Engagement with fact-checked posts on Reddit
academic.oup.com
academic.oup.com
I on the other hand, have another opinion. It is often important to have people who have contextual knowledge stand up and say "that input claiming to be fact is in fact (hah) rubbish" and the politicisation here, is because a very specific arc of engagement is CONSCIOUSLY intruding "fake news" as a tactical approach to dealing with it's concerns.
That it overwhelmingly becomes labelled as a left-right or big-oil/green split, or Russia/Everyone-else or Trump/Biden.. is also something to reflect on.
Exxon (as an example) had material facts to hand, in the 1970s regarding the future impact of CO2 and they made a decision (however informally or not) to surpress those facts, and participate in greenwashing messages, despite the consequences. Now, we could dive into a debate of the form "thats a lie! thats fake news" or not. I don't much care.
In context, I think it informs the quality of the question "is fact checking important" and "is it political" and "is it just about rubbishing dissent"
I think it is important.
I think it is very political.
I do not think it is just about rubbishing dissent.
On the left hand side of the page is a list of "testimony" of events. Who said what happened and when, along with any supporting evidence such as photos or video. (Without a journalist interpreting or crafting a story)
On the right hand side of the page is commentary from interesting folks from both the left and right. (Pulling together the testimony, looking for insight, greater meaning, or identifying trends. )
For example, there's been multiple incidents of that here on HN where people post something that's incorrect by all definitions. It statistically does not align with reality. The best way to counter the deluge of low effort, low accuracy claims is with a medium-effort, medium-accuracy source. Usually in these cases the poster simply vanishes because they did not intend to actually follow up a factual counterclaim.
except we now live in a world with phrases like alternative facts. if someone doesn't want to believe in something because it does not align with their ideals, then you will not be able to convince them regardless of how incontrovertible your facts may be. sure, the more "solid" the fact, the more bizarre the counter is, but there will always be a counter.
And it's not even the 'how many died in WW2' kind of data, but simple public records like 'tax revenue for 2020', 'road accidents in october'.
It's as if being able to find information so easily, has made it less trustworthy. Being flooded with fake and twisted news certainly feels like one of the causes.
there are certain people that whole heartily believe that what the person on their TV is telling them is without a doubt true. anyone trying to convince them otherwise is just part of the opposing forces. even when shown where, for example the fox news hosts, have admitted in sworn testimony the did not believe the big lie and knew it to be false, it is rebutted as fake.
Fake News and Alternative Facts have to be the worst combinations I've ever known. they may even be some of the most dangerous as well.
it's classic cult control. when i was a kid being forced to weekly attendance at my mom's church, it was often heard that you can't go listening to other preachers, reading other books of thought, or similar as that's the enemy's weapon to confuse you and tempt you away. as i got older and actually started paying attention, these things really started sounding like nails on a chalkboard. it wasn't just the one church either.
so by only listening to the one source and ignoring all others, they are actually doing good by what they have been told. those of us reading multiple sources are just twisting in the wind so to speak with no real convictions (or some such as i've been told).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_equilibrium
One could alter the perception of the "facts" in order to feel comfortable about them.
It's more to show others that they're incorrect for XYZ reasons and to prevent that detritus from accumulating. Over time if you just let them post without counters or some form of moderation eventually it becomes the norm.
The best way to counter any claim is with openness, empathy and the ability to be wrong. That is how you change minds, don't let emotions separate you. Granted that is far easier said then done as I may disagree with someone then they often turn to insults if they think "I've turned against them" because I may have a different opinion. Some people have such high defense you really can't get through to them.
That's not an effective counter at least as far as my observation goes.
These jerks win not by backing up their asinine claims with sources. They win by diverting everyone else's energy away from debating their asinine claims to making the debate one of sources. Heck, a good chunk of the time they do it you don't even need to find other sources because they're just using junk journalism where the title says A but the article says B. If being "proven wrong" was actually detrimental to their causes they would modify their behavior.
I'm sure one of our resident link-spewers will be along shortly to disagree with me and then edit his comment five times adding subsequent links to garbage that nominally back up his assertion...
Scientist? Journalist? Professor? Librarian? Doctor? It was only a matter of time before "fact-checker" got the same treatment as these other people. None of these people or careers are beyond reproach, but there is a difference between good-faith attempts at finding the truth and bad-faith accusations of bias.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...
Read it.
The point of the claim is that Hillary Clinton had her phones destroyed. This is true, but the Fact Checkers cannot allow this to be true, so what is an honest Democrat-leaning Fact Checker to do?
Easy, you muddy the claim and add to it: the Right-wing Trolls aren't claiming Hillary had her phones destroyed. No, I've decided that they're claiming that she personally destroyed them with a hammer! AHA! Got you Right-wring Trolls! That's definitely not entirely true.
Verdict: MIXTURE. Clinton did not personally, with her own hands, use a hammer to destroy phones.
So you see, this is what Fact Checking is. When the truth needs to be denied, you muddy the waters, you add irrelevant details to the claim that no one really cares about, and then use those details to claim that the original statement is not true.
And look, the issue isn't that this is being done, it's that it's being presented as fact checking, which is why I distinguish between fact checking and Fact Checking.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/
> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
It should go without saying that there’s no single, universally agreed upon definition of anything, thus giving a convenient way to dismiss any inconvenient claims.
I don’t think I’ll find the answer in an article about Hillary’s cell phone.
that’s the tweet. I don’t think there’s a significant difference between “hillary smashed her phones with a hammer” and “hillary had someone smash her phone with a hammer”, especially when a 128 character limit is a factor.
I could say “I fixed my iPhone’s screen last weekend” when I really just got it replaced at an Apple store. The fact that I personally didn’t replace the screen doesn’t matter.
If the debate was “is hillary clinton strong enough to smash things with hammers” and this was used as evidence, it’d be misleading. The debate was “is hillary clinton suspicious”, and having her phones smashed with hammers is suspicious regardless of whether she did it herself or had someone else do it for her.
That’s not the same as describing them as a monolithic group who all act that way.
Scientists: https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2023/01/23/woke-lancet...
Professors: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/just-how-liberal-are-c...
Librarians: https://nypost.com/2022/09/10/librarians-go-radical-as-new-w...
Doctors: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boston-childrens-hospit...
> are you insinuating that "the American right" don't like scientists, journalists, professors, librarians, and doctors?
I actually don't think this. I know conservatives, they will generally believe scientists who are studying black holes but when climate change gets brought up they accuse them of bias. Similarly they will seek out doctors for their condition but when a doctor treats a trans patient they will accuse them of bias. It's not a dislike, and not of individuals, it's more of a distrust of institutions.
As to who I'd personally vote for next election, I'm currently undecided as these things are highly nuanced. I have issues with both major parties in the US and time will still tell in which direction each develops before the next election. I don't take kindly to you trying to literally paint every single politician on the Republican side with a massive brush of "Nazi supporter". It's exactly for reasons like this that I feel it's important to continue to support them in some fashion to prevent the absolute nonsense that you're perpetuating here.
A couple of decades ago we had people wearing literal swastika arm bands goose stepping through jewish neighborhoods. We survived that perfectly fine. A lot of people seem to want to massively inflate how bad things actually are right now compared to history. Driving division in this country is one of the primary aims of foreign Russian and Chinese propaganda and one of those ways is through rabid partisanship.
[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-...
Most of which you won't have seen, of course.
One of the fact checkers given a prominent position on the front page of Google News is polygraph.info. Polygraph.info is run by Voice of America, official propaganda organ of the US, which was until a few years forbidden by law from targeting US citizens.
Now I ask you: do you think it was for reasons of popular pressure, or maybe market forces, that Voice of America became a featured fact-checker for Google News?
Also, do you think I could get them to fact check claims like, "The CIA considered concrete plans to assassinate Julian Assange"? You think that would ever happen, that they honestly promoted a little known fact which was deeply embarrassing to the US government?
I find no good faith there.
Maybe they have the luxury of less actual lying, because as a hegemonic propagandists, they can just stonewall when someone asks them an awkward question. Pretend they didn't hear it, because no one will report it.
Underdog propagandists like RT don't have that luxury, so it's more efficient to conjure up a shitstorm of mutually incompatible lies for them. But their role is the same.
It's deeply politicized by nature. Fact checking is just spinning a narrative.
You cant nor should not want some publication to process information into conclusions.
> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
Seems pretty political to me. Everyone here agrees that showing up with hundreds of pounds of explosives is terrorism.
Why a terrorist, looks like a run of the mill armed robber, further down the article a few references to armed robberies
I fact checked you using the article you provided. I’m confused.
No conviction, charges dropped, didn’t admit it
Perhaps not deliberate, it could just be that the person doing the fact checking was sloppy in their research or ignorant of other developments. Or maybe it was, who knows.
But either way, we shouldn't really be holding these fact checkers up as bastions of truth, in research papers or otherwise. They're not infallible.
I think the research has merit. I think it would need to be continuous, and re-examined.
For history, some people in the UK may recall a "glasgow media group" who did fact checking in the 1970s before the internet at scale was a thing (the internet existed but was functionally still 10,000 people worldwide, not 99% of the developed world).
It was (in my personal opinion) overtly of a left-view interpretation of history and social contexts. Unfortunately, that was siezed upon by the Tory party, and media companies to "rubbish" their work. The underlying work politics aside was fascinating.
Like freeform jazz that lightly riffs on the different sounds in the environment but otherwise is completely made up.
Either through online media or books.
But who checkes the media? It's ok for natural history side of checks, but for social or political stuff it's a shitshow.
I don't think that is necessarily the case. Their interpretations and conclusions drawn from such sources can be misleading
What does this mean, and why can't the author write one coherent paragraph for the abstract?
Why do so many academics think they have to dress up their work in language they don't know how to use?
However, despite Wikipedia's vaunted neutrality policy, there were plenty of ways to adequately skew its bias in the "proper" direction, and those forces have taken hold in a very real way.
The first battle is to collect editors who all share certain viewpoints about political, social, medical issues, etc. This was accomplished because of where Wikipedia originated and the culture from which it springs. It is also accomplished because when editors of opposing viewpoints come into conflict with the "Cabal" as it were, the former editors are the ones at a disadvantage through ignorance, lack of seniority, or poor temperament, and so get themselves banned much more often.
The second of two battles (and there may be other battles I omit from this summary) is the cultivation of sources. In order to skew Wikipedia properly, undesirable sources must be eliminated from the pool. See the MEDRS policy for an example: nothing but Western establishment "scholarship" is permitted to support any statement about biomedical facts. Therefore, alternative medicine such as Chinese or Ayurveda, naturopathic or homeopathic, acupuncture or yoga, these are all relegated to what's called "FRINGE" territory. You may find alternative medicine facts hidden on individual pages about herbs or chemicals in the "Traditional uses" sections and there are usually prominent disclaimers that nobody in their right mind would use these ridiculously ineffective remedies.
Beyond MEDRS, among the sources that have been systematically excluded are right-leaning politics, journalism, and religious scholarship. With FOX News hanging in by a thread, all of the acceptable major English news outlets are left-wing and progressive. The policing of non-English sources may be less vigilant, but likewise is their usage in mainstream articles.
Biblical scholarship is invalid unless it comes from modern (<100 years) secular (atheist) Ivy-league scholars. You're not allowed to quote Church Fathers or prominent bishops or theologians in matters of the Christian religion (of course it's different for non-Christian faiths).
So you see, by control of the major inputs (editorial board and sourcing) Wikipedia is easily able to control truthiness in the Western world. And its wild popularity doesn't care about being forbidden in the classroom or denigrated by conservatives. Wikipedia is a source of truth for millions who don't know or care about [citation needed].
Sources about "alternative medicine" like homeopathy aren't excluded because they're shitty improperly vetted BS that don't have any good methodology or reproducibility, it's because there's a secret Cabal of Wiki Editors that wants to hide the truth from you.
Right wing news sources are excluded not because they're universally and consistently objectively worse at factual reporting, but because there's a leftist agenda on the part of the Cabal of Wiki Editors (also apparently NYT and CNN are fucking leftist lmfao).
Strictly traditional religious sources are excluded on factual matters like history and anthropology relating to religions not because they're inherently going to be biased because most of them sign faith statements, and classical religious figures are excluded not because they're centuries out of date, but because the Cabal of Wiki Editors is biased towards atheism!
I am amazed at the cognitive dissonance required to get to the worldview of the poster you replied to.
I can't tell if this is part of the sarcasm or not. Do people genuinely believe that CNN is not a leftist organization? According to Pewresearch, 50% of CNN viewers consider themselves democrats as opposed to 40% of viewers of Fox considering themselves republican[0].
Additionally, 30% of viewers of CNN consider themselves liberal, and 30% consider themselves moderate. As opposed to 60% of viewers of Fox considering themselves conservatives. I don't know of anybody that tries to argue that Fox isn't right wing, but it always baffles me when people claim CNN isn't left wing...
I completely missed the NYT on there too. But in the same panel it shows that 44% of readers are Democrat and 36% consider themselves liberal. Whereas only 13% of the readers are republican and 22% are conservative. Take of that what you will.
[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/27/section-4-de...
Even in 1971, when the partisan divide had much more crossover than it does today, just 25% of journalists identified as Republicans. By 2014, that number was 7% according to the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju...). As the Post's Cillizza points out, that number is for all journalists in the US, and is likely much lower in major media outlets in urban centres that are already often 80%+ Democratic voting in the broader population. With further partisan polarization and the closure of local news outlets, it's likely that percentage is negligible in the major, invariably big-city based outlets used as sources on Wikipedia.
Whatever you think of Biden, the unanimous blackballing of the Hunter Biden laptop story as "Russian propaganda" outside of explicitly right-wing news sources, including banning it being sent over private message on the two largest communication platforms on earth, is a pretty astounding example of how far that's gone. Anyone who wasn't being deliberately obtuse that looked at the New York Post's reporting could see it was likely real. Seeing journalists ignore the story at best and widely cheer on censorship of stories based on their political implications is a massive deviation from the premise of a media generally willing to cover all important stories that Wikipedia is built around.
The Hunter laptop still looks rather suspiciously like part of a Russian campaign the same way the hacked DNC emails were likely part of a Russian campaign. Several compromising photos seem to be taken from the laptop camera (does anyone actually take photos that way?) as if the laptop was perhaps compromised by hackers. Also, several photos appear to be of Hunter completely asleep or unconscious. Seems like a weird thing to be taken and end up on your laptop.
Regardless, the issue here is less about partisan social media censorship and more to do with journalists, who Wikipedia relies on to provide factual reporting of all significant news, showing how readily they would support censorship and ignoring a story based on its political impact.
I'll grant you that many stories never receive the type of scrutiny that this story did by social media companies, but given the factors surrounding it, I don't necessarily fault the decision.
I also recently learned that the computer shop owner that ended up with the laptop is legally blind. Seems like a convenient place to drop off a stolen and possibly altered laptop.