Fact checking is probably best done by a third party of the user's choosing. It's rare that a statement cannot be reasonbly argued from multiple angles. We simply have to pick the sources we trust and picking them for us is probably not the best solution.
I understand the desire to prevent fake stories, but probably much better to tie credibility to individuals so there's more at stake for them personally.
The problem is that often these "fact checking" organisations are posting long subjective arguments for whether something is "true" or not. That is not an objective fact - that is an opinion piece. As long as they are citing verifiable sources for atomic black and white facts then it's OK, but that is often not the case.
Let's please not throw out the baby with the bathwater and dismiss all fact checking as political, biases, or agenda-driven.
Not agreeing on basic facts in the prime problem in our current political discourse. Disagreement is usually a good problem to have and leads to testing the complete problem space.
What we are seeing now, though, is the absence of the problem space exploration. Instead any discussion is just dismissed by calling the other party's information "fake news". In that fact-checkers are crucial.
Can the fact checkers be wrong? Sure. Could they have an agenda? Sure. Let's fix that. Let's not dismiss them outright as some of the comment here suggest.
One of the biggest issue with fact checking, is that fact checkers don't try to see if something is true or false. But they guess what people are going to understand from a post and then says whether or not those understandings are true or false.
For example if you say "There is no evidence that mask has helped reduce the spread of covid". You will probably be fact checked as false, because they think people will understand "Masks don't work".
"fact checking" is bad. I'm not sure what the good version of it you imagine. By "fact checking in general" do you mean pointing out when someone is wrong? The parent comment sees fact checking as one thing: propaganda used to shut down heterodoxy. It has nothing to do with facts or truth.
Its not possible, period. You can remove this option. FB/Twitter/YT all have "fact checkers" and they are neither neutral nor do they get it right. Even if outsourced it still fails miserably. On top of that people should not be told what the "facts" are for complex thinks. It removes the need to think and build an opinion. This is essential because for almost everything controversial there is no way to find the absolute truth. People need to learn what it means to accept that we dont know something and likely never will know what the truth is.
the fact-checker could also be the person who is just flat out wrong, though. Just ban/block the OP (for spreading misinformation, obviously) so they can’t respond and put a big flag next to their post labeling it misinformation.
People always focus on the agenda of the 'fact-checker' in these arguments, but never seem to focus on the agenda of the 'fact-checked'. This isn't to say that said fact checkers are always correct because people can always double back and issue a counter argument, but rather that it's easy for people to just post nonsense and run, leaving it to fester if uncontested.
For example, there's been multiple incidents of that here on HN where people post something that's incorrect by all definitions. It statistically does not align with reality. The best way to counter the deluge of low effort, low accuracy claims is with a medium-effort, medium-accuracy source. Usually in these cases the poster simply vanishes because they did not intend to actually follow up a factual counterclaim.
Fact checking is just censorship. It's literally a group that gets to decide what is an acceptable view and what isn't. How is that not just plain censorship?
You can certainly argue that censorship isn't always a bad thing. But calling censorship "fact checking" is purposely misleading.
Don't forget "fact checks are a form of censorship".
How did we, as a species, drop so low that to say that the thing a person says is disputed gets blown up into a huge issue.
I have no problem with people of ANY political persuasion being fact checked - is it perfect? No. But is it better than nothing? On balance, it appears so.
2. Any post that has a claim is flagged. The poster, or another commenter has 24 hours (or some time period) to link to both a page and specific text (similar to how Google highlights search text when visiting a link) that supports the claim.
3. Once a claim is attached, posters can vote and downvote how well the source(s) support the claims (claims themselves are not voted/downvoted).
4. Sites are whitelisted and blacklisted by looking at the total percentage in which claims are sited with sources that are downvoted vs. up + downvotes.
5. Posts that do not receive sources for claims are deleted.
I feel like the only reason this isn't already done is because it was dramatically decrease the amount of posts and increase friction around posting. Posters would have to be careful to assert nothing in their post.
The linked page explains that fact checks aren't guaranteed to be displayed, but use an algorithm similar to page rank to choose which if any checks should be shown.
Fact checking doesn't automatically mean people will believe the fact checker over the top link anyways. Exposing people to disagreement to the issue from the start may be important because once people form a belief, they're much more likely to hold that believe despite contradictory evidence.
> I've also noticed that even fact-checking is being weaponized for political reasons. A lot of the time it seems like only one side of the debate is fact checked, and only truly ridiculous claims against the other are debunked.
That could be because the fact checkers are biased, or it could be that one side pushes falsehoods more frequently or more strongly than the other.
Best to apply any moderation as minimally as possible. Tag posts which cause arguments as "controversial" and leave it at that.
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