A WaPo opinion discusses the gutting of fact checking on social media (not paywalled). A few points are worth being aware of:
Last month, the tech company Meta announced its decision to end the third-party fact-checking system it used on Facebook and Instagram. Instead, Meta will adopt a community notes model that invites users to challenge misinformation through the app. For a community note to appear, it must be agreed upon by other contributors from a “range of perspectives.”
Interviewer: How well do you think X’s community notes have worked at challenging false or misleading information?Disinformation expert: Not well. Community notes basically give up on the idea of fact-checking. Truth is not a matter of consensus, and it’s not just a matter of people being mistaken. We talk about the “wisdom of crowds.” Sometimes crowds can be ignorant — but that’s not the real danger. The real danger with community notes is that there are bad actors out there; there are people who will use it as a playground to spread disinformation.Interviewer: Even before Meta decided to cut its fact-checkers, was fighting disinformation on social media actually working?
Expert: No, they weren’t doing nearly enough. Here’s the shame with Facebook: It does an excellent job of vetting the things it truly cares about. Most people have never seen pornography or beheadings or terrorism on Facebook. And that’s because there is a human team that is dedicated to scrubbing the site of those things, because the executives understand that it would hurt their bottom line. They could do the same thing for false claims, but they choose not to.
The expert claims the best way for the MSM to regain public trust, now at an all-time low of 31%, is to talk to the public in person, face-to-face. His reasoning is that once the public meets MSM operatives who put truth above all else, the public will come to see that they are good people. he says that public trust is built through face-to-face conversation. He also says not to lie, because once a reporter lies, trust is lost and almost never comes back.
REALITY CHECK
The expert's assertion that community notes gives up on the idea of fact-checking is correct. There will not be agreement among other contributors from a “range of perspectives”, and we all know it. Social media's concept of “community notes” is pure propaganda to deflect from the fact that fact checking by social media is dead and gone.
Context -- definitions: A fact is an objective, verifiable piece of information that remains constant regardless of belief or perspective. It is something that can be proven through evidence, observation, or empirical data. For example, “fire is hot” is a fact. By contrast, truth is more subjective and can vary based on individual beliefs, experiences, and interpretations. Truths are often constructed by people to describe how they perceive reality. They can be influenced by faith, commitment, or shared experiences among groups. For instance, the statement “God exists” can be a truth for someone who believes in a deity, but it isn’t a fact.
The expert is also absolutely right to assert that truth, assuming he means fact, is not a matter of consensus. Facts are facts, which are objective. A truth can be a matter of consensus. Here he was sloppy and should have referred to fact, not truth.
I find the expert’s advice on how the MSM can regain public trust to be shockingly silly and naive. First, his advice is not even remotely practical. It is impossible for journalists to meet in person with over 200 million people, even if they are in semi-intimate gatherings of 50 people or less.
Probably most people who believe the MSM intentionally lies at least a lot have been deceived by dark free speech, including political demagoguery. They hold a false belief. Even when the MSM asserts a fact that is false, and the MSM source retracts it, most of those people won’t accept the sincerity of the retraction. They will rationalize it away. Like the expert says, once a person believes they have been lied to, trust is usually gone and usually not coming back. A retraction of a mistake ain’t gonna cut it. On this point, the expert is irrational.
In my opinion, it is very discouraging that even now with the rise of demagoguery-powered authoritarianism in American politics and society, experts do not understand critical, fundamental matters in politics like cognitive biology, rhetoric and dark free speech. They are inexcusably sloppy about the distinction between truth and facts. That low level of performance does not bode well for democracy or the human condition.
