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Comment by cowpig | Hacker News Reader

> The third concern is what has dominated the news cycle as of late: Facebook’s decision to not fact-check any posts or ads from politicians. This is largely being framed as aiding President Trump in particular, which is probably both true and also an unsurprising complaint from the Second Estate used to having monopoly control over fact-checking.

Does he mean the American second estate, i.e. the legislative branch? Or does he mean the Nobility?

And what does he mean by Monopoly Control?

And what is he trying to imply with the word "unsurprising" here?

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I think he means the European second state, the one after the church-backed monarch state, i.e. nation state. (I also think his use of the nth-state analogy is slightly is confusing).

I think he is referring to the media establishment's (i.e. TV news) monopoly over fact checking. and it's unsurprising because of course they would like to keep that same power they had before the internet

Isn't the media the fourth estate?

I can't find any way to interpret this excerpt such that it makes sense.

How does anyone have "monopoly control over fact checking"?

And I also can't think of a way to favorably interpret that statement, given that I consider fact-checking to be an integral component of any information dissemination system.

Like many of Ben Thompson's articles, I find his ideas here compelling, but I also find myself feeling like he's an industry apologist and it clouds his thinking/makes him myopic.

I think he made a logical leap based around the US political parties and wealthy elites' influence over the fourth estate - sanctioned political debates on CNN, sources of information with perceived authority such as Fox News, etc. While I also think it's explained poorly, there may be a connection here to his point about the largest advertisers (politician and large corporations) who fund the media which is meant to check them.

That seems like a lot of hand-waving to me.

> this was the context for Edmund Burke’s remarks in 1787 that “There are Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”

There's this quote early in the article about the Fourth Estate being the most powerful, and yet by the end I'm supposed to assume all these things to accept this claim that "monopoly control" of the Second Estate exists on fact-checking?

What I actually see is an article where someone started with a conclusion (that some sort of free-market/libertarianism/lassaiz-faire/whatever brand of let tech companies do whatever they want is The Way) and then spent a lot of time thinking about how to reach it.

TFA spells out the estates being referenced in detail:

In Europe the first three estates are a reference to how society was organized throughout the Middle Ages: the First Estate was the church, the second was the nobility, and the third were the commoners....

Fourth is the press. Fifth has been variously attributed, but here is being applied to online activity generally. It was ascribed to bloggers specifically in 2006.

I think he is actually referring to the Press (ie, the fourth state). I can't make sense of it any other way. It might just be an error.

If he means the Fourth State, then "unsurprising" would refer to a gate-keeper's desire to maintain their position. Ie, the Press has a lot of power because of their position in deciding what people get to hear. It is unsurprising that they would seek to preserve that power.

It's possible he meant the Fourth Estate, but he seems to be blurring the lines between Fourth and Second and trying to make this point about how the Second only exists because of the Fourth, so I'm not sure.

But even if it is just an error, what are the words "monopoly control" doing in there?

And is it even useful to think of "The Media" as a entity with an agenda? When he's talking about the editorial board at the New York Times it's plausible, but then suddenly he's talking about this nebulous "estate" concept and attributing motivations to it like it's acting as an individual.

And then once he's done that, he's taking a criticism of Facebook and attributing the criticism to his nebulous concept and saying "of course they would say that," in order to make me feel like the fact that the criticism is true is less relevant?

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