
Facebook relaxed misinformation rules for conservative pages - chanfest22
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sensitive-claims-bias-facebook-relaxed-misinformation-rules-conservative-pages-n1236182
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im3w1l
I think from a lot of peoples point of view, the fact checkers have a left-
wing bias. Seen from that perspective, Facebook is just correcting for the
bias.

People on the right often don't even want the fact-check system to exist in
the first place. It was pushed by left-wing people who hoped they could use it
to kick out the right.

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CathedralBorrow
This sounds a lot like tribalism. The left-wing people coordinating an attack
on the right-wing people to win some battle. Isn't human communication on a
global scale slightly more nuanced than that?

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im3w1l
The fake-news battle is mainly shaped around the American left-vs-right
battle. You are right that there are many other groups in the global sphere,
but they are not influential in this battle. What happens to them is mostly a
side-effect of the battle.

Talking about people like Bolsonaro, Modi, Duterte or for that matter Boris
Johnson.

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nfoz
I suspect that Facebook is powerful enough to choose election winners whose
policies will favour them. Much moreso, and with much less visibility, than
regular media companies.

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mikenew
This whole thing is just insane. Facebook, as a platform, has enabled mass
amounts of misinformation, hatred, and groupthink, to the point of becoming a
serious concern for our democracy. It is fundamentally designed into the
platform to give more exposure to provocative, polarizing content. And
somehow, people think the solution to this problem is to give Facebook the
explicit job of deciding what is true and what is not.

The answer to the problem is simple. Facebook should not exist. This is a
service that handles a significant percentage of the information flow in the
world, and yet it's fundamental goal is to optimize for ad spending. Which
means it needs to keep people using it as much as possible and as engaged as
possible. Your text messaging service doesn't care if you use it or not, and
it doesn't care what information to send or receive from other people.
Facebook uses everything at it's disposal to keep you addicted to it, and that
comes at the cost of being a balanced, thoughtful way of communicating. The
model is broken and it is not going to be fixed.

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threatofrain
Facebook at its core is a green list of people or voices you approve of. Any
misinformation, hatred, or groupthink... is coming from the world you approve.

And with regards to groupthink, there is surely some basic level of personal
burden arising from the freedom of association.

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mikenew
It doesn't matter. You can argue that "people shouldn't fall prey to
groupthink" and I'd agree with you. But they do. We're talking about a group
of 2.6 billion people, not an individual. On average, people are a product of
their environment. And the environment, in this case, is a bad one. It
promotes all the wrong things and the incentives are in all the wrong places.

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kmlx
the "environment" is in fact our society.

you assume the cause is facebook, when in fact facebook is the effect of a
sick society.

but, facebook does help in bringing to light our abysmal failure in building
society.

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Joeri
It is a circle. Society influences facebook, facebook feeds back into society.
For example, I’m convinced facebook’s amplification of pro-brexit and pro-
trump messages in those campaigns was instrumental in their victory. No
facebook, no president trump. I’ve also seen how facebook turned my sister
into an anti-vaxxer.

In essence you can look at facebook as a platform for information warfare. It
tends to amplify lies, and some forces are more able to exploit that.

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kukx
It is your sister. You probably talk to her. Try convincing her. If you fail,
is the Facebook to be blamed? I do not think so.

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hellisothers
Yes. Because what is one voice (even family) vs the 100s of voices and
constant reaffirmation of lies and misinformation.

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dandare
I hate when words drift in meaning and I am not happy to see the
"conservatism" label being used with clearly alt-right media. I would go as
far as argue that the GOP does not not represent conservative values any more
and the party is Conservative in name only.

(Likewise I hate it when socialism is labeled as liberalism in the US, or when
cronyism and corruption are labeled as capitalism.)

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rgoulter
"I hate when words drift in meaning"

John McWhorter discusses this as an inevitability with language. (Indeed, he
wrote a book with title / subtitle "Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and
Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)").

He discusses various examples of this happening, both in political and non-
political contexts. His suggestion is to just accept it, and to help
communication remain clear by using new words once old words become too
ambiguous to be useful.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmcqcyyR1Y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmcqcyyR1Y0)

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dandare
Good point. I wonder what would be the new names for

* a political and social philosophy whose central tenets are tradition, organic society, hierarchy, authority, and property rights.

* a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.

* an economic system characterised by private property and the recognition of property rights, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets.

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peteretep
I can't see history being especially kind to Mark Zuckerberg.

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nabla9
I'm not so sure.

Bill Gates was Zuckerberg of 80s and 90s. Very unethical tactics, self
admitted bully. Tried to screw his best friend of MS stocks. MS monnopoly
strategy hindered innovation software development for a long time.

Now in the retirement he is perceived favourably and seen in positive light.

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sdigital
He is actually hated fervently by a large crowd that believes in various Covid
conspiracy theories. Most any recent video of Gates on Youtube will have top
comments that are along these lines.

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kelnos
Sure, but this "large crowd" is still a tiny tiny fraction of the number of
people who hated Gates in the 80s and 90s.

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code_closure
On one post people are saying: FB should not exist! On another post people are
saying: country X is bad as it bans FB!

It’s just so funny to see this.

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cblconfederate
i really love to watch tech companies being forced to dance the censorship
dance. Yeah, that s how it works, when you join the dance, you dance

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0xy
>Facebook's fact-checking rules dictate that pages can have their reach and
advertising limited on the platform if they repeatedly spread information
deemed inaccurate by its fact-checking partners.

"fact-checking partners" such as BuzzFeed (no, really!), partisan Politifact,
hyper-partisan Vox and the Washington Post.

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peteretep
Do you have some examples of where you don't agree with the fact-checking
services of any of the sources you've shared?

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0xy
Sure, a notable recent example is Politifact labeling Biden's comments that
busing would turn schools into a "racial jungle" as "half true", even though
the statement was actually stated by him and is on record. [1]

There's an entire website dedicated to their bias. [2]

Another obvious point of bias was Politifact labeling a statement by Trump
that "CNN did a poll where Obama and I are tied" as "pants on fire" because it
was "one poll" (he never stated otherwise). [3]

[1] [https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-
graham/2020/07/10/p...](https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-
graham/2020/07/10/politifact-nervously-tries-add-context-bidens-old-racial-
jungle)

[2] [https://www.politifactbias.com/](https://www.politifactbias.com/)

[3] [https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/apr/27/donald-
tru...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/apr/27/donald-trump/trump-
says-recent-cnn-poll-shows-him-competitive-c/)

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viraptor
The way I understand it, they object to the "CNN did a poll" part. There's one
poll that exists with a close result, but it's not a CNN poll. It means we
don't even know if he got lucky with a lie, or did he know about that poll and
made a mistake about the source.

(Fwiw, I agree it's not a pants on fire situation. (Mostly) false, sure.)

