https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/
https://twitter.com/birdwatch/status/1585794012052611076?s=2...
I honestly felt nothing but contempt for the oligarchic structure of fact checking. Facebook hired organisations like the Washington Post to do their fact checking. I have not forgotten how many people there lies killed in Iraq. I don't forget how the journalists at the time were willing to compromise their ethics in exchange for White House access and exclusive stories from the front lines, simply because journalistic interest is not the public interest. We also saw more recently during the pandemic incompetent journalists without adequate medical training censoring BMJ articles from Facebook: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95.
You are making one of the only tools I can see that can possibly make "fact-checking" a reality in a nominally unbias way that can be broadly accepted by the public. A democratic fact-checking system for a largely democratic website. Even if birdwatch will get things wrong, I appreciate the effort to reform this institution of "fact-checking" with something righteous and moral. No need to touch on my spicy political views, but I think this is a transparent, scalable, fair tool that can truly be embraced by the entire society rather than simply leading to a partisan divide.
Your system understands I'm on social media because I want to hear what the average person has to say, and I would go to a news website if I wanted to get a news websites take on what the facts were. To me, if a news website wants people on twitter or Facebook to pay attention to their "fact check" editorial, they should do it the same way everybody else has to. By creating compelling writing that gets attention and that people agree with.
Do you think there is a risk to "fact checking" gives the public a false sense of knowledge, and reduces certain important skills?
It seems apparent to me that, in the process of a manual substation of truth, through whatever means of research an individual chooses to check the validity of a subject, they accidentally learn more during the task of that research verification both directly through the claim that was made, and as well in that field in a more general sense.
For example: if two users are arguing over a Bible verse, and one side wishes to verify the claim the other side made, the traditional method would mean anything from reading a Wikipedia entry and a few related sources, to a book on the subject, to some other means. During the search for the specific thing they were after, they would also learn about: the general historical context of that period, other related verses, events of a similar nature throughout history, cultural peculiarities, linguistical differences, etc.
On the other hand, if "fact checking" is simply a thing done on a persons behalf, not only is the accuracy of the check a concern, but the act will not encourage learning about that related context. The recipient will not have a reason to learn of those other things, and might never learn or maintain that valuable skill of research and verification.
Depends on what you mean by “completely true.” For instance, I heard all kinds of wild/absurd accusations like he had child porn all over it. If that were “completely true,” he’d be in cuffs. You need to give more context here.
What was disputed was what the repair tech said he found on it, as well as the fake news/gossip Hannity and co kept repeating without any evidence. Remember when a courier "lost" the supposedly incredibly damning and totally-proves-something-about-Hunter evidence en route to Hannity that they conveniently had no copies or backups of any kind? We still don’t even know what they allegedly contained!
Russian accounts absolutely amplified and generated misinformation around Hunter Biden in an attempt to hurt Joe Biden's election chances. They have consistently engaged in this behavior during our elections. There is a consensus among our intelligence organizations, it's old news.
Please present concrete claims and proof if you're going to say something is "completely true."
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/oct/29/fox-news-tucke...
The videos of him smoking crack and negotiating with prostitutes in Ukraine.
>when did Hunter Biden deny the laptop
Joe Biden went on stage to debate Donald Trump where he publicly said that the laptop was “Russian disinformation”. Hunter Biden didn’t really deny it though he said he “wasn’t sure if it was his”.
Twitter refused to post the NY post story as well as banned users mentioning the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
Obviously, this was a cover up. The laptop was his.
I’m done man. Have a good one. I’ll gladly read any sources you send along.
>videos don’t exist
Wait, do you seriously think these videos are fake? They were all over Reddit.
I can send you the link. I can’t post it here since it has nudity but I’m more then happy to send it to you. Is there an email or way you would like to receive these vids? (MP4 files).
Like, if I wanted to learn about something regarding the financial affairs of Europe in the 1300s, someone could just link me a quote that Professor so-and-so said something. But what if that professor is generally seen as a quack in that field? What if, after making that statement, he corrected himself a week later? What if that quote is simply decades old, and new information has come to light since then? What if my interest was specifically in one area of Europe, but his statement encompassed multiple countries, and parts of the Middle East? What if the statement being made had an assumption of "excluding other factors regarding wars A, B, C and plagues, 1, 2, 3" but was not in the quote that I was given?
These are all things that one might accidentally pick up and learn about during exploration of the truth, but be completely unaware of needing to know that when they first started.
To give a real world example of what I mean, consider this: A prominent New Testament scholar is Dr. Bart D Ehrman. In most debates I have seen posted on YouTube regarding whether The Bible is a trustworthy source will reference Dr. Ehrman at some time or another, by those in favor of Christianity and scriptural accuracy. The thing is, Dr. Ehrman is an strong opponent of Christianity and outspoken Atheist. Dr. Ehrman is a very big name in the field, and has a lot of criticisms against The Bible itself, but he also strongly affirms historical proof of Jesus' existence, life, and death - he's written at least one book on the matter[1]. If someone were to simply see the quote he has made, "but he did exist, whether we like it or not." the immediate assumption about his stance and belief is that he's a Christian, and therefore biased.
It's the loss of this context, this underlying breadth that I'm concerned with. That fact checking, in a very real sense, removes both the onus and need to read and determine for ones own self. That fact checking does too much, and gives too little; the worst of both. A fact without the background, a cause without explanation.
I'm not against fact-checking persay, I'm more against the artificial promotion of certain parties influence through forced editorialisation. I feel birdwatch holds the promise of a better way to accomplish the same end.
Now if only if the feed would stop disappearing tweets in the middle of reading them, that would be great.
I guess this can't happen with the Nitter front-end. Just use LibRedirect.
>Twitter laid me off today. If you know of any open positions for project managers and senior software engineers, let me know. I was the PM in charge of that feature that shows you a good tweet before the whole timeline refreshes so you can't find it
Interesting, I remember someone on /r/slatestarcodex having the idea to rate/sort reddit comments by that metric, which I dub "sort by should-be-uncontroversial" (because normally-disagreeing people all think it's correct).
(Then again, it almost might incentivize politician-style vacuous/feel-good statements.)
They for sure would since there's a word for that: demagoguery.