Meta Is Ushering In a 'World Without Facts,' Says Nobel Peace Prize Winner (theguardian.com) 230
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Nobel peace prize winner Maria Ressa has said Meta's decision to end factchecking on its platforms and remove restrictions on certain topics means "extremely dangerous times" lie ahead for journalism, democracy and social media users. The American-Filipino journalist said Mark Zuckerberg's move to relax content moderation on the Facebook and Instagram platforms would lead to a "world without facts" and that was "a world that's right for a dictator."
"Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue -- that's completely wrong," Ressa told the AFP news service. "Only if you're profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety." Ressa, a co-founder of the Rappler news site, won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 in recognition of her "courageous fight for freedom of expression." She faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa rejected Zuckerberg's claim that factcheckers had been "too politically biased" and had "destroyed more trust than they've created."
"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," Ressa said. "What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform." The decision meant "extremely dangerous times ahead" for journalism, democracy and social media users, she said. [...] Ressa said she would do everything she could to "ensure information integrity." "This is a pivotal year for journalism survival," she said. "We'll do all we can to make sure that happens."
"Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue -- that's completely wrong," Ressa told the AFP news service. "Only if you're profit-driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety." Ressa, a co-founder of the Rappler news site, won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 in recognition of her "courageous fight for freedom of expression." She faced multiple criminal charges and investigations after publishing stories critical of the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Ressa rejected Zuckerberg's claim that factcheckers had been "too politically biased" and had "destroyed more trust than they've created."
"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," Ressa said. "What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform." The decision meant "extremely dangerous times ahead" for journalism, democracy and social media users, she said. [...] Ressa said she would do everything she could to "ensure information integrity." "This is a pivotal year for journalism survival," she said. "We'll do all we can to make sure that happens."
To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
To be completely fair here, Meta isn't ushering in a world without facts. They're just accepting that we've moved past the concern for facts. Trump's first election was the transition to the "post truth" world. His second election is the move to the "post facts" world. Alternative facts are now just as valid as actual facts. Reality isn't real. Distortions are truth. Fictions are as truthy as any reality you may encounter. Ignorance is knowledge. Knowledge is heresy.
Facts are inconvenient. Those that seek them are irrelevant to online discourse. Let them find their facts elsewhere.
Re:To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Any platform owned by a billionaire should be assumed to be a platform for them to manipulate the population. The slightly lesser evil in this case would be that he's doing this purely for the money and simply doesn't care who else uses it as long as he gets paid.
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Given that all major media platforms and news sources are either outright owned by billionaires or controlled through proxy by billionaires or politicians, this post fails from square one.
Re:To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Bezos is no hero, he's another monster. Do you really believe he didn't prevent the paper from endorsing Kamala? It's his propaganda outlet, and he was kissing up to Trump to limit the chance of retribution after an election that was perceived to be too close to be confident in the outcome.
Perhaps you think the NYT is left-wing? In reality, they helped the right constantly by 'both sides'-ing every political issue to make them appear equivalent. The Class-B owners are better than Bezos and the Murdochs in that they're not quite so in your face. For all I know, they're a bunch of greedy evil bastards who just have enough self-restraint that you don't see them constantly in the news.
Narrative = Fact (Score:2)
Re:To be completely fair (Score:4, Insightful)
>You're deluded if you think both sides don't have news orgs that pick their favorites and push their agendas.
I never said they didn't. I said any outlet owned by a billionaire is the billionaire's propaganda instrument.
Re:To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
"They're just accepting that we've moved past the concern for facts."
No we haven't, that is also a lie, just liars declaring victory. The average person has not changed, they've grown numb. This is the end game of deregulation, propaganda and Citizens United. Money is power, truth is overwhelmed by lies.
"Trump's first election was the transition to the "post truth" world."
No, it's was the transition to pathological lying being seen as normal.
"His second election is the move to the "post facts" world."
No. Elections are complicated, but Trump's second election had several important contributions: one was a corrupt judiciary, another was open billionaire influence, and yet another was racism/misongyny. None of those things have anything to do with "post facts".
"Alternative facts are now just as valid as actual facts."
No. Lies are lies. They may work on you, but then perhaps you're one of them.
" Reality isn't real. Distortions are truth. Fictions are as truthy as any reality you may encounter. Ignorance is knowledge. Knowledge is heresy."
Yes, this is the Trump message and it is designed for his benefit. And you buy it.
"Facts are inconvenient. Those that seek them are irrelevant to online discourse. Let them find their facts elsewhere."
Well that has always been the SuperKendall approach to posting. Just because you're a liar doesn't mean that truth doesn't matter. You aren't a winner, you're just an asshole.
Re:To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. You made this exchange needlessly persnickety.
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Yup, cause the Hunter Biden laptop totes was a Russian op, and those photos NARA just released now, and not say 5 years ago when it was relevant, released of the Big Guy meeting with Hunter and his business partners don't exist.
Wait... no... you're just retarded.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/28... [cnn.com]
Re:To be completely fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey guys, I have a compilation of the 10,000 times Trump lied or was openly corrupt, including claiming immigrants were eating pets, when he kept secret documents in the bathroom, meetings with Putin without a 3rd party present, putting pressure on Ukraine to phony investigations, calling up asking for votes, paying off porn stars, his head of DOJ pick paid underaged girls for sex, claiming that schools perform sex changes on students without parents knowing, Jared Kushner getting billions from Saudi, Trump personally putting all his children in positions of power etc, etc
Well... may I present... the other President's son had a laptop that proved he bought a gun while recently using drugs. No number of lies from our side will count now because some experts though the laptop was fake. Checkmate. Oh the senile president is threatening to invade Canada, Greenland and Panama? Too bad, Joe Biden's son's laptop. Can I interest you in Hillary's unsecure emails?
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So what you're saying is everything ELSE on the laptop was true, including the 10% Big Guy Chinese business meetings as confirmed by the photos released by the National Archives and Records Administration, but JUST the Ukraine info was faked on it. That's your current stance?
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Amazing how he allegedly found everything a MAGA chud could yearn for in his most fevered wet dream, right there in plain, security free English.
Including saved emails with hashes of their content, encrypted by a Google mail server ephemeral private key, which (absent the breaking of public key encryption or Google leaking the private key) prove they moved through a Google mail server during the period that key was in use and came from the mail server of the well-known sender's account.
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Was that before or after the dipshits fucked up the chain of custody making any subsequently retrieved info suspect?
For starters, some of the emails could be authenticated as passing through Google's mail servers within the time and from the (well-known) corporate sender, using a mail-processing security system dependent on a google server's for-a-time-period ephemeral private key which was never published (though its companion public key was widely published and archived). After-the-fact forgery of the co
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More than that, it was the GQP crime party's official coming out, throwing off the veil and embracing openly being pathological liars, as well as the worthless media's decision to actively work to normalize this instead of fighting back in any meaningful way.
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"They're just accepting that we've moved past the concern for facts."
No we haven't, that is also a lie, just liars declaring victory. The average person has not changed, they've grown numb. This is the end game of deregulation, propaganda and Citizens United. Money is power, truth is overwhelmed by lies.
"Trump's first election was the transition to the "post truth" world."
No, it's was the transition to pathological lying being seen as normal.
"His second election is the move to the "post facts" world."
No. Elections are complicated, but Trump's second election had several important contributions: one was a corrupt judiciary, another was open billionaire influence, and yet another was racism/misongyny. None of those things have anything to do with "post facts".
"Alternative facts are now just as valid as actual facts."
No. Lies are lies. They may work on you, but then perhaps you're one of them.
" Reality isn't real. Distortions are truth. Fictions are as truthy as any reality you may encounter. Ignorance is knowledge. Knowledge is heresy."
Yes, this is the Trump message and it is designed for his benefit. And you buy it.
"Facts are inconvenient. Those that seek them are irrelevant to online discourse. Let them find their facts elsewhere."
Well that has always been the SuperKendall approach to posting. Just because you're a liar doesn't mean that truth doesn't matter. You aren't a winner, you're just an asshole.
wow, silly me, I thought the original post was satire. I guess satire really is dead now. Another piece of collateral damage in the culture wars....
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And note that some speech is still illegal, regardless of Facebook policy. Granted the limits are generally pretty generous in
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A woman got drug in to court over the loan on an RV.
The problem is it wasn't her loan.
She had documentation of the loan numbers. They did not match. The name did not match. The lender had changed owners a number of times. The creditor bringing the suit had no legal proof this loan was hers.
But they had one guy who swore to the court they were pretty sure the loan was hers.
The judge decided those were valid facts. A woman was ordered to pay a ton of money despite all proof saying she didn't.
I guess if this i
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To be completely fair here, Meta isn't ushering in a world without facts. They're just accepting that we've moved past the concern for facts.
If that were actually the case we wouldn't be having this debate right now. But we are so no we've not moved past the concern for facts. In fact these days people seem more concerned about them then every before thanks to how rapidly bullshit spreads. You may note the whole story is about criticising Facebook for this very thing.
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Or maybe more accurately, facts are no longer profitable for Meta.
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The wonderful thing about objective reality is, it is completely independent of whether you believe in it or not. It doesn't matter one single whit how much any fascist bastard lies about it, or whether people are smart enough to believe objective truth instead of the lies.
It simply, is.
The looming collapse of the Thwaites glacier and the shutdown o
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unfortunately reality doesn't work that way. People believing lies is why Trump is now President for another 4 years. People believing lies changes the world. You can't deny that reality by claiming some objective truth will save you from the consequences of lies.
The preceding two posts can be summed up thusly:
Objective reality will assert itself. Politics will ignore objective reality.
Re: To be completely fair (Score:2)
We have been post-truth for a long time and if you think you can only blame this on the right, you have not been paying attention.
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The very definition of usher [wikipedia.org] is somebody who welcomes and directs you to the right place.
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True (Score:2)
It's been a mess for a whole.
Facts (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook didn't have facts before. What they mean is that their censorship apparatus is weakened in some way.
META forces us to think for ourselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Tough one!
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That is not the point. Most people make their mind up based on the news & opinions that they read. Many, but not all, seek several sources and deduce a consensus from the different writings. If what they read is wrong they will become misguided. Groups trying to push some meme can put it up a forum. If they put it up in enough places people will accept it as truth.
This is why fact checkers are needed to stop bad information becoming accepted as truth. The bad information either being a deliberate lie (p
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Sure, zuck only cares about money, but so does everyone else. True facts curated by benevolent sources doesn't put food on the table.
You're too optimistic (Score:3)
Most people have one source of information at best. Not long ago that was the TV news, which was from one perspective; the success of Fox lay in its creation of offering an alternative. But the idea that most people have any real interest is flawed. This is part of the reason Trump has been successful. He's creating a delusion that he cares about his supporters - by actually talking about the issues that they are worried about - but they pay no attention to the allegations against him. And, of course, socia
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On the other hand, the US seemed to start a lot more wars when news dominated.
There's no hope then (Score:3)
Most people are not seriously capable of thinking for themselves. It's hard work. It's easier to trot out some phrase that they've heard and cling to that; sadly 'Brave New World' was spot on in that prediction.
Jimmy Fallon nailed it. (Score:5, Funny)
Saw this on The Daily Show last night:
Jimmy Fallon: Today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will no longer fact-check posts on Facebook and Instagram, and users will now have to correct any false posts themselves. Unfortunately, I have no idea if that's true 'cause I read it on Facebook.
"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't realize there was a Nobel Prize for comedy. I guess one does not have to have more than a room temperature IQ to get a Nobel Prize.
This just levels the playing field. "News" organizations can - and do - publish whatever propaganda they expect to sell the most advertising, users on Facebook should be able to do the same.
Re:"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics (Score:5, Informative)
There is one side of the political spectrum whose media organizations engage in outright lies, and the irony is they're also the party that complains about journalism.
This is of course the same party which complains about stealing the election at the same time as their leader was recorded attempting to convince officials to falsify records. The same party who complains about politically motivated prosecution while their leader was recorded attempting to pressure a foreign government to falisfy records against a political rival.
The republican party has a pattern - if they're complaining about something its a smokescreen for what they're engaged in.
chatroullette effect (Score:2)
Hopefully it'll all die with the chatroullette effect.
if most people keep getting crap and realize it they might disengage (right now they still think they are getting info from their friends and family)...remember chatroullette (or whatever its name was) when people started connecting to only teenagers masturbating....it basically killed the platform and concept of chatting with some random strangers for a few minutes.
Free speech /s (Score:2)
Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue ...
Funny how it's a "free speech" issue when it's their speech, but they get upset when it's someone else speaking, especially if the latter is calling out the former. I'm thinking specifically about Elon Musk hits out after student branded him 'the largest spreader of disinformation in human history' [dailymail.co.uk]
Elon Musk hit out at a student who accused him of 'rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history' in a foul-mouthed tirade on his platform.
The billionaire X owner, who was not tagged in the statement, found the original post and commented 'F u r*****', using a slur for somebody with a mental disability in apparent violation of the platform's own rules on slurs and tropes.
Google: musk student fuck off [google.com]
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I'll conduct an experiment.
Every day I will make a post starting with Convicted rapist Mark Zuckerberg and see how long it takes before the ban hammer comes down.
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It is because we are fucked.
The same people who scream free speech are now saying they're going to punish the news networks by revoking FCC licenses. The incoming FCC chair said he absolutely supports FCC enforcement the way Trump wants.
If zuck suddenly bends over; we're all about to get raped by the republicans.
I hate to (Score:3)
Not gonna happen. They never did. They never will. They aren’t a journalistic organization. They don’t employ journalists (in any real number). They put in some janky content moderation because of the political winds of the time, and now they’re pulling it back because politics have shifted the other way. But they never really cared much. Their “board of ethics” has about as much real power over facebook as Musk has real power over Trump - zero.
Anyone who gets their news from social media is cattle. Moo. MmmmmmoooOOOooooo. There are still news sources that have decent standards, but there isn’t a single social media site that falls into this category.
Half the population is of below average IQ (Score:2)
Most of us slashdotters have no significant interaction with such people and assume people are like us. They're not. Once we realise this, a lot of other things fall into place...
Fun Fact: (Score:5, Interesting)
Mark Zuckerberg died of syphilis today. I read it on Facebook. No seriously this isn't a joke I actually did read it on Facebook, it seems a lot of people are having fun with trolling fake news about him specifically right now which is hilarious.
I wonder if he'll hold out longer than Musk who has his panties in such a twist because people on Twitter keep being mean to him counting his bullshit with facts.
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x-) He is dead... I asked AI and this is what i get.(Optimism: AI and junk is going to kill social media. Don't know when though).
Independent Sightings of Mark Zuckerberg
As of now, there are no widely reported independent sightings of Mark Zuckerberg by individuals not connected to him since the Meta Connect 2024 event on September 27, 2024. The claims regarding his status have primarily been addressed through official channels and media reports, but independent verification from bystanders or non-affiliate
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Good for them. I think it also highlights the fact that Facebook/Twitter/TicToc/Fox or whatever are overrated as a serious news sources outside localized idiot bubbles.
Or, we could simply accept the obvious reality... (Score:3)
...that some sources of information are trustworthy, and others aren't.
Untrustworthy sources of information have always been with us. Back in the 1980s, you could pick up a copy of the National Enquirer in the checkout aisle of any supermarket. (Most of the articles were clearly meant to be "for entertainment only", but the Enquirer would also occasionally weigh in on real news events). You could also go to a newsstand and buy a variety of obviously partisan newspapers and magazines. In the 1990s, you could go on Usenet and read unhinged conspiracy theories all day long, if you wanted to.
The factor that makes Meta different from the National Enquirer/Usenet is the issue of scale. As far as I know, Meta is the biggest "news platform" that has ever been created in human history, by at least two full orders of magnitude. It influences *billions* of people (by contrast, the biggest newspapers in the world have a readership of a few million).
I've put "news platform" in quotes because, of course, Meta was never designed to be a primary source to get news. It was intended, at most, to be a public forum on which to *discuss* the news (which you got from somewhere else). Real newspapers have editors, and they (inevitably) have a specific audience they are intended for. Meta is designed for everybody (and hence nobody). And it can be easily manipulated by anyone with enough money to do it.
The real issue is not that "Meta is evil"; the real issue is that it has wound up being used by the public for something it is grossly unsuited for. With encouragement, of course, from a variety of very powerful people (including the owners of the platform).
A globe-spanning behemoth like Meta can't be "moderated", fact-checked, or controlled. Any attempt to try would in fact be dangerous, since it would be appointing an "editorial board" to oversee a worldwide channel of communication. It would be like trying to "moderate" or fact-check everyone's text messages or phone calls.
The real problem is that we need a healthy journalism industry. When I went to school in the 80s, "becoming a journalist" was still a reasonable career choice (if a little risky). It needs to become a reasonable career choice again.
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"Damned if you do, damned if you don't" sums it up.
The problem is that Meta is *one* source of information. There is no way to moderate *one* source of information which produces acceptable results. The only solution is to have multiple, widely-used, reputable sources of information that are moderated independently from each other.
I think the New York Times is a pretty good newspaper (YMMV), but if someone declared that henceforth the New York Times editorial board is going to be supervising all the newsp
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...that some sources of information are trustworthy, and others aren't.
Or we can accept that there are no sources that are trustworthy. That all information, no matter its source, needs to be treated with caution. The idea that you can set that caution aside is pernicious.
A quip attributed to Mark Twain, "if you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper you are misinformed." Ironically, I don't think he ever said it, but I read it in the newspaper. But it does describe the dilemma.
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All media outlets are now basically following the National Enquierer's formula.. and TV is just Jerry Springer everywhere.
Fun fact (Score:2)
Maria Ressa is a classmate of Jeff Bezos, Princeton University, 1986.
During the election I watched Newsweek (Score:4, Insightful)
What actually happened was Biden was talking to somebody off camera and listening to their question. The moments while he was looking at the person off camera and not speaking because he was listening were clipped out of context. Fair enough for social media claptrap garbage but this was freaking Newsweek reporting on it. I didn't bother to see if they ever issued a correction it's not like that matters.
Meanwhile Donald Trump at a Town Hall 20 minutes in stopped taking questions and spent the next 40 minutes swaying rhythmically back and forth to music. The Washington Post reported this as a touching moment where he connected with voters instead of a senior moment where he lost his marbles and couldn't answer softball questions...
I also watched during the election any journalist who seriously covered the decline of Donald Trump or questioned whether Joe Biden was declining being forced into resigning. I stopped keeping track after around 6 or 7 of them. Just recently a Washington Post cartoonist quit because Jeff bezos refused to let them run a cartoon critical of tech CEOs.
Right about now The maga on this forum or reaching for the down vote button. But let me remind you that it was only a few weeks ago that Elon Musk was telling you how stupid Americans are and how many H1B's he's going to bring in to replace you. If that sounds inflammatory don't complain to me take it up with musk He's the one who said it. But of course the news cycle ate that fast.
All this is before we talk about things like Sinclair Media must run segments or the fact that every single local TV station is now owned by a single billionaire.
I guess my point is journalism in America is dead. If by some miracle you don't just sell out the billionaires will come after you as lawsuits until they run you out of business.
It's going to be extremely hard to ring any truth out of a market like that.
And it doesn't help there's a shit ton of people who just don't want to acknowledge the real world. A nation of 12-year-olds who get extremely pissy when somebody points that out. Sort of like a 12-year-old
Safety (Score:2)
Devil advocate (Score:3, Insightful)
So before when they were peddling YOUR âtruthâ(TM) narratives, it was cool - but now others can post their narratives as well, that is somehow a bad thing???
The internet started out as everyone posting and publishing whatever they want, and that was a very good thing and worked fine for decades. Let people express themselves. It is like you want to take the Gutenberg printing press away from people because you disagree with them.
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The internet started out as everyone posting and publishing whatever they want, and that was a very good thing and worked fine for decades.
Yes, that's true. That was the time when grown-ups were at the keyboards.
And then all the Beavises and Buttheads got themselves a modem. Sadly, they are much louder on the net now than all the grown-ups.
Facts, conclusions and truth checkers? (Score:2)
Facts are accurate or inaccurate. They can be used to support conclusions that are logically correct or incorrect. And accurate facts and conclusions can be used to support narratives that are true or false.
Whether something is true or false is based on belief. That belief can be informed by facts and conclusions but it emotionally based on personal values, experience and interests. That is why it is difficult to change someone's mind about what it true by providing them with alternative facts and conclusi
Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. (Score:3)
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I get some people are afraid the world is going to shit, but policing thought isn't the solution. The solution is for everyone to distrust information and then spend time to dig deep. A fact isn't truth, it's information. How much information do you need to understand the problem varies depending on the topic
the downside of thought police and "fact checkers" is they fool themselves into thinking they know better. Everyone is different and keeping information from people is patronizing bullshit. Instead of shutting down people, the only real way to move forward is for everyone to talk to each other. Of course most people suck at listening and are locked into their own belief system, but policing thought just makes it worse.
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Kind of a bizarre use of those words, but maybe you're doing that on purpose?
Nobody was suggesting "prison time for bad think." The tradition was that when people posted things that are demonstrably false and important, the post might get labeled as false or removed. Typical English would call that "having standards."
By definition, that's incorrect.
You probably think this is patronizing and condescending bullshit; your argument seems
Who cares (Score:2)
Good, let social media embrace what it is. (Score:2)
It should and never really was, a place for news or 'facts.' It also shouldn't be a place to run a business, or the only entrance point for 'support' from a business.
Ignoring facts is cheaper, and easier mentally. (Score:2)
Facebook feels like a bumper car version of emails. Meaning they try to give you a few options that feel useful, and they've set things up to block the painful bits of the usual process.
Or maybe it's that they optimized for what pays them? What actions by other users will get a different set to use Facebook more? If it's "views" then they have no reason to care if we like or dislike something. Will buy or boycott a product. Will even read the text on the screen if they displayed it.
Look for what is pro
I remember... (Score:2)
I remember how we thought the Internet would change the world back in the '90s.
We were so f***ing naive.
Excuse me while I go cry now.
Facebook is dying anyway (Score:2)
Arbiter of facts (Score:2)
In the early days of the web, websites took the position that they weren't in the business of censorship.
For some reason, Meta took this on at some point, and it was a mistake.
A better system is a moderation system like Slashdot's.
And bot prevention (I'm pretty sure bots and comment farms are rampant).
Also, the problem isn't Facebook, or Instagram or Twitter.. the real problem is the classic media: Fox, Cnn, etc.. who have become so politicized and full of opinion over journalism that their value has essent
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook has nothing to do with Journalism and never has. Sure some people think its a great place to get news, but FB is not a news organization. FB is a shit aggregator, nothing more.
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This is irrelevant - the users take this information as convenient gospel. They aren't reading newspapers.
Education not Accuracy (Score:2)
Re:Education not Accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The former was kinda managable, as a lot of the wild ideas were different and conflicted with one another.
The latter is a problem, because getting the nutters to all have the same couple of manipulative wild ideas is about how cults get started.
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No, the bigger problem are "journalists" that don't do anything but spew political propaganda and opinions.
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The biggest problem is that nearly every news organization today has celebrities instead of journalists. MSNBC is about as accurate as Fox is on any given day. They almost all report the same facts. Their specific points of view vary widely.
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Not 'everyone' uses Facebook for news.
Not 'everyone' gets there ideas from a single infuencer, no matter what platform they are one.
Not 'everyone' believes what they are told and isn't capable of doing their own fact checking.
Sure, there are a lot of people that are easily fooled. But that doesn't mean the rest of us can't do our own fact checking and should have our information castrated by those in authority. Too many
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Part of the reason why Myanmar was so vulnerable to misinformation on Facebook was a lack of trust in its established journalistic institutions. People saw Facebook as a neutral third party.
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook's fact checking always sucked, though. Valid posts got flagged as false positive "fake news" frequently.
Letting the community police itself is probably a better idea. Hell... we do it here, and it usually seems to work OK?
Most news outlets are not journalism. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to care and be smart enough to know the difference.
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. The only people saying that are the ones who hate being fact-checked or called out for their lies. Why do you think the cuck J.D. Vance whined when he was called out for his lies [yahoo.com] during the debate?
Re: Most people don't trust journalists (Score:2)
There are too many journalists not doing serious journalism, but highly personal opinion pieces for which there are absolutely no journalistic nor ethical standards, they write whatever they want and if it generates clicks and engagement then even better. Actual journalism with facts and investigation is almost dead, sadly. We are in the age of clickbait, narratives and post-truth where your feelings dictate what is âcorrectâ(TM) or âtruthâ(TM). Sticking to the allowed narratives and wan
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exaclty!
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https://www.axios.com/2024/10/... [axios.com]
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The fact checkers are consistently biased in favor of whatever the most powerful want people to believe.
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The so-called fact checkers have been doing nothing but promoting propaganda for years, which is why everyone outside the Democrat base is outraged. Those were the dangerous lies, not the facts that have been covered up.
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You have written words, but you have not provided any evidence. Can you? You are the one making the claim, so the burden of proof is on you, I cannot prove a negative. Nonetheless this article [wikipedia.org] does mention that there exists no evidence that the virus we are talking about existed in a lab. This article is not presenting it as an impossibility, it is saying that you cannot know for sure, and that the evidence we have, while incomplete, points towards the opposite direction. Can you provide any contradicting e
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:5, Informative)
The Haitians in Springfield Ohio were in the majority there legally. Those were the people he was talking about, not some amorphous nation wide group. Never mind that Vance goes and changes his story to claim that "they shouldn't have been legal" because he thinks temporary protected status is wrong. What he said in the debate was a LIE.
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Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:5, Interesting)
"Perhaps the standards and ethics aren't quite as high as Maria is claiming."
And perhaps it's people lying about being journalists, and perhaps it's the world's biggest liar constantly smearing journalists.
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And perhaps it's people lying about being journalists
I thought anyone with an iPhone was a journalist.
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Sort of. Claiming to be a licensed PE(which is a trade organization) in good standing when you no longer are while being paid for engineering expertise is still illegal, which was the actual purpose of the law in question that the city council charged him under an attempt to get him to shut up, however the man in question was not being paid for his advice nor claiming he was currently a licensed Professional Engineer when he gave it. There is no journalism equivalent, mainly because individuals speaking are
Re: Most people don't trust journalists (Score:3)
We have the internet now, and an iPhone is an internet connected camera that can produce and spread evidence of events faster than anyone with a laser printer and some adhesive tape could.
And Photoshop. You forgot that.
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:4, Insightful)
People tend to smear anyone outside of their world view. Social media then exacerbates the problem because of bias-side echo chambers fostered by the Meta approach.
There are those posing as journalists who have no credentials, and are spoonfeeding BS for various reasons. Add in sanctioned bots, unsanctioned bots, and others with political motives, and believability is at an all-time low.
Yet actual/genuine journalists are doing themselves no favors by not calling out the BS directly, and "free speech" hides many liars, and opinions masquerading as "facts." Nonetheless, Meta is no champion of truth and isn't compelled to do anything but increase pageviews and telemetry sales.
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Exactly. Journalists make mistakes. But old school journos make small mistakes by human error, not in pursuit of an insidious, profitable agenda.
I don't know how you make a living as a journalist (Score:2)
We've just given too much power to too few people. It boggles my mind that if the government can tell you
Need more than Facts (Score:2)
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I think it makes sense to distinguish between censorship and limitations on free speech. I think that they are not the same thing. It is reasonable that someone, for example, should face legal consequences if they tells lies about others in a way designed to harm them; hence the libel/slander laws. It is reasonable that people are restricted from speed design to cause hatred; hence the limitations in the race and equivalent laws. It is reasonable to restrict people for saying things that encourage or cause
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a majority of people don't trust the news as reported by journalists
You don't know the entire world. You can't speak in its name. FYI here the results of 37th yearly poll "Trust of French people in media" study Kantar Public for La Croix, November 2023 https://www.la-croix.com/econo... [la-croix.com] (news report, in French); https://fr.themedialeader.com/... [themedialeader.com] (full pdf report)
"Trust in different media"
"As a general rule do you trust the media or person to inform you about current events"
(classified from highest trust to lowest trust)
* Close relatives: trust 71% / do not trust 20%
* Mainstr
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And why is it? Is it really "a majority", or only a majority inside the MAGA alternative-facts universe? Don't count bloggers, twitterati, and tik-tokkers as journalists if they're self assigning themselves a goal to spread whatever information gets the most monetization. Ie, Joe Rogan is not a journalist any more than Mr Beast is.
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:4)
I can remember a lot of news reporting from my youth and it took decades for me to realize just how many lies I was getting fed.
You don't have to go that far down the memory lane (unless you are a teenager), as I can readily recall: a) Trump secret server communicating with Russia, b) Steele dossier, c) Hunter Biden laptop as a Russian OP, d) Biden mental state coverup. These are just unambiguously, 100% disproven lies.
Re:Most people don't trust journalists (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that GW Bush story, is that journalists accepted the docs at face value. The journalists were not intentionally misleading the viewer, they did not know that the documents were falsified. That's very much different from a journalist that's flat out lying, like claiming that vaccines cause cancer, or covid is a hoax.
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It's cute that you think there's any such thing as "on the left" any more. The political division in the country, and the world, has nothing to do with left vs. right and the people who continue to use that language are part of the problem.
Meta doesn't care about content, it cares about money; it's not in service to any think tank, it's in service to profit. And to ensure profits, it sucks up to power.
"...so this probably won't change the bent of its content."
Meta doesn't produce content, but its content
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Also Meta, and most other social media, want everything to be automated. Thus, let the algorithms decide how to best maximize ad viewership. And the algorithms seem to think that lies get the most views and generate the most ad revenue.
Similarly, over on Youtube there's a lot of annoyance with content creators about how to make sure they get views and aren't downrated by Youtube because they don't seem interesting enough; some defend the click-baity titles because you need the quick response in the first f
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Ronald Reagan would get crucified by the republican party today for some of his policies and statements.