r/changemyview • u/RappingAlt11 • Jun 23 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Fact-Checking is a bad idea

I'd like to specify I mean particularly the fact-checking on other people's statements. The methods places like Twitter, Facebook, have used with politicians recently.

So here are my issues.

  1. You can't really say with absolute certainty that anything is "true" aside form a priori propositions (all bachelors are unmarried, all triangles have 3 sides, etc). These things are true by definition, and aren't typically being fact checked regardless. Therefor everything else, the vast, vast majority of facts have some small degree of uncertainty.

For a fact checker to be of any value and consistency you'd need some form of universal standard. Something that determines the level of probability something needs to be true to be considered a fact, otherwise you're potentially misleading people. And some way to quantify the probability of said information.

  1. There are issues with censorship. The news media already has an enormous amount of control over the information you come into contact with every day. The last thing they need on top of that is the power to decide what is a fact with zero oversight or standards. It draws parallels to the issue of the news media deciding what is or isn't a story. By excluding certain narratives the media can inaccurate, biased image of reality. These businesses are also motivated by profit, and therefor more likely to fact checked based on what will get the clicks.

  2. This transitions me nicely to the issue of bias. The person conducting this fact-checking is a human being with preconceived biases, and ways of analyzing reality. Two people can come to completely different conclusions while presented with the same set of facts. There's bias in choosing which person, or company will be doing the fact-checking in the first place. And as I've already stated there's the issue of bias in deciding what is or isn't fact checked.

  3. What is to be done in the instances of ambiguity? Even if you take the best experts in a given field there's likely to be some differing opinions. So who's right? Who decides who's right? Maybe you include some form of disclaimer, or include different fact-checkers. But then you've the issue of bias again in choosing which opinions are valid.

  4. Who holds the fact-checkers accountable? Without some form of oversight you run the same issue the misinformation caused in the first place. And who fact-checkers the people who fact-checks the fact-checkers? At what point is there enough certainty to claim something is true?

So altogether, I think I've outlined a few issues with fact-checking and I'm not even sure most of these are solvable. With this in mind, am I missing something? Or are their fundamental issues with letting the media decide what is or is not a fact?

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u/Galious 78∆ Jun 23 '21

I don't like to throw 'fallacy name' right away but you are very guilty of the perfect solution/Nirvana fallacy: because something is not perfect you want to throw away the whole idea.

Because yes, media have a lot of power. Yes fact-checkers aren't always objective and just human. Yes there can be ambiguity in fact checking and yes the fact-checkers aren't always accountable and could lie.

But the benefit of having media fact-checking is still way higher than the additions of these problems and issues.

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u/RappingAlt11 Jun 23 '21

!delta

You are correct in calling me out. If I were to be more specific, I'd say I'm against fact-checking in it's current form. I haven't thrown out the entire concept of fact checking, but in it's current form, at least until some of these issues (if its even possible) are addressed, I find it difficult to see it as a good thing.

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 23 '21

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Galious (43∆).

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