Will Anyone Notice A Difference?

[douglas9401]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly74mpy8klo

Our erstwhile saviours/misfits seem to be caving to the lowest common denominator.

[Ellipsis]

As far as I can tell the fact-checkers will still be in place in the UK and EU, and will be removed in the USA. I'm not sure about other places.

[New Judge]

"As far as I can tell the fact-checkers will still be in place in the UK and EU,"

So how do these "fact checkers" check 40,000 posts a second? And do they check only absolute facts (e.g. 1+1=2) or do they also "check" opinions (e.g. Kier Starmer is the worst  PM the UK has ever had)?

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle and it won't be forced back in by a handful of "fact checkers". I think a smidgeon of realism needs to be injected into this debate.

[douglas9401]

The best we can hope for is an extremely aggressive inoperable tumour consuming itself and host around the middle of the month

[Untitled]

if you don't use facebook newjudge and also didn't use it before factcheckers were introduced then you won't know the difference they made. facebook was absolutely riddled not with opinion or mistakes but with purposeful misinformation that was designed specifically to deceive people and influence their voting behaviour. companies like cambridge analytica sold digital profiling in order to replicate users' language back at them and manipulate them. that kind of business has only become more sophisticated in the last 10 years especially on X. opening the floodgates to that is not something to be welcomed. 

facebook also has moderators whose job it is to remove things like illegal pornography and have to sift through some of the nastiest material people post on the internet. 

[youngmafbog]

The problem is many of these so called misinformation was simply opinion, and opinion the left or Government didnt like.  In the US this has been shown.

I'm glad its opened out and  free speech is restored, in the US at least and for the lefty liberals moaning remember it could go the other way too, which we dont want either.

[Untitled]

"The problem is many of these so called misinformation was simply opinion, and opinion the left or Government didnt like"

look at the people who claimed that the southport killer was a muslim refugee... that wasn't opinion that was deliberate lying. and it was intended to provoke violence against muslims which it did. 
 

look at the people who spread claims that turkey was about to join the EU. that wasn't a matter of opinion, it was a lie. 
 

look at the people who spread the conspiracy that a pizza restaurant was being used by the democrats to order child sex slaves. that wasn't a matter of opinion, it was a lie - and one which caused someone to enter said restaurant with a gun. 
 

look at the people who claimed that COVID was being spread by 5G or that the vaccines contained nanomachines. these were not matters of opinion, they were lies. 
 

look at the people who claimed that donald trump "really" won the 2020 election. this was not a matter of opinion, it was a lie spread maliciously in order to justify an attack on congress during certification. 
 

the truth is that you simply agree with the causes that this misinformation is put to so it doesn't bother you. 

[Old_Geezer]

In the pub one can usually spot and distinguish the idiot to be humoured from the ones seeming rational. Plus, as mentioned, the affected group listening is a small one. On the Net it is often difficult to distinguish whether the poster seems expert in the field, or just an individual interested in the subject, or someone without a clue just gibbering or deliberately stirring. And on the Net there are a lot of folk getting fed the opinion.

 

Total free speech is a good theoretical situation when discussing stuff in person, but is dangerous to society in general when false claims are reaching mob sized audiences.

 

There should be a balance point where the obviously wrong & dangerous gets pulled while the rest, even if it's not something the forum, or the channel owner, or site owner, disagrees with, is left for discussion between posters.

 

Whether it should be called fact checking, a title which holds an air of authority, is questionable. Ideally if the idea is to show why something is suspect, rather than simply censor it, then any evidence for or against should be from independent sources.

[Ellipsis]

> So how do these "fact checkers" check 40,000 posts a second?

Here it is from Meta themselves (note the "UPDATED JAN 7, 2025" at the top of this link):

https://transparency.meta.com/en-gb/features/how-fact-checking-works/

[New Judge]

"the truth is that you simply agree with the causes that this misinformation is put to so it doesn't bother you. "

That's not  quite correct. The truth (as far as I am concerned) is that I believe it is my job to check the veracity of anything I read if it is important to what I might do or say. 

If the source is dubious (and I would not believe a post on FB or X from somebody I didn’t' know - and from many who I do know - if it told me the sun would rise tomorrow morning)  I will check elsewhere.  It's for me to judge the value of what I'm told. If I used either of them, I would judge FB and X information from sources I was not familiar with as of zero value.

You can't have a so-called open social media platform and then decide what people can and cannot post on it. The only exception should be material which breaks the law. As far as I am aware, telling lies is not against the law in most circumstances.

“Here it is from Meta themselves…”

Thanks for that, ellipsis. Whilst it explains the mechanics it does not illustrate its capacity. I have doubts (in fact I’m 99.9% sure) that it can properly “fact check” upwards of 10 billion posts a day.

The problem is that many people are not quite so circumspect as I am and will fall for all sorts of drivel. Since it is quite clear these platforms cannot be controlled, governments have only two choices – allow them to continue unfettered or prevent their citizens having access to them.

I imagine there would be quite a rumpus if the second option was chosen and I can see why. If you ban Facebook, X  and the like, what next? Answerbank?  Letters to your maiden aunt criticising the government? Conversations in the pub saying nasty things about the Prime Minister?

Wedges have a nasty habit of thickening rapidly. When a government sees it can get away with an imposition it gets an appetite for expanding that measure. If you think I'm joking or exaggerating, just look back to March 2020.
 

[chelle7272]

//You can't have a so-called open social media platform and then decide what people can and cannot post on it. //

You mean like AB?