Or rather, the anonymous hive-mind is now deciding if something is factually correct. Completely unaccountable, perfect for social media.
So, just like normal then?
I don't disagree with being cynical about social media, but community belief is the overwhelming mechanism by which fact is decided throughout history, including now.
A community can certainly have beliefs, doesn't make them true in a factual sense. Some things are "decided" by the majority opinion, like how we think of gender. Others have an objective truth, whether the majority likes it or not.
"Community belief", or the appearance of it, can be engineered by a bad actor with sufficient resources: an authoritarian state, a think-tank with sufficiently rich sponsors, or the platform itself.
Back to our roots of free work, sorry, expression.
The technology now exists that allows the company to offload the ugly business of "fact checking" onto users. It's a pretty clever algorithm, and if they implement it transparently like on X, then it means they can avoid a whole class of criticisms and accusations. This is a no brainer for Meta.
This isn't about saving money on tooling or reviewers. This is about the incoming Trump administration and not wanting to have him decide to point his administration at Facebook because he is pissed at them.
This is exactly right. All hail Trump. All bow and worship Trump. We’re watching in real time a phenomena that I think is not new to the world, but new to America.
Once they go after somebody like Mark Cuban and Khodorkovsky him, it’ll all make sense.
Also it opens a new field of commercialization in the social media space, in a time where troll farms seem like a legitimate business.
Honestly one thing that works well on Twitter is community notes (and better than "fact checking")