[Frondo]

Facts don't generally change people's minds.

Google "do facts convince people" and you'll see lots of stuff about this. Here's one, from scientificamerican.com...

> In a series of experiments by Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan and University of Exeter professor Jason Reifler, the researchers identify a related factor they call the backfire effect “in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” Why? “Because it threatens their worldview or self-concept.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convince-s...

[aantthony]

Yes that is a good point. The link I gave mentions that study, and says it has failed replication attempts. I think the truth is more nuanced - there are ways it can be more effective and yes sometimes counter-effective. But that doesn't mean we should just give up fact-checking entirely. I think there are several ways we can make corrective fact checking more convincing to people and am working on building a collaborative fact-checker https://verifact.io to try to do that