YouTube is major conduit of fake news, factcheckers say
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/06/january-6... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/04/bidens-cl...
Facts are, from a epistemological point of view, things as they are. We do not have access to facts about the physical world, science does not produce such facts. Empirical science is a process that asymptotically approximates facts by eliminating false propositions.
Or flipped around: The facts are the things that true statements correspond to, the things in themselves.
There is serious problems with facts merely being true statements if you start poking at the edge cases a bit.
Consider that there are things that are, and statements that are true. If the two are the same, then all statements that are true must also be things that are. But it is true that if I were to lick my own forehead, it would become wet; yet I cannot lick my own forehead. This is an example of something that is true, yet cannot be. The statements that are true is a larger category than the things that are.
And just for shits and giggles https://metro.co.uk/2018/12/03/man-claims-to-be-only-person-... haha
It could never be a fact to you, because if you're dead, you'll be quite incapable of knowing it to be fact, and if you survive, it will be wrong.
The person with whom you're debating appears to have a philosophical understanding (likely logical positivist or early Wittgensteinian) of the term "fact" rather than the common dictionary definition.
The dictionary definition isn't necessarily wrong, but it's a different language-game (i.e. different context).
The consensus on the definition of the term is irrelevant to the subject of this thread. There is no way to form of a body or committee dedicated to the identification and preservation of what is fact and fiction because the facts, the things that are the case are based on our perception of them, and we can be wrong.
People make mistakes, and can persuade others to agree with their mistaken interpretation, or people can be persuaded to deliberately falsify their interpretation of data in exchange for something they want.
What is fact and fiction is ultimately impossible for any group of people to be responsible for without bias -- people have their personal beliefs, their own agendas, they can be bribed, lobbied, persuaded, agitated...
The wise among us do not trust newspapers or media outlets, and even treat scientific discovery with academic scepticism until the math checks out. Fortunately in the sciences, we can check the work of others by making predictions and testing them, as well as checking the math.
Take a news article and filter out everything that would be considered weak or bad science. You will be left with a statement of something that happened, perhaps a picture or video of the thing happening, or in many cases you may even be left with an entirely blank page.
There has always been fake news, as long as within the news there has been the expression of opinion. People aren't motivated by a pursuit of the truth, they're motivated by earning money and notoriety (and thence more money). Motivated by ego. This is what people are instructed to do from childhood.
As long as our primary currency isn't truth, you cannot trust anything but what you can prove for yourself. And even in that world where truth is what we all aspire to find, you still can't trust anything blindly -- because people can still make mistakes.
Nothing is fact to you unless you can prove it based on something else you accept as a certainty, and nothing is a fact to people other than you unless you can prove it based on something they accept as a certainty.
But all of those philosophers got closer than anyone in the last 70 years or so because they didn't just throw names and books at each other, they thought for themselves and engaged in debate.
The whole problem is that nuance is getting lost. In the 80s, a scientist could say 'I have found some troubling signals, there is a 90% chance something bad is going to happen, can we discuss this?' and they would discuss, do risk analysis, come up with mitigating steps.
But now it is 'are you sure this will happen' and of course any scientist will say 'it is very probably, but naturally one can never be 100% sure' and the media will slam him for false news and shape it into their politically advantageous story.
These factcheckers should try to dilute the extremes, and bring nuance in the debate. That's what we need, and that has nothing to do with being politically correct. This is literally the job of the media, which they start to neglect.
That's what they should be doing, but instead we get stuff like this[1], which poisons the well for "fact checking" as a whole.
> A letter signed by more than 80 groups, including Full Fact in the UK and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker
The people who publish lies have now nominated themselves “fact checkers”.
That’s ironic.
Facebook literally refers to fact-checker statements as “opinions” in their legal terminology.
I believe this, but do you have a link? I'd love to show my family this.
This is the original article: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/youtube-misinform...
Anyway there are
No one is using legal arguments when they spread things like vaccine denial.
Those are things that fact checkers are used to Combat.
https://www.achgut.com/artikel/youtube_verliert_erneut_gegen...
>The signatories, who include factchecking groups in India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Colombia, include examples of false content about the reign of the former Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos – whose son is running for office – and the amplification of hate speech against vulnerable groups in Brazil.
>The signatories are from more than 40 countries with a range of funding backgrounds. They include: Full Fact, a UK charity, Washington Post Fact Checker, funded by the eponymous newspaper, Spain’s Maldita, a factchecking foundation; and India Today, a unit within the privately owned TV Today Network.
The effort of getting misinformation tackled in the global south is incredibly hard.
Especially with the prevalence of things like WhatsApp which don’t have a public facing stream to be examined.
They are no different except that people in general know to be skeptical of YouTube videos, while trusting reporting of mainstream media to be truthful.
Every single time mainstream media has reported on an incident that I myself was very familiar with they have ALWAYS misreported it.