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Comment by ospzfmbbzr | Hacker News Reader

Fact checking is the business of publicly labeling as false those narratives that people with real power already viewed negatively. It becomes necessary when you lie all the time.

The whole notion of fact checkers is laughable -- who pays them? Do they still get paid if they 'fact check' their benefactors?

There is no debate. There is no invitation for refutation.

It's propaganda.

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This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion? And if you agree with that, all we're arguing about is where to draw the line between "obviously false" and "disputed" facts.

> It becomes necessary when you lie all the time.

There are plenty of people lying and/or grifting on the other side of this power structure as well. There is some non-zero benefit being provided by fact checking, but it's certainly not an ideal situation. The real problem is virality. No one felt the need to fact-check discussion forums because those posts were not likely to spread to millions of people.

>This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion?

The issue is I don't agree with all that. Who cares if crazies share flat earth theories on Facebook? You either trust your fellow humans to be able to think critically, or you don't. And if you don't, then why do you trust them with power of life and death over you via the state and voting?

Because other lies are dangerous and I don't trust people to think critically. We also don't have a direct democracy and maybe that's what saves us most of the time.

>Because other lies are dangerous

And who has power/moral authority/whatever to decide that? There's no answer to that that doesn't lead to tyranny

There are solutions here that aren't predicated on that decision, such as shutting down the dangerous avenue to all data equally (though that would break the Facebook ad machine).

The point that a lie in this context can be societally dangerous is still very relevant. Next up is the frequency / commonality of these dangerous lies.

Yes, just look at the terrible state of Switzerland.

It's been quite a couple years. I guess it's the climate change. Now we are policing and holding higher grounds around what people can and cannot talk about?

You know, at some point in the history of this earth, people thought the earth is flat. Those who thought it was round were thrown in fire. Don't be that guy and let's not get there because it's easier than you think.

> If I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false

Isn't that implying that the reader is too ignorant to know at a glance? In the marketplace of ideas shouldn't that nonsense content just get buried anyway?

> There are plenty of people lying and/or grifting on the other side of this power structure as well.

Agreed. Lying is how you create something out of nothing after all.

I don't like being lied to but some amount of lying does seem to be necessary to maintain any control over a group of people and impose order.

> No one felt the need to fact-check discussion forums because those posts were not likely to spread to millions of people.

Exactly. The range and impact presents a challenge to their long held ability to unequivocally decide what is 'true' -- which is the authority's most critical power because this effectively creates reality, from which everything else flows. It's not surprising they are defending it so vigorously... they just don't call it that. They use phrases like 'combating misinformation' and 'fact checking'.

This isn’t a free marketplace of ideas though - thanks to dubious algorithms and recommendations, not all ideas even have a chance of being seen, let alone the bad ones buried. The echo-chamber phenomenon is like walking into a shop, looking at an item on a shelf from one manufacturer, and then once you put it back and look around you can only see items from that manufacturer. You get trapped in a bubble where you’re only ever seeing content like the content you just engaged with.

I agree that in a free marketplace of ideas bullshit content would get buried, but this isn’t how modern social media platforms work.

> Isn't that implying that the reader is too ignorant to know at a glance?

Yes. Have you been on Facebook?!? It's pretty much Ignorance City.

> In the marketplace of ideas shouldn't that nonsense content just get buried anyway?

Maybe it would... If the "marketplace of ideas" weren't a marketplace of sheep.

>This all sounds good, but if I assert that the earth is flat on Facebook why shouldn't that simply be labelled false so others can avoid wasting their time trying to refute a ridiculous assertion?

The particulars aren't the issue and never have been. The issue is, there's no "authority" you can trust to decide for you what is and isn't true. The particulars are of what's being discussed is a red herring.

Facebook, youtube, twitter, and reddit, all think they know better and you should trust them. It would be far less alarming if they didn't all agree with each other all the time. There's no significant political dissent between them. The present a single face. Aka fascism when they agree with the government, which they currently do.

How do you know the earth is not flat?, if it's merely because some authority figure told you so do you really know that the earth is not flat?

If you know the earth is round based on observed reality then why would you believe some internet rando who says it's flat?

Yeah, this exactly. Wonder why there were no "misinformation" bans for the MSM companies that repeatedly reported on unconfirmed, and later disproved rumors about Russiagate.

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