Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
How would you solve that problem?
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”
Dude, facts are facts or they are not. There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
this is mostly an american take, and most of the rest of the world tends to disagree with this “free speech absolutism”
it’s the slippery slope fallacy
That’s a solvable problem, not a reason to reject fact checking as a concept.
So if the US would make obligatory fact checking under a Trump administration. How would you solve that problem?
In the end it always boils down to the current administration getting to decide what the facts and what the disinformation is.
This is easily abusable and for instance Goerge Orwell predicted such problems with the “Ministry of Truth” in his book 1984.
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”