
Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption - CaptainZapp
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/27/facebook-only-dutch-factchecker-quits-over-political-ad-exemption
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forgingahead
For everyone doing all the hand-wringing about Facebook, doesn't existing
media (newspapers, TV, cable, etc) already NOT "fact check" ads run on their
networks?

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paulus_magnus2
False advertising is normally a crime
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising))

I think (suspect) the trick FB is using is not unlike Uber / Airbnb where they
fall just outside regulation. Meaning that sponsored content on FB is just
"self-regulated"

~~~
SaltyBackendGuy
Anecdotally, can you remember the last time a big (any?) company got nailed
for false advertising? I remember reading marketing material my old company
would send out and I knew the application didn't do $the_thing they said it
did.

~~~
paulus_magnus2
Actually yes [1], but penalties seam to only be imposed on foreign companies.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/03/hyundai-
and...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/03/hyundai-and-kia-
fined-100m-for-misleading-customers-on-fuel-economy)

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the-dude
Nu.nl is the news-outlet with least journalistic activity of all publications
in NL. It is basically a one-on-one copy of AP.

~~~
leggomylibro
It makes sense that they lasted longer than Leiden University before quitting,
then. Facebook couldn't even make the token concessions needed to keep at
least one low-effort rag on board?

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bilekas
I just can't get my head around why political speech is permitted to be
false..

Have Facebook ever actually given any solid reasons for this decision?

~~~
c72a7fd0
People should be allowed to be wrong. It's that simple. If you disagree with
this you're not a very good person (fact).

~~~
HorkHunter
Water is not wet. It's that simple. if you disagree with me you're not a very
good person(fact)

~~~
chrisseaton
I don’t have a problem with you advertising that water is not wet on Facebook
using your own money.

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jfengel
I'd have a problem with it if it was part of a campaign to replace all water
with Gatorade. People spending their money to be publicly stupid is not a
problem, but people spending their money to make other people be stupid in
ways that impact my life is.

Our democratic policy is resilient against a certain level of deliberately-
induced stupidity, since stupidity does tend to be self-defeating. But at
sufficient levels, it can do a lot of damage to everybody else before it
finally defeats itself.

I'm not saying that this can be fixed by the trivial addition of fact
checkers. But I don't think that "it's your money" is sufficient reason not to
try various solutions. Your right to swing your money around ends where my
nose begins.

~~~
chrisseaton
Can you not just _disagree_ with it?

Why do you need to _ban_ it?

~~~
jfengel
I didn't say "ban it". I said that a variety of options were on the table.

As for disagreeing with it... I can disagree with it until it takes on the
force of law. Then I'm _required_ to agree with it, or at least, to live with
the consequences. Political speech takes on an aspect of force in a way that
other speech doesn't.

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skocznymroczny
Fact-checking is misleading, because it makes some people believe that facts
are completely objective and you can verify or disprove them without any bias.
In the end, most fact-checking outlets just repeat propaganda of the political
parties they align with.

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rimliu
Can you provide some facts that would be subjective?

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jerf
In the realm of media, there's a lot of equivocation with the word "fact". I
believe in the existence of objective facts in the general sense. But when
we're using the term in the context of our current media environment, a lot of
"facts" are actually conclusions that contain heaping helpings of opinion, if
you really dig into them. There's a lot of telling you what to think and not a
lot of bare facts, because who wants to read boring bare facts? Assuming the
bare facts are even reported accurately between the place where they were
collected and the final reporting (see almost all popular science articles,
where even when "facts" are being reported they still get screwed up).

Here's a common set of "subjective facts": "Policy X will help group Y in
manner Z." along with "Politician A voted against X and therefore hates Y." As
I've commented before, even the apparent objective fact that "Politician A
voted against X" isn't necessarily as factual as it may seem since it's a
common tactic to have X bundled in with a whole bunch of other things, and you
don't know whether A voted against X, or voted against boondoggle B buried in
the bill, or if X was in fact the only thing the politician agreed with in the
entire bill and was forced to vote against it because everything else was
worse, or if they agreed with X and voted against it as part of some other
political deal, or what. Even the "bare fact" "Politician A voted against X"
can be treated in a way that turns it into an effective lie, even if it is
nominally 100% true. That is the sort of "fact" we deal with in the media
environment all the time, and it isn't as objective as we'd like it to be.

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IIAOPSW
>"Policy X will help group Y in manner Z."

While true that conditional statements about the future ("X _will_ help") is
not falsifiable, it is still a well formed if-then statement. The statement
must be either true or false even though we can't derive a proof one way or
the other. I disagree that we have to just throw our hands up and accept
belief in unfalsifiable "subjective facts". I can easily fix your statement.
Watch me:

"Relevant organization W projects that policy X will help group Y in manner
Z."

Now your belief in "X helps Y in manner Z" is no longer blind but derived from
trust in organization W. If you don't want to trust W you can dig deeper into
their methods and data. There is no link in the chain that can only be filled
in subjectively.

>"Politician A voted against X" isn't necessarily as factual as it may seem
since it's a common tactic to have X bundled in with a whole bunch of other
things, and you don't know whether A voted against X, or voted against
boondoggle B buried in the bill, or if X was in fact the only thing the
politician agreed with in the entire bill and was forced to vote against it
because everything ..."

If you looked closely you would see "therefore politician A hates Y" is a
false conclusion from a true premise. Not to victim blame here, but if true
facts are leading someone to false conclusions then that's on them for being
bad at critical reasoning. The facts aren't subjective. The flaw is in the
wetware. Human brains have exploitable bugs. We call them "fallacies". The
hotfix was released in the education system. It hasn't reached everyone yet.

If the public can't be trusted to evaluate facts presented to them then the
very premise of democracy is flawed anyway.

~~~
jerf
"I can easily fix your statement. Watch me:"

But that's missing the point. My point is entirely about what the media calls
"facts" and what gets called "facts" in these sorts of discussions and by
"fact checkers", not whether or not in some hypothetical universe the media
could indeed deal in objective facts alone. The fact that it could be done
correctly does not mean it is done correctly; or to go with a traditional
philosophical formulation, ought does not lead to is. Correcting _me_ doesn't
help anything, you need to convince the media.

And you will not do that, because dealing in psuedo-facts suits them fine.

