Even if I have own opinions on the subject, I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Doesn't mean they are wrong by doing this, but it's hard to be claiming they are still somehow neutral.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
So what exactly is this one side that 99% of experts agree upon?
The only disagreements are on extent to which we will be fucked - will we see hundreds of millions of climate refugees, or billions.
And if that's true, then it's possible there's no grand conspiracy and at the end of the day, either the evidence isn't strong enough or the case isn't being made well enough to get everyone on board. If the debate is being lost before they even start telling people how dramatically their lifestyles will have to change to have a meaningful impact on the issue, what possible hope could they have when those realities are laid out?
But that's probably not true, so don't worry about it. Now are you with us or a denier?
"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."[0].
There are plenty of misinformed people that will gladly tell you there is no such thing and if there was human activity has no effect. Pretending that there aren't and even if the issue is complex there isn't a set of clearly wrong opinions is disingenuous to the extreme.
[0] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...
Are you saying these concepts are equivalent to the aforementioned 99% of scientists and experts?
I'm really not trying to act dense, just figure out what it is people even believe about this topic.
This is getting off topic, but do you consider asking that to be impolite?
They aren't, though.
It appears this is the wrong place to get an answer to that question.
This simply isn't true, it's outlandish even, and is part of why moderation is tricky. Why do you believe this?
We are not 'fucked' even at the worst estimates.
In 1990 almost 2 billion people were on less than $2.00 per day.
Were we 'fucked' in 1990?
Are we currently 'fucked' with 700 million people on less than $2.00 per day.
You'll be at the mercy of whichever out of 3,000 moderators ends up passing judgment on your post, whether they are liberal or conservative, whether they are having a good day or not, etc.
I don't see this going well for Facebook.
Climate Change is by no means a 'settled' science, one of the most important questions scientists must answer is what the Climate Sensitivity is to CO2. There's a wide range of answers to this question by scientists, depending on which climate model you use, as well as many other factors.
Popular science articles misrepresent the science and ignore the variance/complexity, in the end hurting the cause in the eyes of those who don't agree with the prescribed policies to address it.
I don't. They will, of course, push a particular agenda. In the worst possible way.
As we've seen with Twitter and other organizations, the ToS don't matter. Or at least, don't matter for the right people. The "bad people" get punished even if they don't violate the ToS. The "good people" don't get punished even if they do violate the ToS.
I'd be OK with even egregious ToS, if they were applied evenly. But as we've seen too often, they're not.
Whatever agenda FB and friends are peddling, it's hidden in the guise of "safety", and "fairness", and "community standards".
It's not automatic who you need to PR for.
There is obviously false, and then there is everything else. I guess the best facebook can do is weed out the obviously false. If they do that, it is a guarantee that they will get attacked for being biased, because with the shifting of the political winds usually one party or the other spreads more misinformation.
Sure, branding real news as fake news is politically motivated, whereas labeling what is the clearly the equivalent of the most absurd supermarket tabloids as "fake news" is accurate and appropriate.
It is curious that many people are somehow oblivious to tabloid headlines when they appear on the internet, whereas nearly everyone discards the supermarket checkout stand "The Pope is a space alien!" stories.
Of course, it doesn't help for outright lies like WMDs in Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
>President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet, to name a few leading figures, built support for the war by telling the world that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling chemical weapons, feverishly developing germ warfare devices and racing to build a nuclear bomb. Some of them, notably Mr. Cheney, the administration's doomsayer in chief, said Iraq had conspired with Al Qaeda that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/opinion/remember-that-mush...
Which is true.
I was listening to a podcast on my commute today, and the person mentioned a book called Think Twice that was about decision making. How we make decisions with these different biases. I think I even remember a great post on HN about all the most popular biases.
I guess what I am getting at is its no at all clear cut how someone's post will be judged given all the baggage each one of us carries with us.
We democrats tend to stick to tech pretty hard, and we buy things. Billy joe bob will post his pro-trump rants on Facebook all day, but will still go to a walk in store to buy things.
Of course I'm generalizing and oversimplifying it, but the leadership at FB is strongly left leaning, and they know how to cater to their audience, keep them happy and make money from them.
The issue is of course branding everything that might help the right "fake news". Sure, there's a lot of it (from both sides really) but the idea that they have the power to shape people's opinions in a political direction, and are willing to do it is dangerous for all of us.
If you want america to be a certain way, that holds even more strongly. How 'murica moves forward will depend heavily on the political parties stances. Being able to move (I'm guessing) the democrats will have a massive effect on politics.
Not being beholden to a share price also really helps.
If I'm not breaking reddit rules, then as long as I've been active any time within the past 6 months, I own the subreddit and can make changes to the direction of the sub and its moderation team as I see fit.
That subreddit was created, by the way, because I disagreed with rules regarding the discussion of Cuban cigar sources which ship to the US in the main cigar subreddit. They're free to administer their subreddit as they see fit, and I'm free to do the same.
Anyone with enough points on SO becomes a mod automatically, and gets to deal with "how dare you close my shitty off topic question, I have every right not to follow the rules and homogenise so into every other discussion forum". Anyone who starts a subreddit becomes the mod of it and can promote other mods at will.