from Hacker News

Zuckerberg Dismisses Fact-Checking

by besus on 5/28/20, 6:54 PM with 12 comments

  • by jmull on 5/28/20, 9:07 PM

    > "I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,"

    No platform really wants to be the arbiter of truth. The problem is, if you punt on that entirely you’re 4chan or some other cesspool.

    Anyway, Zuck is being pretty disingenuous here, though, because Facebook does have community standards... they just don’t apply to politicians and other influential people. Facebook wants to give them free reign but control regular people.

    Pretty dystopian, IMO, though hopefully more people will recognize this and drop Facebook.

  • by SideburnsOfDoom on 5/29/20, 12:39 PM

  • by mastermojo on 5/28/20, 8:40 PM

    I like the idea of fact-checking in theory, but in practice the epistemology gets pretty messy.

    Donald Trump says "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S manufacturing non-competitive." I think global warming is a fact but it's become so politicized that certain people don't consider it a fact.

    I think everything lies on a relative scale of fact to "alternative fact", and it's probably less controversial for private companies to be conservative in their censorship. How do you properly refute someones conspiracy theory anyways?

  • by jasoneckert on 5/29/20, 1:36 AM

    This statement could very well be the result of a business decision rather than one based on principles or ethics.