Zuckerberg Says Twitter Is Wrong to Fact-Check Trump | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg Says Twitter Is Wrong to Fact-Check Trump

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25 pointsMaysonL32 comments

A significant portion of social media posts are filled with simply false information. I recently got into an argument with someone on Facebook, but stopped when they admitted they weren’t confident Covid-19 is caused by a virus.

The level of misinformation has reached a point where I wish I could pay for a service to fact check my Facebook feed, Twitter feed, YouTube videos, etc. I wish these platforms would allow third party filters to plug-in to their platforms and modify feed content and search results. I can imagine many more uses for these filters such as checking for inappropriate content for children or avoiding triggering content for trauma survivors. I can imagine a mix of AI and Humans being involved in these filters, and large number of people subscribing to popular filters.

I find it depressing that people think Twitter Feeds or Facebook feeds or even reddit posts are information sources. They are at best, opinion sources most of the time, and at the lest, they are a biased news source that fits a specific narrative with heavy (and often uninformed) commentary conveniently directly added in.

This is different from say....an rss feed of actual news sources that, in theory, are vetting/verifying information for some level of accuracy before publishing it/posting it.

That doesnt happen on twitter, facebook or youtube, and there is not a requirement to do so.

Now there is still work to be done by you, the reader, to further vet these news sources for bias, but if you cant trust the source information then its entirely worthless.

Thats where something like Feedly or any RSS/aggregator that you can organize sources and topics should come in. You can still link in some of these aformentioned sources as well, but you can do so in a way that its obvious that they are probably containing bad information or heavy bias.

Is that Thiel getting his fangs into Zuckerberg again or is Facebook simply too afraid of the administration to do anything

Or different people have different opinions. Here where I live people who can't go to vote, like very old, get visited by the certified people and they check your documentation. Sending out just mail and getting it back screams a lot of fraud. It's weird that people on HN are against voting online because it can never be secure but are fine what California is doing.

Colorado has success with mail-in ballots—the state's system is an alternate approach to what you described where you are[1]—and such ballots have never been an issue for US military personnel stationed elsewhere.

[1] https://www.5280.com/2020/05/no-fraud-isnt-rampant-in-colora...

Could it be that there isn't much fraud around mail-in ballots at the moment because it's not the primary method of voting and mail in and absentee ballots aren't always counted? Might this change if mail-in becomes the primary voting method? It seems pretty undeniable that commiting fraud via mail-in ballots would be far easier than if voting were mostly in person. We shouldn't wait for an attack vector to be exploited before securing the vulnerability.

> Could it be that there isn't much fraud around mail-in ballots at the moment because it's not the primary method of voting and mail in and absentee ballots aren't always counted?

There are states where it is the primary method, and they are (other than overseas absentee ballots, IIRC) in most places counted the same as any other ballots (provisional ballots aren't always counted, but that's a different kettle of fish.) In some cases the process results in them being counted later, which may be after immediate media attention to the counts moves away, but...

In what state is mail-in voting accounting for a plurality of votes cast in a national election? That's the only way you could claim that it's the primary method in a given state.

Further, mail-in ballots don't tend to lean toward one party or the other at present, so claiming that it's an attempt at Democrat voter suppression is disingenuous. 538 recently published an article on the matter. I would link it, but it's a pain on mobile and I've given you enough info to find the article yourself. This really is about security, an area in which mail-in ballots are lacking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon

> The U.S. state of Oregon established vote-by-mail as the standard mechanism for voting with Ballot Measure 60, a citizen's initiative, in 1998. The measure made Oregon the first state in the United States to conduct its elections exclusively by mail.

Interesting. How do they prevent fraud? The goodwill of man isn't an acceptable answer.

I understand signature matching to be a part of it. I don't know, beyond that. I would expect the Oregon secretary of state's office, or similar, would have more info. I'll spare you the lmgtfy link.

You should spare the link, since you are making a claim of fact without providing evidence.

Sorry, claims without evidence? I am not arguing with you. You asked questions. I shared what I knew, made clear that it was my own understanding, made clear that you should do more research, and suggested where that might be fruitful. It's not my responsibility to do that research for you.

> Further, mail-in ballots don't tend to lean toward one party or the other at present, so claiming that it's an attempt at Democrat voter suppression is disingenuous.

No, claiming it would be effective Democratic voter suppression might be inaccurate (though the issue isn't “who votes more by mail”, but “who votes by mail that would not vote if only allowed to vote in-person”, which are not equivalent questions, so the fact you relate doesn't even make that weaker case.)

But that the motivation is partisan (whatever the evidence is about the likely effects) comes straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/08/trump-voting-by-mai...

It's not disingenuous to suggest an actor has a nefarious motive when the actor explicitly announces that motive, even if there might be evidence that the act taken would not realize the motivating goal.

Ok, doesn't change the fact that not adopting vote by mail as a primary method is not voter suppression. I'm not concerned with intent in this case. It also doesn't change that vote by mail has a larger attack surface than in-person voting and is therefore less secure. If voting accessibility is a problem, expand early in-person voting. Given the current climate, I don't trust that either side will not try to unduly influence the election using any means they think that they can get away with.

I was a pollworker in California this past election. Why do you think mail balloting is "a lot of fraud" compared to what happens in a polling place? At the end of the day it's still a signature on a sheet of paper combined with a check before counting that nobody was recorded to have submitted more than one ballot.

What’s weird is trying to peddle your gut as evidence of a real problem.

It’s clear you’ve done little to learn about the process. It’s not as if a piece of paper written on with crayon and sent back in the ballot envelope gets counted.

It’s weird you’ll probably be all “oh yes this math about computer stuff is just right” but seem to ignore how the math of investigating fraud has usually revealed it in broad daylight. Not in any of the dozens of elections 100% of vote by mail states have used it for for years now. But by plainly corrupt politicians and their sycophants, not the voters of the general public.

Yet your knee jerk reaction is to deflect on your neighbors as if they’re the problem we just don’t see it!

That’s what’s weird.

We have just breached the zero integrity event horizon.

I agree with Zuckerberg. Fact checking isn't possible as most of these things aren't "facts" twitter can prove or disprove. The illegal or threat of harm test seems like a much more reasonable one.

Surely accusing a person of murder where an investigation has concluded otherwise can be proven.

This is exactly what I am getting at. Does it prove otherwise? Can Twitter know the state of truth about this? Should we tag every post saying OJ did it with information about the trial and that he was proven innocent? What about posts about Michael Brown and the Ferguson riots? Courts found the cops innocent do we need to append the Michael Brown was murdered posts with WELL ACTUALLY the court found him not to have been murdered FACT CLOSED.

I am not sure if twitter established any fact to be true or false, rather prompted the readers to additional information. Although there might be an interpretation that the information they pointed to could be bias (in some way).

> Fact checking isn't possible

Except outright lies and misinformation are easily disproved.

But moderation is not cheap. Zuckerberg is working what he sees as the most profitable angle, unsurprisingly, and spinning it to promote his ad company. Ad views are profitable. The fact that a hands-off policy allows the promotion of genocide in Myanmar and spreads hate and propaganda everywhere faster than ever does not matter.

In my opinion when it comes to elections politicians should be fact checked.

By whom? Every side can argue either way to truth or lie.

Looking at the arguments in the multiple posts of this topic / concept we have people saying President Trump’s statement is false and true. It depends on the perspective, a significant amount of which is tribal based. You can get a great example of how a person’s thoughts change depending on who says it if you watch any of the YouTube videos of people asking opinions on a quote; when it was revealed to be someone from their tribe, BOOM!, perspective change.

Fact checking could be accomplished by a three person team that has items presented to them without context. But, we would need them to be isolated from society to ensure their purity in a subject matter.

Yes, by journalists in the press, and perhaps by their opponents. But just because you sell billboard space, or ad space, doesn't mean you should be responsible for that fact checking.

There's a reason newspapers would separate out advertising and editorial content and identify them as such.

The counter argument typically is "but what if no one sees the countervailing message?!?" Shouldn't such a verdict be affixed to the message as a visual mark of sin or righteousness?

Counter ideas with ideas, not imprimaturs.

That said, I'd love to have a "No Tweet" litmus test for Presidential candidates. "I promise, when I'm President, that I will never personally tweet from my own account."

Wow, for once Mark said something rational.

quick move to prove themselves to be on the right side of social network spectrum!

Yet Facebook is very happy to censor the Anti-Trump Project Lincoln group, & deny them their ads.

https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-why-facebook-censored-...

Zuck looking to get that Trump traffic ...

Zuck is a republican, enough said. Using his company to shove his tongue up Trump's ass to make money off facilitating mass disinformation just isn't ethical.

Please don't do this here.

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