This is an unwinnable fight, the only reasonable response is to abandon the pretense that opinions are facts, and that most people can't distinguish truth from falsehood.
> [1] https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1469331084550852615/ph...
In this context, it is the fact checks that are claimed to be protected speech.
"Protected" refers to statements of opinions (as opposed to facts) being protected by law against allegations of defamation. For example, if I publish something as a factual statement, e.g., "Mark Zuckerberg is a criminal", I can be sued for defamation (if it is false). However, if I say "I think Mark Zuckerberg is a criminal", I can't be sued for defamation.[1]
Thus, Facebook is defending itself against a defamation suit by arguing that all its "fact check" labels are merely statements of the fact checker's opinion, not actual statements of fact.
In particular, the paragraph quoted in that Twitter post does not refer to any attempt to protect an opinion against "political enemies".
[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#United_States - In particular: 'Defenses to defamation that may defeat a lawsuit, including possible dismissal before trial, include the statement being one of opinion rather than fact or being "fair comment and criticism".'
I don't see how that's much different than a newspaper running front page stories that asserting that everything John Doe says is inaccurate then a year later saying "oh it was just our opinion".
Imagine if CNN interjected in our in-person conversations with friends and family on nearly everything we said -- it would be a nightmare -- and on social media, there is no difference in its nightmarishness or weight, and to think that some millions of people are in full support of such interjections in order to protect their own narrative, because as long as someone powerful is watching out for them to prevent the high crime of "disagreement" viewed as dangerous bullying, they couldn't care less how negatively it impacts society, much less the other side of the aisle's freedom to discuss, debate, and participate in the broader discussions society brings us.
There's a lot of irony in nearly an entire political segment (leftists) in 1) supporting third wave feminism as a means to shut down, specifically men, from correcting others when they're wrong, or simply acting on one's behalf out of kindness (I ain't need no man), and 2) supporting the same behaviors by abusive corporate media outlets and paid commentators acting on behalf of social networks.
Listen to yourself. You are allowing MSM to manipulate the meaning of things in your mind.
You literally just suggested that fact checking in general is bad and should go away. I know you think that everyone is operating under the context of malicious/false fact checking, but that is my point: you all have undergone a paradigm shift in which you allow the meaning of words to change based on false flags and what mentally ill people are claiming is "fact checking".
Stop.
Everyone should be learning critical thinking and fact checking. Uneducated and vulnerable people need to understand this and see the difference between someone else doing it for them, and they themselves being able to see clearly what is happening to their lives.
They're not checking facts, they're just enforcing the mainstream view. The mainstream view is often correct, but sometimes it isn't, and then the fact-checkers are just horribly wrong, and suppressing actual debate on the merits of an issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory
“Some scientists agree that the possibility of a lab leak should be examined as part of the ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19, though they have expressed concerns about the risks of politicization.”
You argue that blocking debate is a righteous act because the theory's "very existence harms public health". I'd counter that the gagging of a concerned public breeds distrust that is vastly more harmful than allowing debate would have been.
If the FCC ever got regulatory hooks into the internet we’re done with web innovation.
- as I researched and reported, I kept notes about the source of every piece of info I got.
- as I wrote, I noted that source every time I stated a fact (using phrases like "according to")
- my editor asked me in general whether I had done all this - and during the editing process drilled down on several facts I stated and what the basis for them was.
- A factual error once crept into my story through the headline, which was written by a different editorial team. It was a minor thing, but it was a big deal, my editor was super stressed, and they issued a printed retraction.
- This was all inline with the general policy followed by a 300 person newsroom.
- Editor's year-end review is partly based on the number of retractions issued.
- The culture of the organization was such that if a known error made it into print, and there wasn't a retraction, that would be basically a scandal.
You can certainly argue that censorship isn't always a bad thing. But calling censorship "fact checking" is purposely misleading.
The truth being suppressed once is far worse than a thousand lies.
No, not by that logic. The logic is "some people claimed that claims of the possibilities of bad outcomes were instances of the slippery slope fallacy, and now that the bad outcomes were actually realized, they should apologize, because something isn't the slippery slope fallacy if things further down the slope have actually happened". That's not even remotely connected to anything you said here.
the truth hurts...if you care about the truth...
It may be true that it's hard to draw a clear line between bullshit and almost-bullshit, but it's hard to draw a clear line between porn and almost-porn and they somehow manage to do that okay.
edit because apparently this wasn't clear enough: the way you distinguish science from bullshit is not by evaluating the claims (that's what I am arguing we should not trust Facebook to do). One is a money-making endeavour and the other isn't, and that's the basis on which they are distinguished. Even the worst science is not festooned with ads.
I'll say it again: "Facebook doesn't do a good enough job of evaluating accuracy" is a trap, and it's a trap they desperately want you to fall in to. If we get to the point where we put any value in FB's evaluation of any scientific claim, we're already into dystopian sci-fi territory, no matter how good a job they do.
The existence of power-centers like giant social media monopolies guarantees they are targets for political interests to hijack that power & censor opponents. Even if you could snap your fingers and magically populate these dominant platforms, and media/journalist institutions as well, with good faith actors (even here they are limited by their ability to actually know what is true), this wouldn't be a stable equilibrium and would in short order be populated and/or lobbied/pressured/swayed by political opportunists.
Every single (semi)-erotic artist i know has faced a daily struggle of avoiding their work (and livelihoods) being demonetized somehow - whether it be shadowbans, straight up sudden bans, deactivations of accounts under false pretenses, etc. One could argue there's a difference between 2D art and "live action porn' but I'd say as an artist the line is a lot fuzzier than most think, as there tends to be a suspicious amount of activist work that tends to get shoved under the "porn" rug because it makes it easier to hide dissenting minority opinions.