“...with no fact-checkers, the responsibility for discerning truth now falls squarely on those of us who engage with social media.”

SI Filings
Society & Culture
Discernment
Misinformation

“the issue of bias remains. This is not eradicated by removing fact-checkers; it merely shifts to the community. While this could lead to more diverse perspectives and meaningful discourse, it might equally amplify extreme viewpoints.” - Premier Christianity

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dgszweda
Mon, 01/13/25 3:27 pm

What is the difference, everyone complained on both sides of the fence about the bias in the fact checking.

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dcbii
Mon, 01/13/25 4:10 pm

>>What is the difference, everyone complained on both sides of the fence about the bias in the fact checking.<<

Yup. I, for one, am happy to see “fact” checking go in favor of community notes. I got rid of my FB account 4 years ago seeing the censorship that was going on. I got rid of Twitter at that time too, but have since reactivated that one given the current X platform’s seeming commitment to free speech. Personally, I think the only content that should be removed from a site claiming section 230 is content that is illegal (incitement, etc.). If they want to censor other legal material, I think their section 230 protection should be removed as they have become a publisher rather than a platform. As long as I can filter/block authors of content I think is indecent, etc., I’d rather handle it myself than trust a supposed independent fact checker to do it.

If I still had children at home, I’d probably use one of the Christian filtering programs/sites, as long as I had the ability to adjust the filters, since no one will filter exactly the same things.

Watching European leaders fret about about not being able to suppress disfavored speech (or even negating election results when “far right” parties win) in the name of “saving democracy,” I’m even happier that we have options to keep free speech alive.

I don’t personally think Meta/Zuckerberg has “gotten religion” on free speech. I think it’s more likely he wants to get along with current leaders and political realities. Still, I will applaud any move the media platforms make in the free speech direction. I haven’t yet decided whether to reactivate my FB or not. I will probably wait a little to see whether Meta actually follows through and how it works.

Dave Barnhart

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Bert Perry
Mon, 01/13/25 4:32 pm

As I've watched the course of the "fact-checkers", what I've seen far too often is that "fact-checkers" will ignore known data, "helpfully" change the question to what they think should have been answered (and then accuse the speaker of lying because he didn't answer the right question), quote obsolete data to fact-check current data, and the like.

More or less, the office of "fact-checker" seems to have been irresistible to those who wanted to put their finger on the scales of truth, and the classic method of fact-checking, to ask whether the source has accurately answered the question he seems to pose, seems to have been lost.

Put differently, I've got as much bias as anybody, but it is indeed possible for even me to address a question honestly. The press, with their biases, ought to give it a try.

Side note; the best indication that I've ever seen that someone is not being honest is their insistence that they're unbiased.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

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Joel Shaffer
Mon, 01/13/25 9:04 pm

Glad that Meta/Zuckerberg has changed their tune since the fact-checking with Facebook was quite ideologically progressive. I remember John Stossel's Climate Change video (where he even acknowledges some climate change) where he pulls no punches critiquing the climate alarmists. And his video was censored for spreading misinformation (even though it was their fact-checkers who were spreading misinformation about some of those whom they were censoring) which led to him (unsuccessfully) suing Meta for defamation.

Twtter/X's community notes is a better way to address misleading information, although it is tragic how Twitter/X is fertile ground for so much misinformation, slander, gossip, and defamation, especially by an army of anonymous accounts.

Due to so much misinformation through social media and even legacy media, I've learned that before I teach a workshop or several sessions on socio-cultural topics such as race, poverty, and justice, I spend an hour teaching critical thinking skills to counter the misinformation on race, poverty, and justice that so many social media influencers pass on as truth.