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Comment by fractionalhare | Hacker News Reader

A principled commitment to fact-checking is more important than whether or not any particular fact-check is ultimately correct. Mistakes happen. If the effort results in more good calls than bad calls, it is a good initiative overall.

What would you have Facebook do, fact check using Twitter because the CDC made this one bad call? Do you think the modal CDC consensus is worse than that of Twitter?

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I would have them not make a blanket commitment to fact-checking, because I don't agree with the perspective that it's a good initiative if it makes mostly good calls. A "fake news suppressor" that's allowed to make any significant number of bad calls will inevitably be abused by bad actors who have specific topics they'd prefer people not to discuss.

I guess, but even if it's imperfect it still seems better than the status quo.

Facebook should just not use fact checkers at all. The sites were fine before that and "fact checkers" shoot themselves in the feet so frequently that ever fewer people take them seriously. Most such self-proclaimed checkers are far more interested in what authority figures say than what is true, hence why they're such a mess - the moment authority figures disagree it sends them into a tailspin of confusion and random, arbitrary decisions.

Really, Facebook and others need to just give up on this. There is no principled commitment to anything here. "Misinformation" isn't even a meaningful concept. It's arrogant and abusive for randos at FB or other social media firms to believe they are so smart they can sift the entire world for what's true and what's not. Nobody can do that. Nobody.

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