[cjohnson318]

Saying something is "technically true" or "at least mostly true" is a red flag. Try saying these out loud:

  1. Try this sushi, it's mostly fresh.
  2. Sure, I'll give you a ride, I'm mostly sober.
  3. I know what I'm doing, I'm technically a doctor.

[umvi]

Every article is going to have some statements not 100% true. Would you rather fact checkers flag mostly true articles or mostly false articles? If one grain of rice in the bag is bad, is the whole bag bad? How about 2 grains of rice? 20 grains? Where is the line drawn at which a fact checker should label the article as false or partly false?

What I've seen this last election on Facebook is partisan fact checkers hunting for that one bad grain of rice so they can use it to label the whole article as "false" or "partly false" in an effort to protect Biden/Harris. I'm having trouble finding them now because facebook isn't super searchable but I remember thinking a lot of them were really nit-picky, similar to this one from 2018[0]. It got so bad I started seeing various viral memes complaining about it[1]

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...

(Context: Trump tweeted that "crooked Hillary destroyed her phones with a hammer", Snopes labels his tweet as partly false because Hillary personally didn't destroy her phones with a hammer, her aide did)

[1] https://imgur.com/a/1Job9xX

[cjohnson318]

Regarding rice, if your serving is sufficiently rancid to make you sick, then the bag is bad.

And yet, you were able to read on Snopes why they flagged something as "partially true", and you were able to make an informed decision.

When someone says "Hillary Clinton is using private email servers and unauthorized phones," that's technically true, and it sounds really, very bad. But when you learn that previous officials, like Colin Powell, and current officials, like members of the Trump family, did the same thing, then it provides more context, and it makes you wonder just how egregious the original charge is.

The point is, "technically true" things are often intentionally misleading; the fact that something is "technically true" should arouse more suspicion than trust.

I hear you calling out fact checkers that provide insight into why something is flagged true or false, but I don't hear you calling out officials that make misleading "technically true" statements, or totally false statements. What's up with that? Are fact checkers really the root of this problem, or are they a symptom?