
Facebook overrides fact-checks when climate science is “opinion” - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/facebook-overrides-fact-checks-when-climate-science-is-opinion/
======
vorpalhex
I remember being very concerned that the fact checkers wouldn't be operating
in a vacuum and we'd have a bunch of facebook execs being arbiters of truth.

And that appears to be exactly what has happened. This is terrifying. A
handful of mainstream publications and a bunch of basically unknown facebook
folks are now the censors. We've already seen well known EFF activists rated
untrue for their arguments against warrantless surveillance, and now the
censors already can't agree on climate change. I've seen arguments about
Confederate generals rated as false because of modern news events - in ways
that disagree with well tenured academic historians.

We seem doomed in this regard.

~~~
refurb
Yup. This is why I actually agree with Zuckerberg on his “no censorship”
approach.

He’s smart enough to recognize that taking on the burden of what should be
censored and what shouldn’t is a quagmire he’d prefer to avoid. No matter how
“good” your filters are, you’re going to piss off a massive group of
customers, despite all the effort.

It’s just a massive time sink with little to no benefit.

“The only way to win is to not play at all.”

~~~
smt88
I think it's fine for Facebook to opt out of fact-checking, as long as they
also opt out of algorithmic syndication of content.

If my feed is going to have posts shared by others (even non-friends) or,
worse, op-eds in it, then FB is vouching for whatever I see. If they share a
link with 50 million people, they're certainly responsible for the
consequences.

Worse is the ad side, where Facebook wants to continue to profit from well-
funded wars against science while still claiming to be neutral.

If you get paid to broadcast a message and then broadcast it, you are not
neutral.

~~~
forgotmyhnacc
How does this argument apply to Google? When you search something e.g. is
climate change real, Google ranks the results algorithmically. If Google
doesn't do fact checking, are they liable for false statements?

~~~
Nasrudith
It applies just as much because it is a fundamentally technically illiterate
argument. It already ignores that the whole point of the algorithim is to
prioritize. In this case just as much means "none" for both because it is
asking for an outright contradiction to - provide prioritization without any
bias. Or bias without bias. Nonsensical stupidity. The mobster with a cudgel
making vague threats rhetoric is just another form of the stupid and wrong
meme of service and platform being mutually excluse.

I personally try to do my part by stomping on this dumb sentiment like a
cockroach whenever it pops up.

~~~
AlexandrB
I disagree. The "algorithm" is fundamentally an optimization problem and
companies get to choose what the fitness function for each algorithm is.
Facebook chooses "engagement". This is not an accident nor some fundamental
property of math. It's a product decision made by a human. One that can be
changed.

And there _is_ a fundamental difference between Google's algorithm and
Facebook's: control. Google requires user input through search, Facebook
decides what shows up when you open the app/site based on an algorithmic feed.
In one case the user has some idea that what they're doing is interacting with
an algorithm and they can change their search terms if they're not satisfied
with the results, in the other the algorithm is in the background making
decisions without making itself obvious.

~~~
Gigablah
There is an implicit search on Facebook though, namely the personal
information you’ve entered into your profile and your relationships.

------
mixedCase
What a disgustingly terrible article. Never explains what precise facts
Facebook is taking into consideration as opinion, just throws around political
leanings and pointlessly polarizes it as "climate scientists" vs "climate
change deniers".

This is the kind of journalism that only serves to divide the people even
further by empowering their tribalism instead of trying to discuss the matter
at hand.

~~~
Covzire
More insidiously, it's another drumbeat for the idea that we need classical
media gate keepers to invade people's personal space and "correct" any wrong-
think. Very dangerous and unwelcome idea for a free society. The media has no
valid purpose for having the power to amend private citizens conversations, we
wouldn't tolerate at a bar and we shouldn't on our personal web space.

~~~
floatrock
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is making you think he doesn't exist.

Even without active censorship, Facebook very much is a gate keeper invading
your personal space. It's just rather than building _up_ walls around you,
it's merely giving you a shovel and showering you with dopamine bursts every
time you dig yourself _down_ into your own personal hole. The end effect is
the same, though -- all you hear is echos bouncing off walls around you. You
just think the echos are only your own.

I agree a free society shouldn't tolerate amending private citizen's
conversation. However, that comes with the responsibility of recognizing the
more insidious ways of doing that, such as when your attention has been
hijacked with industrialized behavioral profiling. The "private citizen
conversations" you hear bouncing off your walls are being algorithmically
seeded by whatever brings in the most dollars the most efficiently. That's not
a truly free society, that's just a very subtle form of mass indoctrination.

The devil already exists out there whether you think he does or not. And when
you play with the devil, the only winning move is to not play his game.

~~~
Nasrudith
The real hillariously devious move is the devil does not really exist as a
literal thing. Yet he causes people to carry out the agenda by not only
scapegoating it for their selfish desires but from countereffective attempts
to fight the devil. If he was real it would be easier to learn and recognize
an actual bad actor and their mechanisms. That can't be done when it is fake.
Attempts to fight are always a wild goose chase when building something good
is the only actual way.

"The secret to my success is that I do not really exist."

------
jeffreyrogers
Would be nice to know what the actual claims are. I'm not at all a climate
change denialist, but some of the things claimed by people trying to raise
awareness for climate change are outright false, or at least extremely
unlikely, e.g. humans almost certainly aren't going to go extinct because of
climate change. But it can still be catastrophic at a society level.

It's a shame the issue is so polarized, because while the claims that the
earth is warming and that the warming is at least in part caused by c02 and
other forms of pollution are solid, some of the assumptions going into the
models are questionable and can be legitimately debated.

~~~
stronglikedan
The problem is there are three groups: climate deniers, climate alarmists, and
climate realists. The first two are _much_ louder than the third, so the
debate quickly turns into an extremist yelling match full of misinformation in
the public arena. Most people never settle into the minority middle ground of
climate realist, because it can be difficult to muddle through the extremist
views to get to the truth. And even if you do, the majority of people will
just make it a point to tell you how wrong you are anyway.

~~~
mturmon
This trichotomy is not really helpful.

Here's a more helpful one: people who actually have expertise and peer-
reviewed publications, people who at least pay attention to the above, and
everyone else.

------
octaveguin
This problem was created by social media by choosing which articles to show in
your news feed based on engagement. That is, how much you'll emotionally react
to it.

The solution is not to add another layer of "fact checking". That's super
dubious.

Get rid of what got us here.

News feeds organized by engagement are evil. Dismantling them would solve both
the production and consumption of emotion driven information.

~~~
chillacy
Traditional news media is also organized by engagement: an entire department
is responsible for picking the home page of a newspaper and importance of each
story.

The major publications do a better job at not sensationalizing everything, but
this has been a problem since 1890 at least:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

That social media naturally tends to become a tabloid magazine may be more a
reflection on readers than the editor (whether human or machine).

~~~
octaveguin
I agree. That's a problem, too.

The reason it became so pronounced is that social media got very good at it
and then taught the lesson to traditional media. They, too, now use metrics of
engagement to choose what they show.

It is true also that it is a weakness of people. But there are other
weaknesses that we regulate in the interest of a healthy society.

I'm not a fan of regulation but a general awareness of the core issue would go
a long way towards a solution.

Right now, the talk about the issue seems misdirected. I can only see the
proposed solutions putting immense power of controlling narrative in a few
hands.

------
exabrial
Facebook warned me yesterday when sharing a satire article that the article
was over a year old and the facts may not longer be current.

Thank you for protecting me Facebook gosh darnit!

~~~
raxxorrax
Heh, satire can get stale if overtaken by reality.

------
curiousgal
I don't understand why it's Facebook's role to teach people. Maybe if
regulations were instead imposed on school curriculums we wouldn't have dumb
adults arguing about climate change, flat earth or mask wearing. Combat issues
at the root not the fruit.

~~~
jfengel
Facebook endumbens people. It's there front and center of the stupidification
process, whether it wants to be or not. And it wants to be: it's aware that
the mechanisms it uses to attract eyeballs (and thus revenue) favor lies and
propaganda over facts. Facts are boring. Proof that your ideological enemies
are out to get you is endlessly fascinating.

They want to have it both ways, to remain sticky but without having the world
become a worse place for it. I'm sure they'd love it if schools didn't also
contribute to the increasing gullibility of the US, but that's not something
they can control. Their own feeds, by contrast, is something they have power
over.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Facebook endumbens people. It's there front and center of the
> stupidification process, whether it wants to be or not.

Facebook isn't making anyone dumb. They were already dumb; you just didn't
notice before.

~~~
jfengel
You're correct that they were already dumb, but it does actively remove
knowledge from their heads and replaces it with harder-to-budge falsehoods.
That sclerosis of the neurons makes them act like people even dumber than
their natural state of stupefaction.

~~~
Gigablah
With Facebook there is at least a chance, however minuscule, that you are
exposed to different ideas. With media like Fox News, it’s straight out
propaganda. This is what’s causing the polarization; the conspiracy theories
and extremism have to come from somewhere. Why go after the symptom and not
the cause?

~~~
jfengel
The cause is all mixed up in cause and effect. Fox News exists because there
are people who want it. It amplifies what they believe and gradually pushes
them to believe more extreme forms of it, but it's just one part of a huge
ecosystem -- politicians, right-wing radio, religious leaders, etc. The common
factor all of those have is the population.

Facebook doesn't have control of any of those things. The only thing it can
control is itself. But it can at least reduce its own part in the way the
people and the media perform for each other to be even more extreme. And
Facebook is in a rare (if not unique) position to be directly in front of that
population: it can't make Fox News go away, but it can put a flag in front of
Fox News stories.

The "cause" is ultimately the individuals, not the media or the politicians or
the wealthy think-tank funders. They don't have mind control. All they can do
is appeal to people with what they already want to believe and amplify it -- a
process that's been going on for at least four decades. Reversing it will take
at least as long. I don't expect FB to solve it, but I do think it's a good
idea for them to not allow themselves to be part of it.

------
fdschoeneman
According to the piece, the fact checkers claimed an opinion piece was false
because all of the facts in it were cherry picked:

"The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry-
picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are
wrong about global warming."

This is not a logical argument. Facts are correct or incorrect, whether
they're cherrypicked or not.

~~~
LoSboccacc
cherry picking truths and listing them out of context (i.e. wildfire reduction
without mentioning land usage changed) may not be fake news, but it definitely
smells like propaganda

not defending Facebook actions, which are wrong for a different set of motives
detached from the actual article quality, but this isn't the censorship
smoking gun people want it to be

------
throw737
Question: facebook as a platform is not liable for information it contains.
However if Facebook would publish fact checking info, that is wrong or
missleading, are they liable?

Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me damage?

~~~
bhupy
> Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me
> damage?

Per the landmark ruling NYTimes v Sullivan — no, you'd probably lose that
case.

~~~
Wohlf
This case seems to apply to public officials, I assume it would be different
for private citizens?

~~~
bhupy
The case was specifically about a full page ad that the New York Times had
taken out that contained a number of factual inaccuracies, such as the number
of times King had been arrested during the protests, what song the protesters
had sung, and whether or not students had been expelled for participating.

GP asked:

> facebook as a platform is not liable for information it contains. However if
> Facebook would publish fact checking info, that is wrong or missleading, are
> they liable?

> Could I sue facebook if their "facts" were proven wrong, and cause me damage

NYTimes v Sullivan held that unless the "facts" proven wrong are specifically
about a private individual, you can't sue for damages if a newspaper publishes
information that are factually incorrect. If the NYTimes Editorial Board
published an article that claimed that the sky is green, you can't sue them
for that. More practically, if the NYTimes Editorial Board published an
article that "climate change isn't real", you can't sue them for that either.

Likewise, if Facebook published fact checking info that's proven wrong or
misleading, they won't be held liable unless the fact checking info directly
defames a private individual.

Also note that this is US-centric. Outside of the US, this kind of publisher
speech protection doesn't exist, and such nations can cause legal problems for
Facebook. Either FB would have to hide the contents from citizens of those
nations, or stop operating there altogether.

------
MattGaiser
I’m not really sure what people expected from Facebook here.

The oldest of newspapers struggle with these kinds of judgements (until they
just decide to stop caring and cater to a certain political side).

It is not reasonable to expect Facebook to get it right with any consistency,
if there even is a definitive correct answer to begin with.

~~~
ogre_codes
Consistency is the word here.

Facebook has a policy that they put in place that's fairly reasonable, they
have outside fact-checkers they acknowledge as experts. They deliberately set
aside the mechanism _they put in place_ to avoid this kind of nonsense.

It is entirely reasonable to expect Facebook to apply the policy that they
themselves created in order to avoid having to make these kind of calls.

------
christiansakai
Or we could get rid of Democracy and back to kingship/dictatorship. /s

But on a serious note. It seems that the requirement of functioning Democracy
is under the assumption that the majority is educated and know what is good
for them. Information warfare like this spells disaster for Democracy.

------
BTCOG
Stop using someone else's domain and server space to act like that is where
you deserve unhindered free speech. I'm so tired of hearing the bitching about
Facebook or Twitter on HN lately. The future of the web will be decentralized.
It never made sense to use your real identity and then go and post totally
private conversations, unencrypted, on someone else's machines! Create your
personally hosted cheap blog and post your thoughts there, where YOU control
them. I think Facebook should start charging like $50/month to use it so it
would wake everyone up to the simple fact it isn't your service. It isn't your
server. You are choosing to be moderated in your "private" conversations,
because you choose to do so. We should have millions of personal websites and
blogs that are solely controlled by the individual but instead, millions of
people flock to private web servers, for free, and act like they own
it!Absurd.

------
tzs
I think the problem with Facebook and similar platforms is that they tend to
merge everything into one stream. You see news, opinion, humor, satire, and
ads all in one continuous feed, often not labeled as to which type it is
(except ads usually say "sponsored" or something like that).

Furthermore, they are designed to get you to consume as much of this stream as
possible. They would rather have you shallowly engage 120 article in an hour
than deeply delve into 2 articles.

(In fact, their stupid system actually penalizes you for going too deeply into
an article, but I'll save the rant that would follow if I went into detail on
that for another time...)

This results in their readers often failing at telling news, opinion, humor,
etc., apart.

They should probably separate stuff out, like newspapers and magazines usually
do. Then fact check everything in news, and perhaps have a disclaimer in the
opinion section clearly stating that the articles are the opinions of their
authors and have specifically not been fact checked.

~~~
dredmorbius
This was Neil Postman's critique of (pre-Facebook, pre-WWW) media in _Amusing
Ourselves to Death_ , originally published in 1987.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death-
pu...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death-public-
discourse-in-the-age-of-show-business/oclc/1171114784)

The underlying criticism of news media is rather older.

------
BTCOG
The bottom line is that much of the climate science is nothing more than
conjecture and you can get as mad about it as you like, and call it
"misinformation" all you like. There is no evidence. Several million years ago
we can tell that ppm levels of CO2 were over 1,000 and could climb higher than
that. Today, we are way lower in comparison, and we face more pollution than
anything. I find often times that people like to argue and conflate pollution
with global warming. We have evidence of pollution. We don't have evidence
that the poles shifting and climate shifting is actually man made, or that it
WILL factually be detrimental. The planet is still here and spinning although
it's seen CO2 atmospheric levels over 1200 ppm/ppb in past centuries, prior to
industrialization. So much drama is involved in these tightly held opinions
based in conjecture.

------
intended
Facebook is arbitraging manpower here.

Firstly, this article is about American issues, so it’s only the America issue
“lens” that is being used to focus on issues. These same and similar issues
must exist for every other country, many of whom have 0 ability to fund and
afford individuals who can dedicate their time and lives to fact checking
their Local power structures or narratives.

Secondly, even the constrained solution/issue space is too deep for Facebook
to effectively police - leaving aside the philosophical arguments.

Removing statements which say “all minority people need to die” is easy,

Removing opinion pieces ? Suppose Kanye says he doesn’t believe in vaccines
and that is his opinion. Remove ? Keep?

Is it noteworthy because a huge personality said it ? What about people who
are B list celebrities. Or C list ?

What about an article which says “we find that the science on climate change
makes claims that are not supported entirely by the data, here is why and here
is research.” -

Now you need specialistS or have access to a network of diagnosticians who can
tell you whether complex pieces of content are Trojans or not.

Facebook and social media enterprises are paying the price of the hollowing
out of editorial boards. All those local newspapers and newsrooms where stuff
gets filtered - that is the likely amount of (Skilled) manpower Facebook needs
to employ to handle this.

This is where the social media model totally collapses - you can have issues
with climate denial, fake medicine, voter suppression etc. - and sub divisions
of these problem.

There’s never a shortage of problems and a fractal level of complexity.

How do you ever satisfy the verification needs at this point?

Therefore social networks will always have massive numbers of bad actors,
subterranean cults, hidden mind viruses infecting armies of people, propaganda
and legions of victims.

This isn’t an idle question - the problems here are about the nature of how
humans structure Their networks, verify information and build trust.

Facebook or any social network will always fail at this, unless they see this
as what it really is - time to make editorial decisions on content on the
network at scale.

The Silicon Valley hey day ideal of free speech is dead. We’re now in a rear
guard action to ring fence people from infectious and malicious ideas.

If you think this is a step too far, please remember that America has people
actively fighting wearing face masks during the greatest modern Pandemic.

~~~
ogre_codes
> Removing an article which says ...

This is no different from removing an article which says you shouldn't use
vaccines because they are ineffective and cause Autism.

When the _facts_ which are used to back the opinion are false, then the
factual portions of that opinion piece are subject to fact checking.
Otherwise, there is zero point to having Fact checkers or any sort of
moderation.

------
wnevets
When facebook hired the daily wire to be part of its "truth" everyone knew is
was going to be trash.

------
codecamper
maybe this is because Zuck flies between Hawaii and SF about 2 times every
month? (just guessing based on his freckle count)

------
api
If they didn't allow opinions, then the platform is no longer a discussion
platform.

~~~
yokaze
It was never a question, if they allow opinions, or don't, but always what are
you allowed to publish on their platform.

And as in any forum, private or public, there are restrictions in place. The
question is only, which. If it no restrictions where in place, then it
wouldn't be longer a discussion platform either.

------
jdlyga
Facebook has devolved into the Karen social network.

------
fdschoeneman
According to the Ars piece, the outsourced fact checkers claimed an opinion
piece was false because all of the facts in it were cherry picked:

"The researchers found that the post by the CO2 Coalition was based on cherry-
picked information to mislead readers into thinking climate science models are
wrong about global warming."

This is not a logical argument. Facts are correct or incorrect, whether
they're cherrypicked or not.

------
annadane
But we don't want to be the arbiters of truth!

Has this company ever been honest about anything in its entire history? Do any
of the execs have mirrors in their houses so they have to look at who they are
every now and then?

~~~
newacct583
First sentence of the second paragraph:

> _Facebook does not employ fact-checkers directly but rather works with a
> range of third-party organizations to rate how true or false content shared
> in categories is._

The checker in the particular incident in question was Climate Feedback. The
article doesn't have a link to the original Daily Wire article.

------
sowellecho
Consider the outrageous claim that Tucker Carlson made today (that NYT was
"planning" to dox him). Was it true? Did he just cleverly "pre-empt" it? Or
did he intentionally create a story to teach a lesson to the NYT reporters?

Things are made much murkier when you then find out that, yes, indeed, he was
actually doxxed before once. And people did actually show up to his house to
protest. And even more amazingly, the first person account of this "witness"
actually makes you believe if Tucker has a point. Why did they go to his house
at night? And how can anyone, from the inside of a house, distinguish "firm
knocking" vs trying to break down the door. Will you be calm enough and just
say "Oh.. I thought he was going to break it. But it was just a firm knock,
now that I think about it. Phew.. "? And why in fuck's name would you actually
spray paint anything on Tucker's property? He is going to refer to it as
vandalism, because if someone came to your house and peed on the front door,
that's exactly how you would refer to it too. Or are you instead going to say
"Well, it's just some organic material, it can always be wiped off"?

[https://archive.thinkprogress.org/i-was-at-the-protest-
outsi...](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/i-was-at-the-protest-outside-
tucker-carlsons-house-heres-what-actually-happened-665c2dc0cb67/)

At this point, there isn't actually any reason to believe one side over the
other anymore. It is just complete hysterics on both sides.

~~~
bmarquez
> Consider the outrageous claim

Is it really outrageous when NYT has previously threatened to dox people? Most
recently the owner of Slate Star Codex, which recieved a lot of attention on
HN.

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-
my-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-
revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/)

~~~
Nasrudith
Yes, because you can't dox known public figures by definition. Donald Trump
resides in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Look I just doxxed the president!

To claim knowingly claim something impossible by definition is outragous.

~~~
bmarquez
Just because Tucker is a public figure doesn't mean his private residence
needs to be publicized by the NYT. Regardless, the rest of his family who live
with him aren't public figures.

Willfully conflating the White House and Tucker's house is disingenuous.

