Ask HN: Should HN implement a fact checker for its links and why/why not? - sahin-boydas
======
smt88
1) It would have to be a human. Existing "AI" solutions aren't close to being
as good as humans, at least when they're only fed articles without context.

Even humans aren't exactly infallible when fact-checking, and truth is a
debated term. The training data for any AI would be "biased" to some people
and not to others.

2) HN is already great at this. That's why I read comments first.

~~~
muzani
Agreed. When I see news, I open up the comments as a fact and quality checker.

------
krapp
Absolutely not.

First, because "fact checking" has become tainted and appropriated for the
sake of political demagoguery. Any attempt to do so will be assumed to be an
attempt at censorship or misinformation, and result in people from different
camps arguing their "facts" against other "facts."

Second, because this is a forum which is supposed to cater to people with
intellectual curiosity. That should mean people don't expect their hand to be
held and be told what the truth is. It's bad enough this place tries to
correlate karma with quality, the last thing we need is a score for truth as
well.

Third, the purpose of Hacker News isn't, and shouldn't be, to curate facts. It
should be possible to have a civil and intellectually thought provoking
discussion about the flaws in a linked article, as well as the facts.

------
2038AD
There's no need. Most links aren't simple yes/no facts to be evaluated and the
comments provide reasonable discussion. Hacker News doesn't tend to discuss
hoaxes which would need checking either.

------
Adamantcheese
NLP along with an awfully difficult problem that would've probably been solved
somewhere else first? I don't think it's worth the effort. The community does
a fine job moderating itself.

