[veidr]

This particular technology initiative does appear to be an effort to build a system that harnesses unpaid volunteers as fact-checkers.

However, according to today's front-page Washington Post[1] article, they are also still paying people in the "Trust & Safety" department, to do jobs including fact-checking (and presumably acting on fact-checking done by other humans, and possibly trained-model automated fact-checkers as well).

From what I can understand, the company was recently purchased by an oligarch, who then implemented massive staff cuts of around 50% generally across the board, but the "Trust & Safety" department had a lower level of layoffs, at around 15%. So human staff is apparently still involved in fact-checking, aside from the system described here.

It seems likely that fact-checking on a global "social media" network would necessarily involve various approaches and multiple layers to be effective, so the core idea of this system seems worth trying.

However, it is a difficult problem, with powerful financial and political incentives for various parties to game such a system, it will be interesting to see if this ever yields results, and if so, what those results are.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/05/twitter...

[beachy]

Elon is not an Oligarch, unless the US is an Oligarchy (it's not).

> An oligarch is one of the select few people who rule or influence leaders in an oligarchy—a government in which power is held by a select few individuals or a small class of powerful people.

[veidr]

There is considerable debate[1] about whether or not the US is, in its contemporary form, an oligarchy (including, I suppose, your (parenthetical) refutation of that notion above).

Personally, I'm persuaded by the argument that it is an oligarchy, or at least, it is more one than it is not.

Unlike some (most?) others, where the government is the seat of ultimate power and chooses its accomplices, in the US that arrangement is inverted; the very rich (the few hundred billioniares, and a few thousand of not-quite-that-rich individuals and families) excercise enormous control over the government, without having to directly participate in its execution or hold office themselves.

(And our politicians themselves almost never achieve that level of wealth; many do become rich by ordinary standards, but its clear where the actual power resides.)

So we could quibble about definitions and degrees of words like "oligarch" and "the klept" but in my view the US is clearly more toward the oligarchy end of the spectrum than the other end.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_States#...

[washadjeffmad]

Incredible, I've never met anyone who could alter reality through the power of parentheticals before.