There is obvious ideological/institutional bias. Look at who Facebook offloads censorship to and who finances them.
There is obvious censorship not due to shitstorms. dang censored plain links to scientific studies highlighting myocarditis side effects to covid-19 vaccines. Now those effects are accepted fact.
"Facebook has brought in the right-wing news site The Daily Caller, which was co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is known for pushing misinformation, to help fact-check articles, according to The Guardian."
The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work.
This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.
> The way to evaluate a fact checker isn't via an ideology measurement, it's via an examination of their work.
We have a 6-3 Supreme Court. Do you think there's no conservative bias in their work?
> This bias thing feels like a dangerous precedent. I get not wanting kooks to exert strong cultural pressure, but if we start locking people out of various parts of society because of their beliefs, that sounds like the definition of illiberalism to me.
It's not about locking people out, but ensuring that the people who have power are ideologically representative of the people they have power over.
Saying you can have apolitical "fact checking" is like saying judges just "call balls and strikes based on what the law says." In many cases both statements are actually true. But in practice, in many important cases, ideology and politics is inextricable from the job.
FactCheck.org doesn't exactly stick to verifying the number of carbon atoms in Butane. Their fact checks regularly, for example, parse through a politician's words to make inferences about what they meant or may not have meant. There's a lot of subjectivity wrapped up in that sort of analysis.
Whenever you give someone power and discretion, their "work" will be influenced by their ideology. I'm not talking about transparent favoritism, but differences in world view, values, and priorities. And it drives people nuts when people who don't share their values exercise power over them. This is true of everyone--from people who grow up in conservative little towns and escape to the big city as soon as they can to distinct ethnic groups who declare independence for their own patch of land. "Who" the decision makers are matters just as much if not more than what decisions they make.
> We have a 6-3 Supreme Court. Do you think there's no conservative bias in their work?
Based on their rulings (their work), of course. But I would never presume to predict their work based on their ethnic background, their political contributions, the schools they went to, their religion, the kinds of websites they visit or music they listen to, etc.
> It's not about locking people out, but ensuring that the people who have power are ideologically representative of the people they have power over.
That's just a long-winded way of saying you're locking people out, based on their ideology. This is the kind of stuff that lets people argue that Catholics or Jews shouldn't be president.
> Saying you can have apolitical "fact checking" is like saying judges just "call balls and strikes based on what the law says."
I'm not saying this. I think the "balls and strikes" Roberts quote is 100% horseshit, whether it's applied to SCOTUS or grading student essays.
What I am saying is (within reason) we shouldn't let someone's ideology prejudice us against them. If you're a conservative I won't be prejudiced against you. If you're a flat-earther I will. This seems fair.
> There's a lot of subjectivity wrapped up in that sort of analysis.
I think there's a lot of middle ground between "number of carbon atoms in Butane" and epistemological free-for-all. I went to factcheck.org and opened up the 1st carousel article I saw [0]. It seems fine.
> Whenever you give someone power and discretion, their "work" will be influenced by their ideology.
Of course people are made up of their backgrounds and experiences (Justice Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment comes to mind). Why don't we want that? How could we ever not have that?
> And it drives people nuts when people who don't share their values exercise power over them.
I don't think the ideology matters more than the policies and actions. I don't care what Biden's ideology is, he hasn't canceled student debt yet, and I think that's real dumb. I don't care what Trump's ideology was, he sent billions of dollars in aid to Americans who need it, and I think that was great.
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Zooming out a little, maybe you would agree with me when I say that the rise of fact checking is a symptom of decaying discourse. I think people are so used to the other side acting in bad faith that they think they need refs, and then working the refs starts to be part of the game, then you start questioning the motives and ideologies of the refs, blah blah blah.
I think we can change this! I think we just need to be a little more earnest with each other and be more willing to acknowledge when we're wrong. Truth is huge and humans are small. The most we can hope for is to experience a little more of it by working together.
Who gets to decide for everyone else what the "obvious truth" is and what the "dumb ideologically driven belief" is? If the truth or falsity of some point is in contention, then the way to resolve the disagreement is to allow all sides to argue and justify their position. Of course this system doesn't always come up with the right answer, but no magical infallible truth-determining oracle exists, so we do the best we can.
Under certain definitions of "1" "2" and "+", 1 + 1 = 2. But it's completely possible to define mathematics where 1+2 doesn't equal 2. It just so happens that we have a universally-shared convention on arithmetic.
But that simplicity quickly breaks down when people don't share the underlying axioms, and "fact checking" regularly operates in that space. For example, does 1+1 = the number of human genders? Everyone where I'm from would say that's an obviously true fact, but a lot of the folks who run Twitter would disagree.
Why would ideological inclination be a primary bias factor unless the ideology includes such pettiness as putting your bias ahead of your work as one of thousands of low level fact checker employees?
If I try to not be a blind ideologue over such a small thing as being a fact checker, wouldn’t I be better than median politics fact checkers who want to exert their bias as much as possible?
We don’t want political stuff in the fact checking. It’s far more bias to have fact checkers who are in line with the median citizen and put their political stances above fact checking. Aka doing their work.
Every one has biases. However not every one will consciously or otherwise, have their biases seep into determining what is misinformation or not and so on.
Edit: Even sadder is the parent is not down voted to greyness like the person you responded to. A sad take. Not only putting bias ahead of an attempt at “the truth”. But leaning into that. Which makes the thread make sense —- not even trying to act in good faith.
There is obvious censorship not due to shitstorms. dang censored plain links to scientific studies highlighting myocarditis side effects to covid-19 vaccines. Now those effects are accepted fact.