We have totally accepted that as normal, as a society.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Sadly the consensus was abused to push narratives once too
| often instead of actual leadership/guiding people to
| concepts/understanding/consensus building. Our leaders
| forgot/got too lazy/became too corrupt/dogmatic/complacent to
| care how to lead, abused the levers, and now it's going to
| probably take a generation for society to organize new trusted
| mechanisms.
|
| Crime statistics/reporting are extremely gamed. It took a
| friend having a heinous crime committed against her by a large
| group, on a side street just off downtown Santa Cruz with no
| reporting for me to realize just how bad. We've probably all at
| this point had crime committed against us that the police
| didn't document which then destroys our faith in crime
| statistics.
|
| I'm a super hippie. But there was a lot of manipulation/playing
| fast and free by the earlier global warming folks to try and
| get their message across breaking peoples trust and you are
| never going to get that trust back with models/projections no
| matter how good/accurate the assumptions used for those
| models/projections once the trust was lost.
|
| Things like using COVID funds to KNOWINGS TEMPORARILY reduce
| child poverty with the goal of having INCREASED CHILD POVERTY
| statistics in the near future so that it could be used as a
| policy weapon again just does damage and makes poverty
| statistics more meaningless. Just politicians using abusing and
| manipulating instead of leading, breaking down more levers.
|
| Stop with how gamed 'rate of inflation' was by this
| administration. You are never going to convince people WHO
| CAN'T AFFORD TO LIVE and are in CONTSANT distress that 'things
| are getting worse more slowly' is good. Sorry, you are going to
| have to lead and convince people on that one, not lazily use
| numbers. Again, it's lack of leadership.
|
| See how the same things can be interpreted differently by
| different people and how much it's that these have been
| abused/used for manipulation/out of laziness/instead of
| leading?
|
| Source: Other than my personal crime experiences it's from
| living in a red state and talking with people why they support
| crazy stuff or reject what seems like common sense to me.
| nullc wrote:
| You sort of made your own counterpoint by giving a list of
| statistics that are far from objectively measurable and whose
| result and meaning depends a lot on the details of what exactly
| you're measuring and how.
|
| Take inflation for example. Measure inflation in terms of gold,
| broken arm repairs, hamburgers, or houses and any will give you
| _wildly_ different figures. The government preferred index
| prices a basket of goods but the particulars of the basket may
| not match you or anyone you know, and various corrections are
| necessary but are themselves subjective. An often disputed one
| is correction for goods substitution-- if steak goes up people
| buy less steak and more rice. The current preferred model of
| the government chains these corrections even though in reality
| you can only replace so much steak with rice before it 's all
| rice and no steak. These indexes also have corrections for
| goods increasing in quality-- the price went up but its because
| the thing got better, not because inflation. etc.
|
| yadda yadda, I don't mean to import the debate here but the
| point is that there _is_ something to debate particularly when
| the statistics don 't match a person's lived experience -- when
| the things they need to live are rapidly increasing in price--
| especially when politicians are abusing the stats beyond the
| breaking point (I think of the time when the Biden
| administration was crowing about something like the rate of
| inflation increase no longer increasing. What a jerk! ... or is
| that a snap? ;) ).
|
| And even when the fact itself isn't really in dispute there is
| often plenty of room for reasonable people to debate the
| implications or relevance.
|
| When people confused these subjective issues for "basic axioms"
| and then impose their understanding as "facts" it's extremely
| problematic and highly offensive to people whose experience has
| taught them otherwise.
| cryptonector wrote:
| All of these sorts of facts are manipulable and/or not easily
| knowable.
|
| > - whether crime is up or down
|
| Manipulable by the agencies that keep track of and publish
| those stats. Governments often manipulate these.
|
| > - whether the earth is warming or not
|
| There is a huge amount of controversy in climate science. Check
| the "Climate Gate" files from 2009 for example. Check out the
| controversies over weather station siting for another.
|
| > - how many people live in poverty
|
| Poverty levels vary with time and by country, and are typically
| set by governments. People often disagree as to what defines
| poverty. Poverty stats are manipulable.
|
| > - what the rate of inflation is
|
| You should look into what Argentina did around 2012.
|
| > - how much social security or healthcare costs
|
| The figures from the budget are not controversial. How much
| healthcare spending is wasteful is a completely different
| matter. Quality of healthcare is also very much subject to
| debate.
|
| > These are all verifiable, measurable facts, and yet, we
| somehow manage to disagree.
|
| They are not easily verifiable because they are mostly
| susceptible to manipulation. Therefore it's not surprising that
| people disagree.
|
| > [...] And that leads to an total inability of having any
| discussion at all.
|
| No, it means that discussion might have to start with the fact
| that there is disagreement as to facts and then you can have an
| open discussion about why, what is being done to prevent
| consensus forming as to those "facts", what needs to change to
| make that possible, etc.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > Imagine math if we'd question the basic axioms.
|
| The world we exeprience and the language we use to describe it
| doesn't have axioms like math, so it's no surprise people
| routinely disagree about these topics. Most of the subjects in
| your list contain a great deal of nuance. For example:
|
| > whether crime is up or down
|
| What counts as "crime"? Is it based on a legal definition or a
| moral defintion? What jursidictions does this include? What
| time period are we using as a baseline? Do we account for the
| fact that different jurisdictions measure crime differently and
| do we use the raw reported numbers or adjust for underreporting
| in the statistics? Do we weight our consideration by the
| severity of the crime or is it just the number of recorded
| offenses? The laws themselves may have changed over the period
| of consideration, so how do we account for that?
|
| These questions don't have objective answers, so it's
| unsurprising people disagree.
| zahlman wrote:
| >These are all verifiable, measurable facts
|
| _No, they absolutely are not_ :
|
| > whether crime is up or down
|
| Depends on the definitions; what is or isn't a crime changes
| over time in a given society. Taking "crime" as an aggregate
| conflates many different possible crimes and relies on a
| subjective weighting of their relative severity. Crime rates
| can vary wildly between various subgroups of the population. We
| can only meaningfully compare rates of crimes that are actually
| detected and result in law enforcement actions; an unknown and
| broadly unknowable amount of crime is overlooked.
|
| > whether the earth is warming or not
|
| Most of the disagreement is about the rate of change, the
| predicted future rate of change, the predicted impacts of those
| change, the extent to which we can do anything about it, and
| especially about the relative importance of the predicted
| impact vis-a-vis the effort that might be required to do
| something about it.
|
| > how many people live in poverty, what the rate of inflation
| is
|
| "Poverty" is generally measured in terms of income versus an
| arbitrarily decided baseline. The baseline _at best_ varies
| over time specifically to remain in "real" terms, i.e.
| adjusted for "inflation" which is calculated on a basis which
| may bear no relation whatsoever to the rate of change in costs
| practically faced by the poorer segment of the population.
| Furthermore, income is nowhere near the entire picture of
| wealth, which in turn is not a full picture of economic well-
| being. Inflation measures are designed with "hedonic quality
| adjustments" (https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-
| adjustment/questions-and-ans...) in mind which involve
| subjectively putting numbers on a wide variety of factors -
| they're literally trying to measure "how much better" a cell
| phone becomes if the screen resolution increases, so that they
| can decide whether the increase in price is justified; and in
| many cases they just resort to assuming that the initial price
| is fair relative to existing devices when the new one hits the
| market.
|
| >How much social security or healthcare costs
|
| Again, this has to be considered in the context of inflation
| adjustments, because the value of currency is not objective.
| World currencies are not a unit of measurement for value; it's
| just another thing that you can exchange for other valuable
| goods and services. If they were objective, there would be no
| reason for exchange rates to vary over time; they vary because,
| among other things, of varying relative faith in the issuing
| governments, and varying supply (which governments can
| generally control more or less at will).
|
| Aside from which, there are valid reasons why the per-capita
| costs might vary due to demographic changes. The disagreements
| I've seen haven't been about the bottom-line number in (say)
| the American federal government budget; they're about how to
| contextualize that number. Are per-capita costs changing? Are
| _your personal_ costs changing? Are the costs of _people like
| you_ changing? (Those answers could be different for many
| reasons.) How do they compare to costs in other countries? Is
| that justified? Is it explained by extenuating circumstances?
| How shall we compare the corresponding quality of care?
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| You are being hoisted by your own petard. Lying with statistics
| is a very common thing and it is, in fact a cliche. I'm
| surprised you brought up the crime thing. There are so many
| problems with this. Also, note, one way to reduce "crime" is to
| just make many crimes legal but it does not change normal
| people's view of crime. What kind of statistics were used to
| decide that Iowa would go for Harris with an 18 point jump?
| tqwhite wrote:
| The discussion here is painful to read. The 'neutral' discussion
| of product features and how Austin, TX is more liberal than the
| rest of Texas are grotesque.
|
| Zuckerberg says Facebook is going to be more "like X" and "work
| with Trump". It has changed its content policy to allow
| discussions that should horrify anyone.
|
| "In a notable shift, the company now says it allows "allegations
| of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual
| orientation, given political and religious discourse about
| transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of
| words like 'weird.'"
|
| "In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse
| transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their
| gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not
| respond to requests for clarification on the policy."
|
| But Zuck himself says that they are also dialing their algorithms
| back in favor of allowing more bad content. It's not right.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/meta-immigration-gender-policies...
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| The timing also pretty clearly signals that this should be
| interpreted by bigoted individuals as a green light for
| harassing speech.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| I feel the same way and I think the writing is on the wall for
| the near future of the world. It is disheartening to see people
| on a forum like HN who I assumed have values similar to mine
| fall right in line with conservative propaganda and try to act
| like this isn't an overtly political action. This decision is
| political, and it goes a lot deeper than left vs right - its
| about attacking support for a baseline scientific 'truth' and
| fully accepting a post-truth world where reality is what the
| powerful deem it to be. This has always been the case to some
| extent but it has gotten so lopsided in the last decade that
| its hard to see how we come back from this.
| pesus wrote:
| I similarly share your pessimism. Ironically, I think a lot
| of the propaganda that is effective on HN's demographic works
| because it frames itself in a way that makes it appear
| logical and intellectually robust. Us devs love thinking
| we're the smartest person in the room and strong, logical
| thinkers who can't be fooled, but that's exactly why those
| kinds of propaganda and talking points can work so well. (I'm
| certainly guilty of it myself at times, fwiw.)
| spencerflem wrote:
| Yeah, its pathetic.
|
| Fwiw, not everyone on 'hacker' news is like this, and many of
| the thoughtful ones are smarter than I am and skipped this
| post entirely. But its so disheartening the rot in the
| Silicon Valley ideology that's everywhere here.
| paxys wrote:
| I use Instagram and Threads specifically because of the relative
| lack of political content on them. If they also start to become
| cultural war grounds like everything else then RIP.
| pesus wrote:
| Instagram comments seem hell bent on bringing culture war
| nonsense in. It's probably only a matter of time before it's
| exactly the same as Facebook.
| etchalon wrote:
| I assume the data is showing that conservative users are growing
| either in raw numbers or in aggregate interaction on Facebook,
| and thus, will now be catered to.
|
| Meta, as a company, doesn't have values beyond growth.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I am concerned about the community notes model they're moving
| towards.
|
| Community notes has worked well on Twitter/X, but looking at the
| design it seems super easy to game.
|
| Many notes get marked 'helpful' (ie. shown) with just 6 or so
| ratings.
|
| That means, if you are a bad actor, you can get a note shown (or
| hidden!) with just 6 sockpuppet accounts. You just need to get
| those accounts on opposite sides of the political spectrum (ie. 3
| act like a democrat, 3 act like a republican), and then when the
| note that you care about comes up, you have all 6 agree to
| note/unnote it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Community notes is maybe the only good thing to happen to the
| microstructure of social media in years so I'm vaguely in favour
| of this.
|
| The official fact checking stuff is far too easily captured, it
| was like the old blue checks -- a handy indicator of what the
| ancien regime types think.
| nojvek wrote:
| "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there
| always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a
| constant thread winding its way through our political and
| cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means
| that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
|
| Isaac Asimov - Hitting the high notes even after 30 years from
| the pulpit.
|
| Mark doing what Mark needs to do to keep that Meta stock
| elevated.
| interestica wrote:
| It would be hilarious is somehow Elon/X claimed some kind of
| ownership or trademark or patent on the model.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Don't worry, there will be community notes and some form of
| eu/us/state notes. The paradigm has changes, moderation has to be
| separated from censorship and transparent. I would love to
| hear/read Audrey Tang's take on this, as CPP has been heavily
| involved in manipulating Chinese public opinion.
| guax wrote:
| Community notes and enforcement might help meta in the long run
| as being a step into more organically managed content that can
| scale better than simple moderation.
|
| I have my serious gripes with how Instagram currently manages
| reports. I've recently reported a clear racist post promoted to
| me on Instagram that did not get removed or acted on. They seem
| to go the route of "block it so you cannot see the user anymore
| but let everyone else see it".
|
| So as far as I can tell the only thing that Instagram actually
| moderate at the moment are gore and nudity, regardless of
| context. So barely dressed sexualised thirst traps are ok, black
| and white blurred nipples are not, everything else is a-ok.
| justinl33 wrote:
| this is good. the automated systems were getting increasingly
| byzantine, with layers of rules trying to patch edge cases, which
| just created more edge cases.
| chambers wrote:
| > When we launched our independent fact checking program in 2016,
| we were very clear that we didn't want to be the arbiters of
| truth. We made what we thought was the best and most reasonable
| choice at the time, which was to hand that responsibility over to
| independent fact checking organizations... That's not the way
| things played out, especially in the United States. Experts, like
| everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This
| showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and
| how.
|
| This frustration with fact-checkers seems genuine. Mark alluded
| to it in https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-says-
| hes-d... which squares with how the Government used fact-checkers
| to coerce Facebook into censoring non-egregious speech
| (switchboarding) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41370516
|
| Alex Stamos pushed this initiative pretty hard outside of
| Facebook in 2019+, seemingly because he wasn't able to do inside
| of Facebook back in 2016/2018. But I haven't dug into his
| motivations.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| If only they had lawyers to defend their free speech rights
| xvector wrote:
| Then the government sics the FCC or European Commission on
| you, who make trumped up charges that they push through a
| kangaroo court to fine you billions.
|
| There's no fighting a government, and all governments are
| corrupt if they see an opportunity to rent-seek from you.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Examples of the FCC doing this?
|
| Europe has way weaker free speech protections so I have no
| interest in defending them.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > As a result, we're going to start treating civic content from
| people and Pages you follow on Facebook more like any other
| content in your feed, and we will start ranking and showing you
| that content based on explicit signals (for example, liking a
| piece of content) and implicit signals (like viewing posts) that
| help us predict what's meaningful to people. We are also going to
| recommend more political content based on these personalized
| signals and are expanding the options people have to control how
| much of this content they see.
|
| IMO the concerning part is hidden at the bottom. They want to go
| back to shoveling politics in front of users. They say it is
| based on viewing habits, but just because I stop my car to watch
| a train wreck doesn't mean I want to see more train wrecks. I
| just can't look away. FB makes theirnacrions sound noble or
| correct, but this is self serving engagement optimization.
|
| Social media sites should give users an explicit lever to see
| political content or not. Maybe I'll turn it on for election
| season and off the rest of the year. Some political junkies will
| always have it set to "maximum". IMO that is better FB always
| making that decision for me.
| astolarz wrote:
| >Social media sites should give users an explicit lever to see
| political content or not
|
| Facebook does sorta have this, under Settings & Privacy >
| Content Preferences > Manage defaults. Note that the only
| options for "Political content" are "Show more" and "Default".
| The other categories listed also include "Show less". There is
| no "off" option for any of the categories.
| _thisdot wrote:
| IIRC, Political Content is by default restricted on Threads.
| But if someone you follow engages with or posts content that
| is political in nature, fb doesn't hide that for you
| danpalmer wrote:
| > just because I stop my car to watch a train wreck doesn't
| mean I want to see more train wrecks
|
| Maybe they need to be optimising for unregretted user seconds
| /s
| pona-a wrote:
| They will just relabel what is political. Union organizing? A
| bill on internet censorship? Anything mildly inconvenient to
| Meta or its shareholders? That's politics, you said you don't
| want to see any politics, didn't you? The culture war? Well,
| that's just pop culture, so that gets a pass.
| intended wrote:
| Everything important is politics though. Celeb talks about
| her experiences - politics. Earth is getting warmer -
| politics.
|
| Our lives ARE political.
|
| Hell, right now researchers on misinformation are being
| harassed by senators to bankrupt them, and create living
| lessons to stop others from reducing the reach of
| manipulative content.
|
| WE already had the entire free speech fight at the dawn of
| content moderation. We collectively ran millions of
| experiments, and realized that if you dont moderate community
| spaces, the best ideas DONT rise to the top, the most viral
| and emotional ones do.
|
| If you want to see what no moderation looks like, you can see
| 4 Chan.
|
| By nature, taking a stand on being factual, is automatically
| political because there are people who are disadvantaged by
| facts. Enron and oil producers spread FUD over global warming
| because it was problematic for their profits.
|
| Stopping their FUD, is censorship via moderation. How is a
| regular joe going to combat a campaign designed to prevent
| people from reaching consensus?
|
| Anyway, this is going to be fun.
| mc3301 wrote:
| I really do wish that one of the major platforms would a strict
| white- and black- list. "Doomscrolling" would be so much nicer
| if one could have, say, strict filters set to "Don't ever show
| me pranks, fake useless diy, kids being exploited, anything gym
| related" and "I really like snowboarding, WW2 history and
| pinball machines." Of course, the algorithm is still gonna "do
| its thing", but with a few hard guides.
|
| Sure, initially the platform's view time would decrease, but
| then maybe people would actually like that platform.
| amyames wrote:
| Meta has failed (abysmally) at identifying and categorizing
| content where you've said "show me less of this."
|
| Bluesky's not my favorite website but Xblock is proof that
| the app can go "this is a twitter screenshot and she doesn't
| want to see those" at scale.
|
| AI could identify, label, and hide all of these things.
|
| On bluesky it already does: "this is rude" or "this content
| promotes self harm" , I wish both websites could suppress ,
| snooze, or completely nuke "viral" or political content be it
| left or right. In bluesky's case it's not that I disagree
| with them. It's just that I've had this shit that I more or
| less agree with shoved down my throat from every angle for a
| decade and I'm exhausted and don't want to see or engage with
| it anymore. People who have nothing else to say 24/7 every
| single day of their life and mine just need to go away and I
| wish the AI on bluesky would just let me filter people whose
| content is primarily political temper tantrums because I
| don't have the time or will to mute or block them all so I
| just don't use the product.
|
| In fact for moderation purposes, Facebook already is doing
| that on their back end. (a few years ago you could see
| automatically generated alt text like "a woman holding a
| baby" though I don't use meta at the present time and don't
| know if it's still doing this.)
|
| AI is already analyzing the memes and purging ones with
| themes they don't like on FB though . Unlike bluesky
| moderation, it's not presented as something I can leverage or
| access to make my experience more enjoyable on Facebook.
|
| But that's not how they're leveraging AI right now. They
| won't let it prevent me from seeing memes posts and content
| with themes ** _i**_ don't like.
| dexterdog wrote:
| You talk about this like it's a service for the users.
| thih9 wrote:
| In some way this already works - if you have the skill to
| actually not watch the stuff and flag it as "don't show me
| again".
|
| If the platform's view time increases only when it shows you
| "snowboarding, WW2 history and pinball machines", then you
| and the platform are aligned.
| emberfiend wrote:
| Reddit already has this feature, although it might be
| underused. Set up a multireddit. Everything you want and
| nothing you don't. They are also not bottomless (well, more
| so if you stick to smaller subs), so if you don't put too
| many subs in your multi you can also hard-limit your feed
| time. They're great.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| The way I read that -- we tried hiding political content, but
| in the end lost user engagement to our competitors, so we
| decided to roll it back.
|
| People say they don't want political content, but they're also
| more likely to engage with it if they see it.
| thih9 wrote:
| > just because I stop my car to watch a train wreck doesn't
| mean I want to see more train wrecks
|
| I guess FB will be the judge. They might even stop showing
| train wrecks to a person if they notice metrics dropping. Some
| of these metrics might even track the user's well being,
| although most will focus on the well being of shareholders.
|
| We lost the levers long time ago, replaced by opaque
| algorithms; are there any signs for this to change?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > We are also going to recommend more political content based
| on these personalized signals and are expanding the options
| people have to control how much of this content they see.
|
| Great, so more filter bubbles? They don't learn, or more
| likely, don't care.
| bobsomers wrote:
| > They don't learn, or more likely, don't care.
|
| Of course not. Enraged, uninformed people "engage", and that
| sells ads like hotcakes.
|
| I don't know where people get this idea that Zuckerberg had
| any principles or gave a shit about anyone but himself. He's
| spineless, and his primary goal in life is has always been
| acquire as much wealth as possible by whatever means
| necessary.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Filter bubbles are in. Blue sky and mastodon show that people
| want to self segregate. Even people remaining on Twitter are
| happy with the exodus.
|
| Facebook is explicitly pro filter bubble. The community notes
| will come from your ingroup.
|
| One irony is that diversity in online spaces leads to
| division. People no matter their politics and interests
| prefer people similar to them.
|
| One way to look at this is by geography. Think of how a group
| of non English speaking Africans would talk together.
|
| The other irony is that groups of people view the other
| groups as not similar to them and want to change them. It's
| always the outgroup that needs it's filter bubble bursting.
| It's always the other that is brainwashed.
|
| So the downside of filter bubbles remain: more division, more
| separation between different people.
| guax wrote:
| For me the major breaking change on social media is the
| forcing of non linear timelines. They're required to
| increase engagement and promoting content but thats the
| crux of the issue.
|
| I liked the way early twitter worked, I have my bubble
| being the people I follow and I can see glimpses of the
| outside from the trending topics and what comes in as
| retweets, news, etc. Being able to see a thread without
| being logged in. Seeing analysis of people from the
| firehose showing different ways to see conversations and
| the bubbles.
|
| I miss the fact that old tweets died, things had to be
| relevant to humans to be rekindled, meaning someone had to
| retweet to keep it alive instead of an algorithm deciding
| whats important for me based on how outrageous it is.
|
| Bubbles are unavoidable, bubbles decided by algorithms are
| the worse of all alternatives.
| tikkabhuna wrote:
| Isn't there a difference between self-segregation and
| filter bubbles and how they're perceived?
|
| If I go to a woodworking class, I won't be surprised to see
| people who like woodworking. If I go to the supermarket and
| everyone is talking about and liking woodworking, I start
| thinking that everyone likes woodworking.
|
| A user explicitly signing up to specific topics are opting
| into a discussion. Filter bubbles are implicit.
| magic_smoke_ee wrote:
| Doubling-down on idiocracy and civilizational decline because
| there's money in it.
| someonehere wrote:
| In summary, FB was pressured in 2016 to act on "foreign
| influence" the press hysterically parroted by politicians and
| leaders. FB bowed to the pressure. Now that the press lost all
| validity along with the X purchase, the press can no longer
| persuade Meta to "fact check." FB is in a better spot to follow
| the X model of moderation. People arguing this is a bad move are
| ignoring the fact that FB was a censorship hotbed for the last
| four years.
| smeeger wrote:
| ITT: mental gymnastics
| isx726552 wrote:
| This is happening because Trump threatened to put Zuckerberg in
| prison for life (not an exaggeration):
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-warns-mark-zuckerberg-c...
|
| Trump himself confirmed this today:
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lf66oltlvs2l
|
| I cannot believe anyone would actually be okay with this
| situation.
| zahlman wrote:
| >This is happening because
|
| Correlation is not causation, and coincidence definitely isn't.
|
| Trump is politically incentivized to take credit for this. But
| he cannot in principle "confirm" anything about Zuckerberg's
| mental state.
| aylmao wrote:
| It was evident that Mark Zuckerberg / Meta would have to once
| again "adapt" to another Trump presidency, but this is much more
| explicit than I expected, wow.
| ConanRus wrote:
| oh no what happened?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They should have never gotten into that business in the first
| place
| rapatel0 wrote:
| So lets take one of the most expensive, labor intensive parts of
| our business and replace it with crowdsourced notes.
|
| As of 2022, Meta employed 15000 content moderators. Expected
| salary of 70K to 150K per person (salary + benefits, plus
| consulting premiums) so lets assume 110K.
|
| This implies $1.65B in workforce costs for content moderation.
|
| Meta is more likely to make their earnings....
|
| Though I wonder if they will redeploy these people to be labelers
| for LLMs?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Again, conflating moderation within Meta, with fact-checking by
| third party orgs, which is what this is primarily about.
|
| In reading the comments, it's clear to me that "community-based
| fact-checking" will not work since not even HN users can get
| basic facts straight (not due to any lack of intelligence,
| probably just didn't read the article or understand the
| context), how do we expect the FB userbase to do so?
| jeromegv wrote:
| It's not conflating. They also announced that a lot of
| content that was moderated won't be any more. For example
| labeling someone trans as having mental health issues was
| forbidden and it won't be anymore. So they are reducing
| moderation too.
| lorddoig wrote:
| The litmus test of this is whether they roll it out globally. If
| they do, Meta truly has seen the light; if they don't, this is
| just a cynical attempt to butter up Trump in case he regulates
| them into oblivion (as one could argue they deserve).
|
| Zuck is making the right noises. Time will tell.
| andr wrote:
| I know some of those fact checkers. They are career journalists
| and the bar to tag a post as disinformation is extremely high.
|
| To tag a post, they need to produce several pages of evidence,
| taking several days of work to research and document. The burden
| of proof is in every way on the fact checkers, not the random
| Facebook poster.
|
| Generalizing this work as politically biased is a purposeful lie.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Did they even have authority to take down posts? That was
| always Meta's call. The fact-checkers -- which were separate
| news orgs -- would tag posts.
| andr wrote:
| Yes, you are right. I believe tagging significantly reduced
| the chance of seeing the post in your feed, so it was similar
| in effect.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > was similar in effect
|
| Not really. Because if you make the argument that it was
| censorship then you have to say that any feed that is
| generated by an algorithm is censorship because the company
| is determining what, among what all users post, you should
| see, allowing certain posts to bubble up to the top and
| others to fall to the bottom.
| zahlman wrote:
| >...the bar to tag a post as disinformation is extremely high.
| To tag a post, they need to produce several pages of evidence,
| taking several days of work to research and document.
|
| Why was the Hunter Biden laptop story thus categorized? As I
| recall, "several days" did not elapse between the New York Post
| publication of the story and its suppression on social media.
| emtel wrote:
| Even granting all that you say is true, it would be trivial for
| there to be bias in such an apparently rigorous process. All
| that is required is selective application of the rules.
| hahahacorn wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: I would rather just be on a global-entry-esque
| kyc'd social media platform at this point.
|
| Bots and gov-psyop trolls are certainly (hopefully) like 95% of
| the gross misinformation, right?
|
| I'd give some reasonably trustworthy platform my Passport and
| identity to speak to only other people who have done the same.
| clubsoda wrote:
| Not at all! It's been talked about before.
|
| The problem becomes, do you trust the company implementing it?
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| It works in banking.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| Good thing if they won't abuse people in third world country with
| rubbish from social network.
|
| Also I wonder if they will be federating with truth social and
| gab.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I think the way to deal with this is to just opt-out: don't use
| Facebook, Threads, X, etc. I gave up on Facebook years ago.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Off topic but related to holding communities to account: I wish
| there were a way to metamoderate subs on Reddit. The Texas
| subreddit has been co-opted by a moderator that bans anyone who
| criticizes their editorial decisions or notices antagonism trolls
| taking over the sub.
| autarch wrote:
| Asterisk just published an interview with the folks behind
| Community Notes at X (Twitter) -
| https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/the-making-of-community-no...
|
| I don't use Twitter so I hadn't seen it in action, but the
| interview convinced me that this is a good approach. I think this
| approach makes sense for Facebook as well.
| steveoscaro wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. So many people commenting on this
| topic have no idea how community notes even works. Today's New
| York Times article also failed to explain it, while just giving
| a general negative tone to the idea of switching to this model.
| joshdavham wrote:
| It'll be cool to see what a self-regulating social network looks
| like as opposed to a more top-down approach for meta.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| The very fact that he is admitting they are doing this because of
| Trump and that there will be "more bad stuff" is pretty fucking
| crazy.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The median news article has something wrong in it.
|
| Often I live through events and read about it in the daily paper
| and then read about it in _The Economist_ and read a few more
| accounts of it. 5-25 years later a good well researched history
| of the event comes out and it is entirely different from what I
| remember reading at the time. Some of that is my memory but a lot
| of it is that the first draft of history is wrong.
|
| When someone signed their name "Dan Cooper" and hijacked a plane
| a newspaper garbled that to "D B Cooper", the FBI thought it
| sounded cool so they picked it up, but it happens more often than
| not that journalists garble things like that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Armies_of_the_Night
|
| shows (but doesn't tell) that that a novelized accounts of events
| could be more true than a conventional newspaper account and
| similar criticisms come throughout the work of Joan Didion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion
|
| If anything really makes me angry about news and how people
| consume it is this. In the age of clickbait everyone who works
| for _The New York Times_ has one if not two eyes on their stats
| at all times. Those stats show that readers have a lot more
| interest in people like David Brooks and Ezra Klein blowing it
| out their ass and could care less about difficult journalism that
| takes integrity, elbow grease and occasionally can put you in
| danger done by younger people who are paid a lot less if they are
| paid at all. The conservative press was slow on the draw when it
| came to 'Cancel Culture', it was a big issue with the NYT
| editorial page because those sorts of people get paid $20k to
| give a college commencement address and they'd hate to have the
| gravy train stop.
|
| Seen that way the problem with 'fake news' is not that it is
| 'fake' but that it is 'news'.
| motohagiography wrote:
| > Seen that way the problem with 'fake news' is not that it is
| 'fake' but that it is 'news'.
|
| salient point. as a writer, the essential condition for any
| story is a conflict because it's the source of tension or
| dissonance that people engage with for resolution. the issue
| with the "fake news" wasn't the facts, it's that the conflict
| that brought them together as a story was manufactured cheaply
| from ideology. this had a compounding effect where the
| absurdity of the resulting conflict with reality drove further
| outrage from the other "side."
|
| it's a pan-partisan problem. fine observation anyway, I'm
| provoked. to get better news, the conflict it expresses needs
| to be more organic. imo using community notes is way more
| organic than the governance model FB and formerly twiiter used.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If you want automated fact checking you need to create a god.
| (... and creating a human team that does the same is _playing
| God_ )
|
| If you want to identify contagious emotionally negative content
| you need ModernBERT + RNN + 10,000 training examples. The first
| two are a student project in a data science class, creating the
| second would wreck my mental health if I didn't load up on Paxil
| for a month.
|
| The latter is bad for people whether or not it is true. If you
| suppressed it by a large factor (say 75%) in a network it would
| be like adding boron to the water in a nuclear reactor. It would
| reduce the negativity in your feed immediately, would reduce it
| further because it would stop it from spreading, and soon people
| would learn not to post it to begin with because it wouldn't be
| getting a rise out of people. (This paper
| https://shorturl.at/VE2fU notably finds that conspiracy theories
| are spread over longer chains than other posts and could be
| suppressed by suppressing shares after the Nth hop)
|
| My measurements show Bluesky is doing this quietly, I think
| people are more aware that Threads does this; most people there
| seem to believe "Bluesky doesn't have an algorithm" but they're
| wrong. Some people come to Bluesky from Twitter and after a week
| start to confess that they have no idea what to post because
| they're not getting steeped in continuous outrage and
| provocation.
|
| I'm convinced it is an emotional and spiritual problem. In Terry
| Pratchett's _Hogfather_ the assassination of the Hogfather (like
| Santa Claus but he comes on Dec 32 and has his sleigh pulled by
| pigs) leads to the appearance of the Hair Loss Fairy and the God
| of Hangovers (the "Oh God") because of a conservation of belief.
|
| Because people aren't getting their spiritual needs met you get
| pseudo-religions such as "evangelicals who don't go to church"
| (some of the most avid Trump voters) as well as transgenderists
| who see egg hatching (their word!) as a holy mission, both of
| whom deserve each other (but neither of whom I want in my feed.)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook...
| grahamj wrote:
| So much for the supposed zuck rebrand; it's still him
| surume wrote:
| Zuck still dreams of his despotic dictatorial empire where he can
| enslave millions and make them all trans via Police enforcement.
| This move is just to stop bleeding users to X.
| envirogis wrote:
| Removing the politics from this is rather impossible because it
| was so deliberately timed and explicitly positioned as political.
| But as a PM addressing the pure product question, I'd say it's an
| unnecessarily risky product move. You've basically forgone the
| option to use humans professionally incentivized to follow
| guidelines, and decided to 100% crowdsource your moderation to
| volunteers (for amplification control, not just labeling btw).
| Every platform is different, but the record of such efforts in
| other very high volume contexts is mixed at best, particularly in
| responding to well financed amplification attacks driven by state
| actors. Ultimately this is not a decision most any experienced PM
| would make, exactly because the risk is huge and upside low. X's
| experience with crapification would get any normal PM swift and
| permanent retirement (user base down roughly 60%, valuation down
| $30B - how's the look on your resume?... So I go back to the
| beginning - this is plutocrats at play and not even remotely in
| the domain of a carefully considered product decision.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| if you use facebook you're an idiot
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| It's funny to see these tech moguls bend the knee for the new
| king. All their values, their so called care for the community,
| everything they say, everything, ... is just all a big play in an
| effort to make as much money as they can. It sickens me to watch
| this stuff unfold.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's not just a new king, it was the fact that the other party
| won the popular vote resoundingly after all these years meant
| that the 2016 elections weren't just a fluke.
|
| Repubs have all 3 branches for at least a few years now, and
| there will be enormous changes in tax policy in legislation
| that will be passed this year, due to many popular provisions
| of the 2017 TCJA expiring at the end of 2025. And Dems will
| basically be left out of the conversation as their votes are
| not needed.
| intended wrote:
| They won on the backs of decades of efforts to prove that the
| culture wars were unhealthy for America. That worrying about
| climate change was a hoax. That evolution itself is
| controversial. That universities and authority figures are
| not to be trusted. That somehow, Fox News, the biggest media
| corp in America, is not the main stream media.
|
| They got here, by destroying our ability to fight
| disinformation. They beat climate science in the 90s, by
| giving air time to cranks, and then senators used those
| specious arguments to stall climate bills. When scientists
| came onto Fox to try and reach the audience, they were thrown
| to the lions for the entertain of the audience. Derided and
| mocked with gotchas and rhetorical arguments designed to win
| the perception game.
|
| This is a continuation of that game. Because it _works_. The
| idea that free speech is at risk because of moderation is
| amazing, because it is being revived after being tested by
| everyone online. We started the internet without moderation,
| we believed that the best ideas win.
|
| We have moderation everywhere now, because we know that this
| fact is empirically untrue. The most viral ideas propagate.
| The ones most fit to survive their medium - humans.
|
| I agree that they won, because they played the game to win.
| But we should not miss how they worked hard, to set up the
| conditions for this type of a win.
| ausbah wrote:
| - the house majority is a thin 1-2 seats and full of factions
| that can barely cooperate
|
| - the filibuster still exists
|
| - almost certain one or both houses flip in 2 years
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Filibuster is for legislation that needs 60 Senate votes,
| tax changes only need 50.
|
| There are also quite a few Democrats in swing districts who
| I bet will vote for tax cuts. They are basically only in
| office instead of their Republican opponents because their
| opponent opposed women's rights.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That's not quite right. Nothing (or almost nothing?)
| needs 60 Senate votes to pass. The difference is that
| they've agreed not to filibuster tax laws, and you need
| 60 votes to break a filibuster.
|
| So you're right on the practical effect, but the details
| are slightly off.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Of the total national popular vote, Trump won by about 1%.
| That's not "resoundingly". That's a _very_ thin margin. (I
| mean, it 's better than he got in 2016 and 2020. But it's not
| resounding.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's resounding because the expectations were that the
| nation's voters were trending away from Republican
| politicians (or at least the popular vote), and the country
| was just waiting for old voters to die.
|
| But that was shown to be completely wrong, even after women
| lost rights in quite a few states. The message was clear
| that Republicans are here to stay, and businesses better
| learn how to do business with them, or else face the
| consequences.
| justin66 wrote:
| They barely scraped out a popular vote win. It's not a
| "resounding" victory, regardless of what you subjectively
| experience when you talk about it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Popular vote doesn't win President, electoral college
| does, and that was 312 to 226, not barely, and Dems
| didn't win a single one of the 7 states that were
| supposedly in play (GA/NC/PA/MI/WI/NV/AZ).
|
| In the legislature, it is almost impossible for Dems to
| regain control before 2028, as the majority of states
| electing senators in 2026 are very unlikely to elect a
| Dem. And I am not optimistic on Dems' chances in the 2026
| House:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_S
| tat...
|
| As far as I can tell, Repubs have the executive for at
| least 4 years, the judiciary for who knows how long, the
| Senate for at least 4 years, and the House for at least
| 2, if not 4 years.
|
| Knowing this, it makes sense why businesses would want to
| cozy up to Republicans.
| jheriko wrote:
| hopefully i stop getting trouble for reposting things verifiable
| in the public record that other people spoke about in 2018, and
| not being banned for supporting capital punishment, a thing legal
| in the US, the native state of the brand.
| est wrote:
| CN was like a crowd-sourcing disagreement sticker that gets
| attached to some content. Yes it will be abused.
| Gud wrote:
| What fact checkers? In the last one year or so my feed has been
| filled up with conspiracy theory garbage. Not even plausible
| stuff.
| qmr wrote:
| What a crock of shit. Freedom of speech is anathema to Facebook.
|
| Free expression my ass. Freedom of speech is not about protecting
| speech you agree with.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| TBH I had assumed FB was just penalizing all political content or
| that people just tried like hell to avoid it because all I see on
| FB anymore is either stuff related to the few FB groups that keep
| me on the platform or endless reposts of basically pirated Reddit
| content for engagement.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The solution is to be a culture of primary sources and to make it
| easier to link to primary sources.
| smolder wrote:
| I was recently browsing FB for the first time in months, and
| didn't see a peep from fact checkers, despite all the garbage-
| tier content FB is forcing into my feed including things like
| "see how this inventors new car makes fossil fuels and batteries
| obsolete". I spent most of my time on the site clicking "hide all
| from X", where X is some suggested page I never expressed
| interest in. The "shorts" on the site are always clickbaity boob-
| featuring things that I have no interest in either. The site is
| disgusting and distracting from any practical use, i.e. keeping
| in touch with friends, which is what I used to use it for.
| DrScientist wrote:
| The challenge here is three fold.
|
| Companies like Facebook pretending they are not publishers,
| people posting content believing they should be able to publish
| anything without consequences, and professional weather makers (
| PR/comms/lobbyists etc ) using this confusion to get around
| traditional controls on their dark arts.
|
| In the end I think the only solution that works in the long term
| is to have everything tied back to an individual - and that
| person is responsible for what they do.
|
| You know - like in the 'real' world.
|
| That does mean giving up the charade of pseudo-anonymity - but if
| we don't want online discourse dominated by bots controlled by
| people with no-conscience - then it's probably the grown up thing
| to do.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If it's worth doing it should happen naturally, verified
| accounts having more weight in the eyes of readers etc.
| DrScientist wrote:
| I'd like to think so, but I'm not so sure - doesn't it depend
| where the incentives come from?
|
| Optimising simply for demand without any principles leads to
| things like street fentanyl, and junk food and mass shootings
| ( there is a demand to own assault rifles ).
|
| Online right now there is a heady mix of large monetary
| incentives and the ability to rapidly optimise objective
| functions.
|
| Let's not pretend Meta's recent change isn't simply about
| Zuckerberg maintaining his power.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| The only thing that removing anonymity would do is make it
| easier to harass people with dissenting opinions. Professional
| bad actors can switch to posting under "real people" names,
| just as spammers now post from home IP proxies.
| DrScientist wrote:
| I share your concern - however harassing people is illegal
| and if you can't be anonymous to do it then that's also much
| less likely.
|
| I don't buy favourite argument of the US gun lobby - that
| only criminals ( yes by definition ) would have
| guns/anonymous accounts if you banned it therefore we
| shouldn't do anything.
|
| You could apply that to anything that's illegal - by
| definition only criminals are outside the law - so why any
| laws at all?
|
| I'd also be concerned about repressive governments - but I
| think you could distinguish between mass/public communication
| and private 1:1 communication. Just like in the real world
| there is a whole world of difference between saying something
| in private and publishing something in a national newspaper.
| redserk wrote:
| I suggest you consider looking how much it costs to go
| through the legal system, as it seems your assertion is
| based in a theoretical understanding of our system.
|
| Filing a civil suit can be pretty expensive if you want a
| lawyer -- which, yes, you do effectively need one.
|
| This is effectively a tax on the victims of harassment.
| jiriknesl wrote:
| Social media are not publishers. They are way more public
| squares, but online.
|
| On top of that, even when publishers usually curate content,
| there is no obligation to do so. It's just something that has
| been done, because publishing used to be expensive.
|
| Now, when sharing data online is cheaper and cheaper, this
| limiting factor is fading away.
|
| --
|
| At the same time, we have just 16 hours of attention per day.
| So you have to decide whether you want to invest your time in
| more curated publishing (I read a lot of books, often old books
| which stood the test of time), or if you want to go to the
| public square where practically anyone can shout as he sees
| fit. I do that too, but I try to moderate both my time using
| social media and what I see there. And I am proud I haven't
| used TikTok, I stopped using Facebook, Instagram, I don't watch
| any Reels, Shorts, etc.
|
| So publishers still are not lost, but what they are selling is
| not curation because of technological limitations, but because
| of limits of how much we can read and see in the day.
|
| --
|
| At the same time, publishers are biased. They publish what they
| see as high quality. They publish what they consider worthy.
| They publish things they would want to read. And they have
| publication checklists that prohibit publishing certain things
| even if they are true.
|
| Public squares don't have such an attribute.
|
| There are things to be published and heard, even when
| mainstream people would disagree. There are things that should
| be public, even when it's against a law in certain countries.
|
| And online anonymity mixed with public square enables people to
| tell about atrocities that happen, or about corruption,
| government inefficiencies, about people breaking human rights
| and so on.
|
| --
|
| If you end anonymity and public squares, you end a channel for
| democratic feedback. Because publishers don't play this role
| any more. They are biased, people realize it and are fed of it.
| DrScientist wrote:
| > Social media are not publishers. They are way more public
| squares, but online.
|
| I'd believe that if they didn't promote or suppress content -
| in my view as soon as you get into that game you become part
| of the publishing process.
|
| > On top of that, even when publishers usually curate
| content, there is no obligation to do so. It's just something
| that has been done, because publishing used to be expensive.
|
| Eh? Publishers take care of what they publish because they
| are responsible for it in law - if they publish a lie about
| somebody ( even if it's a quote from somebody else - ie
| somebody elses 'content' ) - they are on the hook for that.
|
| In a similar way, if I defame you and then a
| newspaper/facebook promotes that around the world, most of
| the damage actually comes from the promotion of the original
| defamation - the publishing/amplification.
|
| > If you end anonymity and public squares, you end a channel
| for democratic feedback.
|
| You are already assuming we live in a society where people
| are too afraid to say what they think in public . And I would
| also argue if you stand on a soap box in a public square then
| you are not anonymous - you are public. You are confusing a
| public square with people whispering behind masks.
| leokennis wrote:
| Leaving Facebook, Instagram and Twitter a few years ago (and
| never joining TikTok) has been the number one top decision for my
| mental health. I wish everyone and society as a whole to make the
| same decision.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| All I have on my Twitter feed is porn and jk Rowling tweets. I
| don't know what y'all are doing but my feed is exactly what I
| want.
| roxyrox wrote:
| wow so many warnings for the future.. They didnt intend to but FB
| now has some responsibility about whats generated on it as one of
| the most massive source of info in the planet...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-08 23:01 UTC)