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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

It seems inevitable the people attracted to 'fact checking' and content moderation roles (whether paid or free) are likely to be activists with agendas to push.

It's a position that gives them power over their political opponents. Without that, it's probably a pretty miserable job.

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And I would have guessed that its a low pay job with high stress and turnover that attracts the desperate-for-a-jobs, not the crusaders?

Add: there have been lots of whistleblowers about working conditions on Facebook moderation.

A couple of accounts are https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57088382 and https://www.ft.com/content/afeb56f2-9ba5-4103-890d-91291aea4...

Some people will seemingly spend every waking hour moderating multiple large subreddits for free. They get something out of it, and it obviously isn't money.

That would imply moving to a volunteer, public system of moderation would be, if anything, more activist and biased in nature than less.

A lot of them are autistic and they enjoy applying their version of "order" to a chaotic system.

The overlap between subreddit moderators and Dungeons & Dragons moderators is probably quite high.

Unless the crusaders are also payed by someone to push their crusade.

Can you point to an assessment by a meta fact-checker that you disagree with?

The Babylon Bee, a satire site, was repeatedly flagged for false information until their reach was crushed. There’s no reason to repeatedly flag obvious satire unless it’s from activists.

What evidence is there for this claim?

I saw the content warnings on it myself, repeatedly and then saw it show up so infrequently that I had to go to their page directly.

There have also been some very public stories about it, which I believe included a NY Times article that cause the owner’s attorney to get involved.

Most famously, censorship of the BabylonBee was one of the driving forces behind Musk buying Twitter.

https://x.com/sethdillon/status/1404457263197310989?s=46

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/technology/babylon-bee.ht...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/us/politics/babylon-bee-c...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/technology/political-cart...

The difference between "activists with agendas to push" and "everyone else" is surely one of degree.

The difference is that if you check 'facts' about good things Trump or Musk did, you're an activist with an agenda to push, but if you check 'facts' about bad things Trump or Musk did, you're doing the lord's work.

Would you say the same thing about criminal court judges too?

Fact checking is now activism with an agenda? What a hot take. From what I understand Meta used fact checkers certified by Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network [1]. Now with "community notes" you will most certainly get people with an axe to grind.

[1] https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/

Poynter operates PolitiFact, which is blatantly partisan:

They mark accurate statements as 'mostly false', when what they really mean is they lack a very specific context, in this case per-capita adjustment to make killings 'disproportionate', but NOT e.g. per-homicide-perpetrator adjustment. One could of course argue what is the correct normalization, but PolitiFact doesn't do that - they simply label the accurate statement as false: https://www.politifactbias.com/2020/06/politifact-mangles-fa...

They omit fact-checks if those fact checks would give credence to their opposition: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2021/04/21/p...

Another example of labeling data that they themselves admit is accurate, as false:

https://upward.news/p/we-fact-checked-politifact-they-failed

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/26/instagram-...

They label a claim as outright false when it was outdated by mere months: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/apr/08/michael-kn...

They manufacture and debunk a strawman, when the claim is unassailably solid and cites the NYTimes and government commissions:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1761228755031237032.html

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/feb/23/sean-parne...

So the claim "German perverts open bestiality brothels" was true in January 2013? Where were these bestiality brothels located?

No specific locations are given. However: bestiality was legal in Germany up until February 2013 [0,1], and Germany still has its own zoophile advocacy organization [1,2]. The number of zoophiles in Germany is estimated at 100k by this interviewed zoophile [3]. Wikipedia estimates zoophilia has a 2% incidence [4], which would equate to 1.6 million zoophiles in Germany, making the 100k a conservative estimate.

“The issue has become so public and inhibitions fall,” Astrid Behr, head of the German Association of Veterinarians, told Metro, indicating the growth of popular websites and forums, although she could not confirm the existence of rumored ‘pet brothels’. [3]

The Berliner describes zoophile sex parties and a large internet forum where they are organized [5].

“There are even animal brothels in Germany,” [the animal protection official for Hessian state government] said [..] “The abuse seems to be increasingly rapidly, and the internet offers an additional distribution platform,” she said. [6].

So we have a mountain of circumstantial evidence, confessions, an expert statement, and a direct statement by a government official (both claiming the problem is growing) - the kind of statement PolitiFact treats as definitive evidence when convenient [7]. And of course, PolitiFact deftly implies that because something is illegal (or has extremely recently become illegal), that it therefore does not happen. I'm looking forward to their articles on the Aylesbury/Banbury/Bristol/Derby/Halifax/Huddersfield/Keighley/Newcastle/Oxford/Rochdale/Rotherham/Peterborough/Telford child sex abuse rings: "Actually, rape is illegal in the UK. We rate these claims false."

I say looking forward, because currently, they have articles on precisely ZERO of them, somehow, despite what a scandal it was and is. But they do have "There's no evidence that Muslim immigrants are responsible for most of London's knife attacks" [8], so it's not that they ignore the UK. They just pick their battles.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/world/europe/german-legis...

[1] https://www.metro.us/bestiality-banned-in-germany-zoophile-s...

[2] https://www.zeta-verein.de/en/zoophilia/zeta-principles/

[3] https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/a-real-animal-lover-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoophilia

[5] https://www.the-berliner.com/politics/zoophilia/

[6] https://web.archive.org/web/20120205002624/http://www.theloc...

[7] The secretary of state also said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Nevada, now or ever. - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/feb/23/sean-parne...

[8] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/feb/08/viral-imag...

FWIW, Newsbusters is run by MRC which is not exactly an unbiased or high quality source of information to say the least.

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