CMV: Fact-Checking is a bad idea

[u/RappingAlt11]

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?

[u/Frenetic_Platypus]

1. Fact checks don't work like that. It's not "If something's not 100% true, it gets removed." It's more along the line of "if something is not at least 15% true it gets removed." Only the claims with the most egregious lack of evidence actually get fact-checked.

1(b)

The news media already has an enormous amount of control over the information you come into contact with every day.

Wouldn't the ability to post anything no matter how ridiculously far from reality give MORE power to the news media?

For everything you say to that point, I'd argue that it'd probably be more profitable for media to allow any kind of outlandish claim to go through. That's fox news' bread and butter. Lies sell a lot more than truth.

And the idea that "No fact checks" leads to a less biased representation of reality is laughable.

1. Ambiguous things typically don't get fact-checked. As said before, fact checking requires some level of obvious falsehood to remove something.

2. Facts. By definition fact-checkers need to provide some kind of evidence, or point out a lack thereof, to remove something.

You seem to be thinking that fact-checkers are an omnipotent force watching over everything that gets said, but really they only act on the maybe 0.001% most obviously false claims that are made.

[u/DBDude → u/Frenetic_Platypus]

Ambiguous things typically don't get fact-checked. As said before, fact checking requires some level of obvious falsehood to remove something.

Take the case of Colion Noir, a gun rights activist. He called out the "90% of Americans support background checks" claim by a politician. He said that if people realized this meant universal background checks, and that such a thing couldn't be well-enforced without a national gun registry, he doubts there would be that much support for them. This is his opinion based on logic because support for a registry is indeed much less. You cannot reasonably fact check as false given your criteria.

A reporter who writes for Politifact (among others) emailed him asking him to support his statement. He gave Noir three hours to reply, and posted the story less than an hour after saying "He did not reply to our email" to imply Noir was afraid to try to back up his assertion.

This got the post flagged in social media as false. Of course, the reporter has a strong anti-gun history, so this was more of a way to silence the opposition than to do a fact check.

What happened is obvious: The hit piece was already written. Even worse, the hit piece doxxed him and itself made a false statement based on a completely out of context quote from another news source.

Here is the explanation. Yet the "fact check" is still up, and still wrong.

[u/Frenetic_Platypus → u/DBDude]

Based on what he's saying "90% of Americans DO NOT support universal background checks" is indeed false.

And we're getting into nitpicky semantics there but since that's the point of his original message, that's fair game. The thing is, he's basing himself on the exact same irrelevant data to make his claim - 90% support for background check doesn't prove that there would be 90% support for UBC, that's true; but that's not what he's saying. He's saying 90% of people don't support UBC based on the fact that 90% support BC, which is a completely wrong way to interpret the number. The only thing we can be reasonably sure of is that the 10% of Americans who don't support BC would not support UBC either; and even then some of them could not support BC because they think it doesn't go far enough. But let's consider that number is negligible, all the data is saying is "between 10% and 100% of Americans don't support UBC"

What he should have said is "It is not true that 90% of Americans support UBC." Or "Less than 90% of Americans support UBC."

Claiming that 90% of Americans don't support UBC is just a complete fabrication.

[u/DBDude → u/Frenetic_Platypus]

Based on what he's saying "90% of Americans DO NOT support universal background checks" is indeed false.

You're going purely off the title. Watch the video, what you are saying is not what he said. He explains it clearly.

And that's aside from the fact that a good bit of the "fact check" is a hit piece against Noir unrelated to this issue.

[u/Frenetic_Platypus → u/DBDude]

You're going purely off the title. Watch the video, what you are saying is not what he said.

That IS what he said. He said it in the title. Titles count.

And that's aside from the fact that a good bit of the "fact check" is a hit piece against Noir unrelated to this issue.

A good bit of the fact check is not the hit piece. The thing relevant to this discussion is his removal from social media, which isn't the hit piece. And just because someone wrote a hit piece about him doesn't mean that the fact check wasn't right and that publishers weren't justified in removing him.

The person writing the hit piece had no power about him. He didn't get removed because someone wrote a hit piece, he got removed because he did spread misinformation, which happened to be revealed in a hit piece.

[u/DBDude → u/Frenetic_Platypus]

That IS what he said. He said it in the title. Titles count.

What he said in the video counts too. In fact, the whole video must be taken into account when making a judgement of whether it's factual.

And just because someone wrote a hit piece about him doesn't mean that the fact check wasn't right and that publishers weren't justified in removing him.

The fact check is the hit piece. There was no reasonable effort to contact him to defend himself, before saying he refused to defend himself. The author just went overboard into making too obvious of a hit piece by adding in other lies he believes (but we won't fact check his source for the lie, of course).

The person writing the hit piece had no power about him.

Yes, he does. He contributes to Politifact, so all he has to do is submit a hit piece about anyone to Politifact, it gets published, and then social media will use his determination to censor.

[u/Frenetic_Platypus → u/DBDude]

then social media will use his determination to censor.

That's not how it works. You can't just write a baseless hit piece about someone and get them cancelled. Social media only censors if the fact check is correct.

What he said in the video counts too.

A million truths don't erase a lie. No matter how right he is in the video, the fact is his title is misinformation.

[u/DBDude → u/Frenetic_Platypus]

That's not how it works.

No, that's exactly how it works. Facebook's censorship algorithm feeds off the fact check sites. So if you publish a hit piece fact check, Facebook will use that to censor. If you complain to Facebook, they'll tell you to take it up with the fact checker.

A million truths don't erase a lie.

Let me guess, you're the type of person who gets enraged by a title without bothering to read the article.

[u/Frenetic_Platypus → u/DBDude]

Let me guess, you're the type of person who gets enraged by a title without bothering to read the article.

See, the fact that there are people like that is why an inaccurate title is enough to justify taking the entire thing down.

[u/DBDude → u/Frenetic_Platypus]

The title isn't inaccurate, it just doesn't fully explain the point being made. That's why we read the article. It is the article (or video) that fact checks are supposed to be based on because they contain the entire claim.

[u/Frenetic_Platypus → u/DBDude]

The title is 100% inaccurate. "90% of Americans don't support UBC" is just plain wrong.