Meta gets rid of fact checkers and says it will reduce 'censorship' | Hacker News Reader

Meta gets rid of fact checkers and says it will reduce 'censorship'

cnn.com

44 pointssampo13 comments

Worryingly sounds like "Let the fake news and propaganda proliferate for profit."

On the contrary «fact checkers» have rarely had any other function than persisting propaganda for the status quo, which quite often have turned out not to be true.

I say good riddance.

Examples?

The pangolin soup theory of COVIDs origin was touted by fact checkers as true. This was despite real concern from actual scientists.

Fact checkers fall into three possibly overlapping categories:

1. Government censorship units designed explicitly to convey what the government says as ultimate truth

2. Activist organizations using fact checking to control a narrative

3. Useful idiots who cite news or highly contentious sources (Wikipedia) as a source of truth

All 3 of these represent a version of “truth” conditioned on what sounds good or controls a narrative. “Common knowledge” is not always fact, too. In many cases fact checkers would be nice to have the truth is unknowable (think classified data). In no case are fact checkers unambiguously correct as they are often portrayed. Unfortunately, however, they are often given the unassailable position as truth-bearers. The “facts” (read “narrative”) changes so quickly on topics where a true oracle of truth would be indispensable the purpose of a fact checker is, factually, worthless.

> The pangolin soup theory of COVIDs origin was touted by fact checkers as true. This was despite real concern from actual scientists.

I'm curious to learn more about this. Where can I read into this?

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-co...

Here's one place I found. But searching "COVID wet market" and "Pangolin COVID" will yield a treasure trove of articles talking about it.

This link isn't specific to the pangolin theory, but it's a readable review of a very competent debate about COVID origins, so I'd recommend it (and the debate it reviews) for those curious about the state of the arguments (as of early 2024): https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42619935 springs to mind.

Lab leak theory is a good example if you want to deep dive into the history of how it was treated (by the government, by journalists, by social media).

expressions of worry are so plentiful

Discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42622147

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42621627

When making a little extra profit and swapping an expensive team for some AI can be trumpeted as "reducing censorship", suddenly surveillance advertising king, Facebook, is on-board.

In the same way that monopolies that produce super-profits are called "innovation" (innovation in profit-making, that is).

And George Orwell thought the communists were fond of double-speak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com