Hi! Birdwatch ML Engineer here-- these context notes are from Birdwatch. They are written and rated by users, and the notes are only added as context to Tweets if they are rated highly enough by multiple raters who have tended to disagree in the past. The core algorithm is open source as well as all of the data, and there is lots of public documentation about it too:
I honestly felt nothing but contempt for the oligarchic structure of fact checking. Facebook hired organisations like the Washington Post to do their fact checking. I have not forgotten how many people there lies killed in Iraq. I don't forget how the journalists at the time were willing to compromise their ethics in exchange for White House access and exclusive stories from the front lines, simply because journalistic interest is not the public interest. We also saw more recently during the pandemic incompetent journalists without adequate medical training censoring BMJ articles from Facebook: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95.
You are making one of the only tools I can see that can possibly make "fact-checking" a reality in a nominally unbias way that can be broadly accepted by the public. A democratic fact-checking system for a largely democratic website. Even if birdwatch will get things wrong, I appreciate the effort to reform this institution of "fact-checking" with something righteous and moral. No need to touch on my spicy political views, but I think this is a transparent, scalable, fair tool that can truly be embraced by the entire society rather than simply leading to a partisan divide.
Your system understands I'm on social media because I want to hear what the average person has to say, and I would go to a news website if I wanted to get a news websites take on what the facts were. To me, if a news website wants people on twitter or Facebook to pay attention to their "fact check" editorial, they should do it the same way everybody else has to. By creating compelling writing that gets attention and that people agree with.
Do you think there is a risk to "fact checking" gives the public a false sense of knowledge, and reduces certain important skills?
It seems apparent to me that, in the process of a manual substation of truth, through whatever means of research an individual chooses to check the validity of a subject, they accidentally learn more during the task of that research verification both directly through the claim that was made, and as well in that field in a more general sense.
For example: if two users are arguing over a Bible verse, and one side wishes to verify the claim the other side made, the traditional method would mean anything from reading a Wikipedia entry and a few related sources, to a book on the subject, to some other means. During the search for the specific thing they were after, they would also learn about: the general historical context of that period, other related verses, events of a similar nature throughout history, cultural peculiarities, linguistical differences, etc.
On the other hand, if "fact checking" is simply a thing done on a persons behalf, not only is the accuracy of the check a concern, but the act will not encourage learning about that related context. The recipient will not have a reason to learn of those other things, and might never learn or maintain that valuable skill of research and verification.
I feel "fact checking" as first pioneered by politifact (if you don't count snopes) was a significant advance in journalism and I recall they did hold a substantial number of left wing journalists and talking heads to account, bias or not. The biggest change was that journalism traditionally expected you to trust the veracity of a story based on a journalists reputation. After journalists reputations largely got smashed by the Iraq War, I really appreciated Politifact's commitment to at least stating what their sources of information actually were. It felt like a more transparent form of journalism you could "Fact check" yourself. The articles WERE still fundamentally subjective opinion pieces, but they were at least based on sources you could actually look up yourself, and often with these fact check articles I treat them like wikipedia use them as an index of sources.
I'm not against fact-checking persay, I'm more against the artificial promotion of certain parties influence through forced editorialisation. I feel birdwatch holds the promise of a better way to accomplish the same end.
I think there is nothing wrong with fact checking the problem is that the fact checking that is being done often has a bias. One example that comes to mind was the Hunter Biden laptop that was dismissed as Russian propaganda by the fact checks. Turned out it was completely true.
Some items found on it were certainly his. How many lawyers would care to go into court with a piece of evidence having a chain of custody like that laptop's?
Depends on what you mean by “completely true.” For instance, I heard all kinds of wild/absurd accusations like he had child porn all over it. If that were “completely true,” he’d be in cuffs. You need to give more context here.
Sure, let me be clearer. The media said the laptop and the videos were Russian misinformation. Turns out that was his laptop and that was him in those videos.
I'm going to be honest, this doesn't clear up much at all. What videos are you talking about? And when did Hunter et al say his laptop literally didn't exist?
What was disputed was what the repair tech said he found on it, as well as the fake news/gossip Hannity and co kept repeating without any evidence. Remember when a courier "lost" the supposedly incredibly damning and totally-proves-something-about-Hunter evidence en route to Hannity that they conveniently had no copies or backups of any kind? We still don’t even know what they allegedly contained!
Russian accounts absolutely amplified and generated misinformation around Hunter Biden in an attempt to hurt Joe Biden's election chances. They have consistently engaged in this behavior during our elections. There is a consensus among our intelligence organizations, it's old news.
Please present concrete claims and proof if you're going to say something is "completely true."
Although I think that most fact checking is biased, I am less concerned of bias, as long as people have a means and an ability to determine the truth of the thing. My concern then isn't with where bias exists, or in what direction, but instead with what the effect of fact checking results in. I think it would probably be a healthier outcome for truth learning if a "fact checker", whether it be a person or a machine, would instead point the user to instructions of how to research "For the field of (whatever) you will want to consult (this) area of research.", rather than "According to XYZ, (some person) said it's (that)."
Like, if I wanted to learn about something regarding the financial affairs of Europe in the 1300s, someone could just link me a quote that Professor so-and-so said something. But what if that professor is generally seen as a quack in that field? What if, after making that statement, he corrected himself a week later? What if that quote is simply decades old, and new information has come to light since then? What if my interest was specifically in one area of Europe, but his statement encompassed multiple countries, and parts of the Middle East? What if the statement being made had an assumption of "excluding other factors regarding wars A, B, C and plagues, 1, 2, 3" but was not in the quote that I was given?
These are all things that one might accidentally pick up and learn about during exploration of the truth, but be completely unaware of needing to know that when they first started.
To give a real world example of what I mean, consider this: A prominent New Testament scholar is Dr. Bart D Ehrman. In most debates I have seen posted on YouTube regarding whether The Bible is a trustworthy source will reference Dr. Ehrman at some time or another, by those in favor of Christianity and scriptural accuracy. The thing is, Dr. Ehrman is an strong opponent of Christianity and outspoken Atheist. Dr. Ehrman is a very big name in the field, and has a lot of criticisms against The Bible itself, but he also strongly affirms historical proof of Jesus' existence, life, and death - he's written at least one book on the matter[1]. If someone were to simply see the quote he has made, "but he did exist, whether we like it or not." the immediate assumption about his stance and belief is that he's a Christian, and therefore biased.
It's the loss of this context, this underlying breadth that I'm concerned with. That fact checking, in a very real sense, removes both the onus and need to read and determine for ones own self. That fact checking does too much, and gives too little; the worst of both. A fact without the background, a cause without explanation.
Yes. As in I'm looking at the screen reading a tweet, and it vanishes in some animated fashion with me not doing anything. It's not gone, but I have to know how to find it to see it again.
A lot of apps (I don't really use Twitter, but assume this of it) do this thing where you're at a page/view you'd like to return to later, so when you actually do return later (either by switching between apps or unlocking your device) then all the content you wanted to continue is right there as expected, ready to go, then the app unexpectedly triggers an unwanted refresh animation then takes you to the homepage or if not that, it could be impossible or unclear how to get back to what you were just doing/reading. Firefox for android doesn't do this, nextdoor does.
What I'm seeing is individual tweets disappearing while looking at my feed. And it's animated + 144hz monitor so I can see them fly away into the either. Sometimes while reading them and about to click on them. And then I can't. It's really annoying.
>They are written and rated by users, and the notes are only added as context to Tweets if they are rated highly enough by multiple raters who have tended to disagree in the past.
Interesting, I remember someone on /r/slatestarcodex having the idea to rate/sort reddit comments by that metric, which I dub "sort by should-be-uncontroversial" (because normally-disagreeing people all think it's correct).
(Then again, it almost might incentivize politician-style vacuous/feel-good statements.)
I honestly felt nothing but contempt for the oligarchic structure of fact checking. Facebook hired organisations like the Washington Post to do their fact checking. I have not forgotten how many people there lies killed in Iraq. I don't forget how the journalists at the time were willing to compromise their ethics in exchange for White House access and exclusive stories from the front lines, simply because journalistic interest is not the public interest. We also saw more recently during the pandemic incompetent journalists without adequate medical training censoring BMJ articles from Facebook: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o95.
You are making one of the only tools I can see that can possibly make "fact-checking" a reality in a nominally unbias way that can be broadly accepted by the public. A democratic fact-checking system for a largely democratic website. Even if birdwatch will get things wrong, I appreciate the effort to reform this institution of "fact-checking" with something righteous and moral. No need to touch on my spicy political views, but I think this is a transparent, scalable, fair tool that can truly be embraced by the entire society rather than simply leading to a partisan divide.
Your system understands I'm on social media because I want to hear what the average person has to say, and I would go to a news website if I wanted to get a news websites take on what the facts were. To me, if a news website wants people on twitter or Facebook to pay attention to their "fact check" editorial, they should do it the same way everybody else has to. By creating compelling writing that gets attention and that people agree with.