[AmericanChopper]

By my definition it is generally not possible for an entity to be an effective authority on what is or is not false or misleading. You could think of contrived examples which you could get nearly everybody to agree to as false, like claiming the sun revolved around the earth. But that’s not what’s being discussed. What’s being discussed is establishing Facebook (or other entities) as the ministry of truth.

> There is a pretty big difference between a lie by omission and just spreading false information.

I don’t see how there is, and I don’t see how you’d be able to prove one over the other in many cases. Pick any mainstream media outlet, and you’ll find a significant group of people who claim they’re “just spreading false information”. Pick any truth that you personally hold to be unassailable, and chances are you’ll find a significant group of people who will describe it as “just false information”.

Trying to regulate the truth is an incredibly dangerous rabbit hole, which if done effectively, can only possibly end up with a central authority (or group of authorities) imposing their own views on others.

The only reason anybody could think this was a good idea, is if you think that people should not have the right to think for themselves, form their own views, and come to their own conclusions about the truth.

[apatters]

What do you think of the Media Bias Chart? https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

This project assesses the factual accuracy and political bias of a large number of articles (and by extension, the publishers of those articles).

It seems to me that we have always had the ability to verify whether a given statement is factual or counterfactual, and that's a big part of what good journalism is.

A verifiable fact is a verifiable fact and no matter how many people believe otherwise, it's still a fact.

Certainly this is not the whole issue and publications may introduce bias through selection, presentation and opinion, which is why it's important to scrutinize the publications.

I don't think Facebook is the right place for any of this to happen, but it's where the eyeballs are, so it's impossible for it to _not_ happen on Facebook in some form. I think Facebook will fail because there is no way to do this algorithmically. At Facebook scale you can only do things algorithmically.

We should dismantle Facebook and get our news from a federated set of relays which syndicate content from a diverse set of publishers whose objectivity is audited by independent third parties who publish clear and transparent guidelines and findings.

A web browser in which you've bookmarked the Associated Press, NPR, the WSJ, and the BBC is a decent start for the average person, as long as you don't also bookmark Wonkette or InfoWars.

[AmericanChopper]

So you don’t believe that you can use facts to mislead people, nor that you can mislead people without presenting anything as fact?

If you report a story, using only the facts that support your narrative, and omitting only the facts that don’t support it, have you lied? Have you reported propaganda?

What if you report a story, without reporting anything as a fact? What if you report “anonymous sources claim ___”, or “___ is being criticised for ___”, or “a verified document describes ___”. None of those reports involve any facts at all, nor any verifiable fictions.

What if you simply disagree on what the facts are?

What if you intentionally misinterpret something, in an effort to debunk it. If I make a mostly true statement, but use an obvious hyperbole, or get a minor detail wrong, am I “just using the English language as intended”, or “just spreading false information”.

> What do you think of the Media Bias Chart?

I think if you tasked 50 different research teams with producing their own chart with the methods they deemed best, that you’d get 50 different charts.

> It seems to me that we have always had the ability to verify whether a given statement is factual or counterfactual

We have always had the ability to enforce authority on others. That doesn’t mean we have had any success in creating authorities to be the arbiter of truth. In fact, we have a long history as a species of failing miserably at doing that.

Easily verifiable outright lies in the media do happen, but the cases where this is so black and white are incredibly uncommon, and that’s not what these systems are trying to deal with. I mean, recently “conspiracy theories” have become a target for moderation. Do you know what a conspiracy theory actually is? It’s any theory that two or more people conspired to do something. How much recent news reporting would fit that definition?

Any system that attempts to strip people of their right to critical though (which is what this is) is doomed to fail in the exact same way that every such system implemented throughout history has.

[apatters]

I counted at least six questions in your response -- I appreciate the response, but do you really expect a rational person who seeks to make the best use of their time to respond to six questions in one comment? This makes it hard to continue the discussion IMO. I don't know where to start and it'd take me an hour to finish.