Why Is Facebook So Afraid of Checking Facts?
This article misses a crucial point: I do not want fact checked information. I do not want a ministry of Truth telling me what’s an acceptable set of statements to trust. I do not want a third party providing unsolicited opinions on how much I conform with the acceptable statements a ministry of Truth has blessed for public use.<p>I’ll provide three arguments. First, how will Facebook or any other entity that takes on the responsibility to fact check stand up to coordinated misinformation campaigns like “Iraq has WMDs” where an omniscient fact checker could have literally saved thousands of lives.<p>Second, how will Facebook or CNN or Snopes or any other entity fact check disagreeing experts on a subject - for example Sweden’s epidemiologists vs rest of the world taking opposing views on quarantine measures - is anybody at Facebook or any other place qualified to fact check Sweden’s top government advisers?<p>Third, how will Facebook or any single entity fact check unqualified experts on subjects? When Albert Einstein submitted his paper on the Photoelectric effect (which eventually won him a Nobel Prize) he didn’t have a Ph.D nor was he enrolled as a student - he was just an anonymous clerk at a patent office. Today’s reddit would brand him an “armchair physicist” conducting thought experiments. How on earth will Facebook or any Ministry of Truth attempt to fact check anything like this?<p>So, if you rule out Facebook’s ability to fact check coordinated government propaganda, government policy advisors that are literally balancing lives and the economy and fundamental advances in science, what else is there to fact check?<p>A fact checker can only end up becoming a re-enforcement mechanism for popularly held beliefs. Let’s ask Galelio how that worked out for him.