I'm a former journalist, and one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.
Obviously, if you disregard objective facts because they defy your assumptions or hurt your argument, you're deluding yourself.
But an argument that uses objectively true and verifiable facts may nevertheless be invalid (i.e. it's possible that the premises might be true but the conclusion false). Similarly, a news story might be entirely factual but still biased. And in software terms, your unit tests might be fine, but your integration tests still fail.
So here's what I tell people:
Fact checking is like spell check. You know what's great about spell check? It can tell me that I've misspeled two words in this sentance. But it will knot alert me too homophones. And even if my spell checker also checks grammar, I might construct a sentence that is entirely grammatical but lets the bathtub build my dark tonsils rapidly, and it will appear error-free.
Similarly, you can write an article in which all of the factual assertions are true but irrelevant to the point at hand. Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they're cherry-picked to support a particular bias. And some assertions are particularly hard to fact-check because even the means of verifying them is disputed.
So while fact checking can be useful, it can also be misused, and we need to keep in mind its limitations.
In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat's postage.
No it's not. Spell checking relies on very precise rules. Fact checking relies on assessing context and, more often than not, the speaker's intention.
For example, let's take the statement "There are 300 million people in the US". Is this false? Well, it depends where I'm going with it.
If I was only relying on the figure as an approximation, I can say something like "therefore deaths from terrorism only affect 0.0x%, which is not something we should worry a lot about". This is obviously a factually valid argument, even though you might disagree with the conclusion b/c you think other facts are more relevant etc.
On the other hand, my argument can also be "and there were 300 million in 2007, therefore the population has been stagnant and we need to do something about it". This is factually quite false, since the population has in fact increased by ~18M.
Now should the original statement "there are 300 million people in the US" be rated true or false? A hostile fact checker may rate the first instance false, since there are actually 318+ million. A friendly fact checker will rate the second instance true b/c I obviously meant the rate of growth was low by historical standards etc.
I think this all a little besides the point and a bit of a red herring. The analogy, which is quite apt in this case (you can have fact-checking and something that is still overall misleading), much like how a spell/grammar-checker can ensure you have correct spelling & grammar and still a flawed sentence.
Your comment seems to nitpick at the flaws in the analogy rather than the issue itself. No analogy is going to be perfect at describing something and will break down under enough scrutiny.
You can put spell checking into an algorithm. You can't reduce fact checking to an algorithm. How is this besides the point? The algorithm they have is "whatever websites X, Y and Z say".
He's not talking about the process of fact checking, like you are. OP was using the analogy to say fact checking is not enough.
Here it is slightly different: just because you spell check a sentence doesn't mean it is grammatically correct. Just like: just because you fact check a document doesn't mean it is without bias.
Remember, we're talking about Google introducing fact checking. In this context, "fact checking is not enough" is a very different position from "fact checking is subjective".
Fact checking isn't subjective, though. You either do fact-checking or you don't. If you do fact-checking, you're either checking if the statement is factually correct or not. There is no real in-between and no real "this is true because I think it is."
At least from a human perspective. You're right in raising the concern that from a machine perspective this is hard to achieve, but again that's a red herring to the OP.
At some point the machine fact-checking relies on data input by humans. Or does the machine interpret data directly from cameras on the street to determine, e.g. that suspect A shot victim B with weapon C? Does it interpret a historical textbook and assess the veracity of its sources and claims? Or does it build a time machine to go into the past and acquire raw data to verify claimed facts?
> At some point the machine fact-checking relies on data input by humans.
But so does nearly every ML model? In the case of a spell checker it is using corpora made by humans. If the majority of humans start spelling words differently, then facts about the correct spellings change with them.
> Or does the machine interpret data directly from cameras on the street to determine, e.g. that suspect A shot victim B with weapon C?
If the military gets their way this will happen sooner than later. It is not technically infeasible to do activity detection from drone footage.
> Does it interpret a historical textbook and assess the veracity of its sources and claims?
Yes. Just like a journalist would when fact checking an article about WWII.
> Or does it build a time machine to go into the past and acquire raw data to verify claimed facts?
Raw data is both an oxymoron and a bad idea. Data is brought into existence by human-made measuring devices.
It is color? Or colour? Should my English dictionary include "haiku"? What about "teriyaki"? "Shamisen"? Is it "Internet" or "internet"?
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Everything has some wiggle room, but both fact checking and spell checking rely on precise rules to a great exent. You just have to recognize when something is really an opinion. Many things on Politifact, etc. are inferences and conclusions composed of facts, but not facts themselves.
"Aaron Burr was vice-president of the US in 1803." Fact.
"The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion." Fact.
"It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California." Falsehood.
"The US is in an economic depression." Too vague, can't be fact checked.
"The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000." Fact.
Dude. We're trying to talk about things in an absolutely neutral and objective way and you come up with that sentence? How can anyone ever prove what definition is "always used"???
The "unemployment rate" is a specific number produced by the government. Whether it's useful or accurate compared to other numbers (e.g. labor participation rate) is another matter.
Take the definition that is given by the relevant government agency, which is the BLS's U-3 measure.
(Now you might argue that U-6 is also a valid measure etc etc, but only a Breitbart writer or somebody willfully ignorant would confound unemployment with labour force participation.)
It's completely irrational to exclude "the percentage of people who aren't employed" from the set of possible definitions of "unemployment." Each of the various measures of unemployment captures meaningful information about the economy.
Labor force participation rate lets you look at important trends in the economy. For example, labor force participation went way up when barriers to women entering the work place were removed. Women didn't want to all be stay-at-home moms, but the economy didn't offer them any other opportunities. These days, drastically more of the population is going to post-secondary education, which tends to drive down the labor force participation rate. But that's really a paradoxical phenomenon when you think about it, because at the same time, the costs of such education are skyrocketing. Why do people eat the cost (including the opportunity cost) of going to college? Is it because of the love of learning? No, it's because the economy doesn't offer them alternatives.
Of course you can't count every student or retiree or stay at home mom as unemployed. Many don't want to be working. But it's equally irrational to assume (as the BLS does), that none of them want to be working.
That last one about unemployment isn't from the realm of checkable facts because the data are vast enough to be difficult to verify, and because the definition of unemployment isn't settled or universally agreed. And you can't rely on government figures to overcome the first problem, because of the second. ("Official" definitions of unemployment are swayed by political motivations and are known to under-report certain kinds of unemployment that legitimately should be counted.)
This is pretty naive. Do you think Google is now cross-checking news stories with the encyclopedia entries on vice presidents and nuclear fusion? Please go to factcheck.org, which is what they'll actually use. They're dealing with stuff that's almost exclusively like your item #4, and they'll definitely give it ratings. #3 and #5 are also much more open to argument than you want to admit here.
Wikipedia isn't a source of facts, but if you read your own link, you will learn that open carry used to be permitted, but since 2012 open carry of all firearms, loaded or unloaded, is prohibited.
"No license or permit is required to openly carry a loaded firearm in unincorporated areas where discharge is not prohibited by local ordinance."
...Maybe every county has adopted local ordinances prohibiting open carry in unincorporated areas?
"Prior to January 1, 2012, it was legal to openly carry an unloaded handgun in public. In October 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that modifies the law on openly carrying an unloaded firearm to match the restrictions for openly carrying a loaded weapon.[63] Legislation was later signed by Governor Brown to expand these restrictions to long guns and shotguns, except while hunting."
This seems to be making the law for unloaded carry the same for loaded carry, and doesn't address the legality of loaded carry.
> "It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California." Falsehood.
Except that it is true. Well, "licensed gun owner" isn't actually a thing at all (licenses aren't needed to own guns), but the natural interpretation of it as "gun owner who also has an appropriate license" makes the statement true, it's just that there are only limited places in California where you can be appropriately licensed for open carry of handguns (counties with a population under 200,000.)
"licensed gun owner to open-carry in California", as I read it, is "a gun owner licensed to open-carry in California".
Regardless, you can't get a license to open carry in California, as no such license exists, and open carry is illegal in California under California Penal Code Section 26350[1]. So, you may be able to legally carry a firearm in California, but unless you're a law enforcement, you may not carry openly. This has been adjudicated in court in Peruta v. San Diego[2], and the courts found that an outright ban on open carry for the citizenry comported with the second amendment.
So, as a private citizen, you might be able to carry a firearm, but you would have to do so in a concealed fashion, and only after being licensed to do so. In order to obtain a license, you have to apply with your county sheriff, they have to evaluate whether you are of good moral character, whether you have a legitimate reason for carrying a firearm, that you have completed 16+ hours of training, and that you are a resident of their county. Noting that 'self defense' is not a valid reason for issuance, most applications are denied, though that undoubtedly varies from county to county.
A fantastic rebuttal, and you're probably correct. I don't know what it means in the wake of Peruta, but your probably correct for firearms (like rifles, shotguns) that aren't capable of being concealed.
Note though that the parent refers specifically to handguns. Regardless, thanks for the addition/correction.
>Note though that the parent refers specifically to handguns.
Also there are limitations on the locations where open-carry of unloaded handguns aren't allowed. Specifically, [1] states those locations as:
(A) A public place or public street in an incorporated city or city and county.
(B) A public street in a prohibited area of an unincorporated area of a county or city and county.
(C) A public place in a prohibited area of a county or city and county.
...it would seem like you could open carry unloaded handguns in unincorporated counties where it isn't specifically prohibited. Are their any of those places in California? National Forest areas would be one area I'd first look at. A google search comes up with unincorporated areas:
> Regardless, you can't get a license to open carry in California, as no such license exists
Open carry licenses do exist, and you can get them, from the Sheriff of a County with population under 200,000; see Penal Code section 26150(b)(2).
> and open carry is illegal in California under California Penal Code Section 26350
26350 applies to unloaded firearms, and there are a whole slew of exceptions to it in sections 26361-26391, including, most critically, an exception for anyone permitted to openly carry a loaded firearm on the same circumstances (Section 26362) Which includes, naturally, people with open carry permits as described above. (see Section 26010)
Rather than linking each individual section mentioned above, I'll just link the Table of Contents for Division 5 of Title 4 of Part 6 the Penal Code, which covers all of them.
>Open carry licenses do exist, and you can get them, from the Sheriff of a County with population under 200,000;
It looks like the 30 California counties with population of less than 200,000 have a combined land area of 73,063 square miles, while the 27 counties with populations over 200,000 have a combined land area of 83,022 square miles. So about 47% of the state is composed of counties with a population less than 200,000.
There's either an error in one of the counts or a county left out somewhere in there, because California has 58, not 57, counties, but it probably doesn't change the percentage of land area much either way.
Good catch. I apparently was off by one in counting the over 200,000 population counties, but there are actually 28 counties in my spreadsheet, so the area should be correct (but someone might want to double check anyway).
The alternative explanation is that God created stars. And that He did it such that they seem to create heavier elements through fusion. But that's just an illusion. Because, you know, the Universe is only 5000 years old.
And that alternative will pass fact checking, unless they exclude literal readings of the Bible.
But as others have pointed out, choosing accepted fact checkers is subjective and contentious. Do we then need fact checkers about fact checkers?
Many claims have moved from conspiracy theory to fact in recent decades. Now there's a class-action case about CIA experiments with LSD, and the principal investigator will testify. Before Snowden's leaks, how many people thought that the NSA was intercepting so much stuff? Consider allegations about using poor people to study effects of terminal syphilis, measure Pu excretion rates for body-burden calculations, or look at symptoms of lethal full-body irradiation. Which of those (if any) are unconfirmed conspiracy theories?
Because some people believe them to be the ground truth? Any "fact" that contradicts their understanding of their favourite religious passage is obviously fake news. Dinosaurs? Fake. Evolution? Blasphemy. Round Earth? Idiocy...
Curious you drop the adjective "overwhelming" in your quote and confuse scientific theory with hypothesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
"In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support ("verify") or empirically contradict ("falsify") it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which is better characterized by the word 'hypothesis')."
Seems like a fair point to me. If science is really about reproducibility, then this is a fair question. How can we say with absolute certainty until we run a falsifiable experiment?
Note that I'm not disputing our understanding of how stars work. The point is whether our understanding is based on reproducibility.
Spell checking is distance between a word and the closest word in a set. But it's not like the set of allowable spellings for words is well-defined. You generally choose a dictionary (or /usr/dict/words) and call that canonical-enough. Which dictionary you use, and whether your spelling is actually a better choice for your context than what the dictionary says aren't generally considered. Even though they do fuzz the idea of what's properly spelled.
EDIT: I'm not trolling or trying to start a flame war on spellers. Just point out that almost every part of human life has some subjectivity to it.
Note that for many languages there is an institution (often governmental) that decides what the grammar should be like, and which constructions are allowed. That English has many different language authorities, each with their own opinion is more of an anomaly.
I cringe to hear "fact checking" used in reference to news articles. A "fact" is something that can be falsified with the evidence at hand. It's a fact that the temperature of this liquid is 72 degrees--you can measure it.
Almost all of what news articles deal with, however, are inferences drawn from evidence, where the evidence is subject to dispute and many different inferences can be drawn from the same evidence. For example, take PolitiFact's analysis of Trump's assertion: "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East."[1] To me that's not a "fact" that can be "checked." That's an assertion which could mean many different things. What qualifies as a "system" or "vet[ing]?" Is there an implicit assumption about who's system we're talking about? What is the definition of "refugee?"
Even if we decide that under all reasonable assumptions, that statement is still false, what even is the significance of it in context? Here, PolitiFact omits most of the quote: "Altogether, under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children." Are we talking about the system that exists now, or the system Clinton proposed? Are we talking just about vetting, or a system that vets them and prevents future radicalization?
Note the litany of assumptions in PolitiFact's analysis: 1) Clinton's proposal is the same as the status quo; 2) That we're just talking about vetting, not also future radicalization; 3) that "refugee" refers to the formal UN refugee status; 4) that various measures qualify as "vetting," etc. All of these assumptions may be perfectly reasonable, but when you pile them on, you've got a counter-argument, i.e. a proposal to draw a different inference, posing as a fact-check.
As a lawyer, I spend much of my life taking purported "facts" and asking these questions. Because between the complexity of human interactions, the need to make inferences from incomplete evidence, and the ambiguities inherent in human language, it's rarely clear what someone even meant to say much less whether that assertion was true or false.
A very significant number of "fact checks" on sites like Politifact are in fact opinion articles masquerading as fact checks, with some links to sources added if we're lucky. Because a lot of people gave up on reading anything titled "opinion" since they already know what the opinion would be by just checking the name of the site. If you read lefty site, you know what they'd say on Trump or economy or immigration or whatever. Same on righty site. But people still may read something called "fact check" hoping to find anything other than propaganda. Until that well gets poisoned too.
> "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East."[1] To me that's not a "fact" that can be "checked." That's an assertion which could mean many different things. What qualifies as a "system" or "vet[ing]?" Is there an implicit assumption about who's system we're talking about? What is the definition of "refugee?"
Come on, under literally any reasonable interpretation of those words Trump's claim is simply false. That's a perfectly valid fact check, which you could only dispute if you aim to change the English language.
I think Trump's statement is wrong under many reasonable interpretations. But literally false under "any reasonable interpretation" is in fact the criminal standard for falsity of statements. How do I feel about my chances of acquittal in this case? Pretty damn good!
First, he never said "There is 'no system to vet' refugees from the Middle East." That's your paraphrasing of what he said. Your charging him for saying something false when more than half the words in the allegedly false statement are your own.
What he actually said was:
"Altogether, under the Clinton plan, you'd be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children."
And it was in response to Clinton saying:
"Look, we’re facing the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II, and I think the United States has to do more, and I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000 and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in."
Second, he meant a "system" that both "vet[s] them" and "prevent[s] the radicalization of their children." The system described in PolitiFact's article only does the former, not the latter.
Third, "vetting" can mean lots of different things. When we "vet" Supreme Court justices, for example, we're not just checking to see if they have criminal records or are on terrorist watch lists. We're trying to see if they harbor secret desires to overturn Roe v. Wade at the first opportunity. Trump's reference to future radicalization confirms he's contemplating "vetting" to include digging into peoples' ideologies and motivations. Nothing in the process described in the PolitiFact piece gets into that.
Fourth, it makes total sense for Trump to have meant "vetting" to encompass more than just the checks performed today. He was responding to Clinton, who said that we would have to "begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in[.]" The obvious implication is that such "vetting" is not happening today.
Finally, by "no system," he meant "no effective system" or "no good system." It's common for people speaking extemporaneously to say the former when they mean the latter. Running checks on Syrians in U.S. databases isn't going to tell us much about what kind of people we're dealing with. Lots of very bad people won't be bad enough to show up on a foreign country's databases.
> Second, he meant a "system" that both "vet[s] them" and "prevent[s] the radicalization of their children."
Sorry, not a reasonable interpretation. No single system can both vet current candidates and prevent the radicalization of progeny that may not yet even be born. No single system can even prevent the radicalization of existing progeny and simultaneously vet the parents. The very idea is simply absurd, ergo, not reasonable.
> Trump's reference to future radicalization confirms he's contemplating "vetting" to include digging into peoples' ideologies and motivations.
The fact that he stipulated radicalization of progeny as a separate clause requiring a second system does not support this charitable interpretation.
> Fourth, it makes total sense for Trump to have meant "vetting" to encompass more than just the checks performed today. He was responding to Clinton, who said that we would have to "begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in[.]" The obvious implication is that such "vetting" is not happening today.
This merely implies that they were both wrong in stating that no vetting exists. Agreeing with Clinton does not somehow entail Trump was correct.
> Finally, by "no system," he meant "no effective system" or "no good system." It's common for people speaking extemporaneously to say the former when they mean the latter.
So then you agree that what Trump said was literally false, even if some would like us to be more charitable in interpreting his words. If this were an isolated incident, that may even be a reasonable expectation.
But I can cite a plethora of evidence of Trump constantly making such literally false claims, with others executing ever more elaborate gymnastics to interpret him charitably. This past and continuing behaviour suggests your charitable interpretation does not reasonably reflect Trump's actual meaning.
> Sorry, not a reasonable interpretation. No single system can both vet current candidates and prevent the radicalization of progeny that may not yet even be born. No single system can even prevent the radicalization of existing progeny and simultaneously vet the parents. The very idea is simply absurd, ergo, not reasonable.
Depends on what "prevent means." "Only you can prevent forest fires." Does that mean you can keep every forest fire from happening? Of course not. It means you can take measures directed at trying to reduce the number of forest fires. You can certainly take measures directed at trying to reduce radicalization (e.g. through ongoing contact).
> The fact that he stipulated radicalization of progeny as a separate clause requiring a second system does not support this charitable interpretation.
Grammatically, the function of preventing radicalization is ascribed to the "system" in the previous clause.
> This merely implies that they were both wrong in stating that no vetting exists. Agreeing with Clinton does not somehow entail Trump was correct.
Or it means that both are using the word "vetting" to mean something more than the process that exists now. That's a basic feature of human discussion: terms take on a meaning in context.
> So then you agree that what Trump said was literally false, even if some would like us to be more charitable in interpreting his words. If this were an isolated incident, that may even be a reasonable expectation.
You're the one who proposed the standard, which is literal falsity under any reasonable interpretation (which happens to be the criminal standard). In the context of an extemporaneous, spoken statement, "no good system" can be a reasonable interpretation of "no system." People regularly omit qualifiers when speaking. E.g. "nobody thinks that ketchup ice cream tastes good" or "everybody in the office hates the new guy."
> But I can cite a plethora of evidence of Trump constantly making such literally false claims, with others executing ever more elaborate gymnastics to interpret him charitably. This past and continuing behaviour suggests your charitable interpretation does not reasonably reflect Trump's actual meaning.
The purpose of this exercise is not to discern Trump's "actual meaning." (The legal standard for falsity of statements is objective, not subjective.) You can write a very good analysis of what Trump actually means and why you think he's wrong. But you'd call that "political analysis" not "fact checking." If you need to make assumptions and exclude charitable interpretations to falsify something, it's not a fact and the exercise you're engaged in cannot be called fact-checking.
> Depends on what "prevent means." "Only you can prevent forest fires." Does that mean you can keep every forest fire from happening? Of course not. It means you can take measures directed at trying to reduce the number of forest fires. You can certainly take measures directed at trying to reduce radicalization (e.g. through ongoing contact).
My point did not depend upon the interpretation of "prevent", it depended on the absurdity of a single system covering both prevention and vetting. It's simply not logically possible. So if we're being charitable to Trump, we must grant him logical consistency no?
> Grammatically, the function of preventing radicalization is ascribed to the "system" in the previous clause.
Except this is clearly logically impossible, therefore there must be two systems as previously mentioned, therefore Trump's disjunction was either not referring to the same system, or he's so misinformed that we can't take anything he says to be true. Either way, there's no reason to interpret this more charitably.
> Or it means that both are using the word "vetting" to mean something more than the process that exists now. That's a basic feature of human discussion: terms take on a meaning in context.
So without further clarification, which is also required in basic human discussion, their statements are de facto false given the commonly understood meaning of the terms employed.
> You're the one who proposed the standard, which is literal falsity under any reasonable interpretation (which happens to be the criminal standard). In the context of an extemporaneous, spoken statement, "no good system" can be a reasonable interpretation of "no system." People regularly omit qualifiers when speaking. E.g. "nobody thinks that ketchup ice cream tastes good" or "everybody in the office hates the new guy."
Even if I were to grant that point, you now have to establish that "no good system" exists for Trump's statement to possibly be true. What expert witness will you cite to assert that no such "good vetting system" exists? Because no informed article I've read suggests that the existing vetting process is so deficient. In any case, this is quite clearly a factual question with a factual answer.
> Even if I were to grant that point, you now have to establish that "no good system" exists for Trump's statement to possibly be true. What expert witness will you cite to assert that no such "good vetting system" exists? Because no informed article I've read suggests that the existing vetting process is so deficient. In any case, this is quite clearly a factual question with a factual answer.
You still don't seem to understand anything he's been trying to teach you. You're still adding arbitrary qualifiers: "informed article", "expert witness". Whether an article is "informed" is wildly subjective, and whether a witness is an "expert" (which is orthogonal to the question of whether his testimony is reliable) is also wildly subjective.
You are holding onto your bias like a rock in a storm. What you don't realize is that the rock is not attached to the seafloor, and it's pulling you down.
I cringe to hear "fact checking" used in reference to news articles. A "fact" is something that can be falsified with the evidence at hand. It's a fact that the temperature of this liquid is 72 degrees--you can measure it.
Then a different person comes along at noon, and the temperature is now 76 degrees. The 2nd person then starts a social media campaign against the 1st -- and wins because they had pictures and more followers.
You are feeding into what he is saying about there being a lot of context that gets ignored in the name of fact checking. In this case the implicit qualifier is that the liquid is RIGHT NOW 72 degrees. He clearly isn't stating that the liquid will always be that temperature. Of course if you come along later there can be a different environment.
You are feeding into what he is saying about there being a lot of context that gets ignored in the name of fact checking.
You have to understand that clunky little human minds can be easily swayed. The truth is absolute, but the human mind's comprehension of it is not.
In this context, the "dirty trick" is obvious to anyone who knows that coffee and bathwater change temps over time, and that the pool is warmer at noon. What about contexts in which specialized knowledge is necessary to fully understand what is going on? There is a reason why there is a 5th amendment.
Reality is logical and obeys the laws of physics. The social reality that exists across many people's minds is contradictory and treacherous. (If you are affluent enough and have never had extensive contact with the judicial system, it's hard to know this.)
Exactly right IMO. we are entering very dangerous legal grounds and belief systems with this rubber stamping of 'verified' information. Jared Cohen, former head of Google Ideas and now president of Alphabet has a pretty spooky background as Julian Assange will attest to...
The journalistic norm for years has been, as long as you don't lie, no one can prove you were being dishonest, so you get to keep your credibility. So, what happened instead is they used other tactics to insinuate, without stating. My favorite version of this is to leave out the facts and just get quotes. This is the "'Administration is lying about facts', congressman says", kind of headline. It allows the reporter to insinuate that something is true by getting a quote from someone, without having to put their name on the lie. No where in the article will there be any attempt to answer the question of whether it's true or not.
Yeah, citing someone is a cheap hack to put propaganda into an article. Nothing really is going to change much for an average reader, except for who is going to influence them and how much.
The whole fact checking thing is a bit subtle. They are essentially excluding all anti-western organisations from fact-checkers, weakening foreign anti-western influence over readers. Manufacturing consent is also going to get easier.
The other cheap trick is to write a news article and turn it into an editorial by finding random people who agree with the story writer's position and quoting them. This happens all the time with tv news where they interview the random guy on the street.They probably interviewed 20 people and only kept the opinion of the one person they agreed with.
This is too cynical. Citing your source is good practice and people should do it more (see Wikipedia for example). If you learned something by reading it on the Internet and post a link, at least then I know where you got it from, and there's less chance the message got garbled due to paraphrasing.
That's all true. "Fake news" became a term recently due to a situation requiring far less nuance to understand and combat.
Stories were intentionally being made up from scratch and targeted to manipulate certain people for a specific tangible effect. And it worked. We have to stop the bleeding and address this very low-hanging fruit. And that much is not a difficult problem to solve, the Googles and Facebooks are the right places to solve it to provide the greatest visibility. We're not going to make the whole population critical thinkers in the short term.
The veracity of news or information in general is complex like you say and not something Google or Facebook should try to solve.
That original, pure form of "fake news" held onto the label for about 24 hours before the definition started expanding to include all this true-but-deceptive stuff we're talking about.
Nobody's defending "true" fake news like that, but I think that kind of fake news is actually a very small part of the picture.
The much bigger problem is the subtler dishonesties we're discussing here. Because they're more widespread, harder to catch, come from sources that are regarded as reputable, and thus ensnare smarter people in their falsehoods.
Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?
The subtle dishonesties you speak of have existed as long as rhetoric. The true fake news is new, and a product of the internet.
Solving the first one is, in my opinion, pretty much impossible on a large scale—it requires critical reading, original research and a great deal of trust in fact sourcing.
Solving the second one is Google's goal here, and it's an important one. The Comet Pizza incident [1] was emblematic of how blatantly fake news can affect real people. Moreover fake news is engaging: it legitimately competes with real news [2]. So yeah, I think the sub-problem is large and efforts to solve it are a big deal.
You are assuming everybody who shared those memes actually believes they are factually true, as opposed to just feeling good trash-talking somebody the (re-)poster hates.
If someone says they believe a story and spreads the story as factual news to their friends, it doesn't really matter whether they actually believed it in the first place.
Eventually the story spreads to people who actually believe it and will take action based on it.
A large percentage of my family truly believes Bernie Sanders drives a $100k sports car because they read it on Facebook. They believe that Obama's mother-in-law is getting a pension for acting as the White House babysitter. Some of them even believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya.
They believe these things because of they read fake news stories on Facebook.
It's self reinforcing. They vaguely dislike someone; they read a fake negative story on facebook about the person; they believe it because they already dislike them; they dislike the person more because of the fake news story; they read more outrageous fake news; they believe it because it fits their now more biased opinion of the person.
It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.
How do you know they "spread it as factual news"? As far as I know, Facebook doesn't have separate setting for "spreading as factual news" vs "spreading as funny meme trash-talking that idiot I hate". It looks exactly the same.
> It's keeps going like this until they hate the person and will believe almost anything negative you say about them.
Like that "Trump is afraid of stairs" story that CNN featured recently? ;)
It's usually pretty easy to tell the difference if you're a human and not a computer program.
If I say "smsm42's mom is fat", or "smsm42 is an idiot" that's trash talking.
If I say "smsm42 defrauded the US government by awarding his mother-in-law a pension for watching his kids", or "smsm42 passed a law that give Muslims free health insurance because their religion prevents them from paying for it", or "smsm42 wasn't born in the country he says he was born in and I have proof that his birth certificate is fake"--that's fake news.
Nope. These are just different kinds of trash-talking for different audience. Somebody thinks an ultimate shame is to have a fat mom, and somebody thinks it's being corrupt or being a fraud or being of wrong religion. Insults should match the audience, otherwise it doesn't work - in a culture where being fat is considered a sign of prosperity, the insult should be "yo momma is so thin".
There is a difference between an insult that is clearly meant to be farcical (or an opinion/value judgment like "you're an idiot"), and damaging false statements.
In fact courts adjudicate the difference pretty much anytime someone brings a defamation suit. If you are unable to tell the difference, you can conduct this (potentially costly) experiment to see that other humans can usually tell the difference.
1. Find a civil litigation lawyer in your city. Let's call her Alice A. Attorney.
2. Take out an add in your local newspaper that says "Alice A. Attorney's mama is so fat that she gave Dracula diabetes."
3. Take out another add the next week that says "Alice A. Attorney is not a US citizen so her license to practice law is invalid. In addition she is untrustworthy because she embezzled money from her previous employer."
4. Wait and see which ad you're eventually forced to pay damages because of.
> There is a difference between an insult that is clearly meant to be farcical (or an opinion/value judgment like "you're an idiot"), and damaging false statements.
Not as much as you'd like it to be. In court, surely, maybe, though in court to get anything actionable you have to prove actual malice, which is not easy, and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.
If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.
But that's what we're talking in courtroom. A place specifically designed to have procedures to rule between true and false. Most people outside of the courtroom do not behave like this. They won't apply "lack of reasonable doubt" or "preponderance of evidence" if they see an article trashing Trump (or Hillary, if you swing that way) on the internet. They won't research and double-triple-check the sources and quotes. They'd just share it because it feels good.
>though in court to get anything actionable you have to prove actual malice, which is not easy,
Actual malice is only required if it's a public figure being defamed.
>and very very hard if one talks about a public figure.
It's not any harder to prove actual malice when the person being defamed is a public figure than if the person being defamed is not a public figure. It's just only required if the person being defamed is a public figure.
>If you are just shooting breeze on the internet, it would be super-hard to prove any malicious intent.
I think you clearly missed the point of my previous post. It wasn't to try to prove to you that people spreading fake news are committing actionable defamation.
The point is that reasonable people are capable of distinguishing between fake news stories and farcical insults.
Saying that Obama is an idiot is an insult. Saying that Obama was born in Kenya because you have investigators on the ground in Hawaii who found evidence that his birth certificate is a fraud is almost definitely defamation (even though it would be difficult to prove that you acted with malice).
A large percentage of Trump supporters literally believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. They literally believe that he ordered Air Force One to pick up his dog. They literally believe that his mother-in-law gets a lifetime pension.
Sure it's possible that none of them actually believe these things in their heart of hearts, but if you ask them, they'll tell you they do. To an external observer they appear in every way to literally believe these things--if there is no externally detectable difference, is there a difference.
Since you're responding to a thread about my specific example...
I'm also willing to donate $100 to a charity of your choice if you can find evidence that a significant portion, (let's say more than 25%) of fake news being shared on Facebook is just people doing it to say "look how fake this is."
What you are asking is impossible to my knowledge. I don't know of any tracking for why people share or the political affiliation of those that shared it.
This also means you argument is purely conjecture too.
Of course my argument is conjecture. I based it solely on my sample size of a few hundred Facebook friends--clearly stated.
Absent other evidence to the contrary, that is enough to convince me that people sharing fake news mostly believe it.
If you have some other evidence to present--please go ahead. Do the majority of your over 45, conservative Facebook friends and family regularly share fake news just to point out that it's fake?
> The much bigger problem is the subtler dishonesties
Maybe it's a bigger problem, but you're not going to solve dishonesty and you're not going to solve all the cognitive bias and intellectual unsophistication that lets it work. The best you can do is nudge society in a good direction that pays off maybe a generation down the road. Let's focus on stopping our elections from being manipulated since that's a significant easy win in the short term.
> Honest question - has there been any research on how much reach and effect "true" fake news actually has? How big is that particular sub-problem, in reality?
It seems like there was a study from Stanford, regarding effect on the latest USA ellection:
> Gentzkow and Allcott find that the most widely circulated hoaxes were seen by only a small fraction of Americans. And only about half of those who saw a false news story believed it.
This is a good one, also probably because by "lifespan" it means life expectancy at birth, as many "statistics" do, which has pretty much nothing to do with anything that happens to people after 15 or so.
It reminds me Adam Gopnik's idea of a "theory checker"
> [You would] get exactly the same incomprehension and suspicion if you told American intellectuals and politicians, post-interview, that a theory checker would be calling them. "It's been a pleasure speaking to you," you'd say to Al Gore or Mayor Giuliani. "And I'm going to write this up; probably in a couple of weeks a theory checker will be in touch with you."
> Alarmed, suspicious: "A what?"
> "You know, a theory checker. Just someone to make sure that all your premises agree with your conclusions, that there aren't any obvious errors of logic in your argument, that all your allusions flow together in a coherent stream -- that kind of thing."
I used to be one of those critical types. I have learned the errors of my ways and learned to ignore the news and the facts. The facts are that we don't control much in our lives, and the manufactured news is used to manufactured consent. Give your consent freely and you won't have to worry about a thing. It's already all decided for you anyway. They just want you to believe that you have made a choice. Instead of that game, which is emotionally exhausting, it's acceptable to me to instead simply give consent for whatever, it's all good. Nice writing style by the way, you get your point across very well.
I sort-of feel this way. Not enough to give up my voice (vote), but to a degree I think it doesn't matter if I'm worried about politics/news/Tomahawk missiles, or who I vote for, or whatever.
I "fixed" it by moving to a remote location where, at least, things affect me less. Our county is poor, not much money to mishandle. Our road isn't paved, no potholes to fix and no expectation to have a perfect gravel road. No building permits. Cheap property tax. Neighbors don't visit, no traffic driving by.
I go out and vote and then try to avoid political debate, news, etc. I'm not exactly burying my head in the sand, but it's sort-of close.
And then I'm building up my property (a homestead of sorts) and self-reliance.
I don't have any romantic ideas that I'm going to shut myself off from the world and do it all myself, but I do have the idea that I can limit my exposure to a large degree.
The problem is that local politics don't really make the differences that people care most deeply about.
Maybe that should be different. This is why I'd like to see a more federalist approach. Where really passionate issues could be decided as locally as possible without everything having to be handled by the feds. That's how America was supposed to work, at least. A federation of states, not a country with administrative divisions.
You're right, and it's possible that fighting incorrect facts might be a losing fight. A news article can have many correct facts, it only needs one lie that fell through the cracks in order to bias the readers.
Talk to anyone from a country with a corrupt government. They often know at a very deep level exactly what's going on, since they were born in an environment where things only make sense if you are skeptical and look at the motivations behind a politicians actions.
> Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they're cherry-picked to support a particular bias.
IMO that is the single biggest issue with most of the stuff that I see out there. It's not about what you include but what you leave out. A reader can scrutinize what you put in but only somebody with existing knowledge of the subject will know what you're leaving out.
>In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat's postage.
ToMuchWork,DidNotThink;
I think, having a chain of trusted people, who i know too thin, vouching for a articles truth, would be nearly as good?
> one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.
Sure, (subject to the limitations of "true/false" in context as many others have posted). (Warning: All of the below is US-based, because I know squat about politics elsewhere)
But I feel like the major problem is a total lack of critical thinking from readers. Confirmation bias is real, but very few are doing anything to try and compensate for it. So while I'd love to teach people the nuances of fact-checking, I'd first start by having them question what they read at ALL.
Gun Debate: Liberals think more guns = more gun deaths because there are too many trigger happy macho gun nuts. Conservatives think Sweden is a hellhole full of grenade throwing terrorists and rapists because guns don't keep them in check. Almost no one even TRIES to validate facts. If they did, context would become (very!) important...but they haven't gotten that far.
Terrorism: Liberals think Conservative policies spread fear and hate that increases terrorism. Conservatives think Liberals turn a blind eye to the problems "outsiders" are bringing in.
Immigration: Liberals think immigrants are good for the economy, and regardless people deserve a chance. Conservatives think immigrants are bad for the economy and that people deserve a chance _if_ they follow the rules.
You can even get to more basic, easy questions:
Build a wall: Liberals think it's an ineffective waste of money. Conservatives think it will reduce economy-draining illegal immigration and drug traffic.
Cut Taxes: Liberals think the rich have benefited more from the society and should pay back more. Conservatives think that the rich have earned their money, and that cutting taxes on the rich will increase growth which will actually raise govt income.
Climate Change: Liberals think it's human-caused and likely devastating to humans. Conservatives think it's highly disputed by scientists, and potentially good even if true.
Filibuster: Liberals think the Republicans have been so obstructionist and extreme, staring with Clinton and accelerating in the Obama years, that we've gotten where we are. Conservatives think Democrats have been obstructionist starting in the Bush years and were the first to go nuclear.
Voter Fraud: Liberals think it's rare, tiny, and efforts to combat it are just window dressing over minority voter-suppression. Conservatives think it's real, with large groups being bussed in to commit fraud in multiple places.
Benghazi: Many investigations. No charges. Yet most people on both sides don't actually KNOW that notable investigation has happened, so their opinions on what has/hasn't been investigated aren't based on reality.
It is completely true that with the above issues there is a lot of nuance, and fact-checkers like Politifact should but can't completely handle the nuance of context. But the average person doesn't consider that their "facts" can be biased, don't even bother to check fact-checkers, and usually don't even understand the position of the other side.
When people consider that a statement from either side may be wholely made up, or just misleading, then I'll worry about how we as a society hone their skills to determine that. But first we need to get them to even consider it.
The problems aren't facts. The problems are what completely distorted pictures of reality you can implicitly paint with completely solid and true facts.
If 45 states that "the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo." that's absolutely and objectively true - except that Obama inherited the financial meltdown of the Bush era and Trump years of hard financial consolidation (while any legislation has a lag of at least a year to trickle down into any kind of reporting at government scale).
Fact-checking won't change a thing about spin-doctoring. At least not in the positive sense.
One great example of this from the New York Times:
'Last year, 35% of colleges saw international student numbers go up, 26% saw no change, and 39% saw them go down. New York Times publishes this with the headline “Amid Trump Effect Fear, 40% of Colleges See Dip in Foreign Applicants”.'
Source: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/03/one...
This. I see far more fake headlines than fake news. Sure some are just pure click-bait, but often times the headline takes a far more biased angle than the actual text of the story. Combine that with the frequency with which people (re)share without taking time to RTFA and you have plenty of non-fake news distorting peoples view of the reality.
> Fact-checking won't change a thing about spin-doctoring.
That's like saying padlocks won't change a thing about burglaries.
Of course padlocks cannot prevent burglaries 100%. But the salient point here is to make the burglary harder, to raise the entry level to where the frequency of the undesirable event decreases markedly. And of course you should not rely exclusively on padlocks - you also need cops, alarm systems, etc.
Same with fact checking. It's become very trivial to spew bullshit on the Internet, it's as easy as email spam in the past decade. We need to make it more expensive to conduct such activities, ideally orders of magnitude more expensive.
True facts can be used to make invalid arguments. But many pundits are also basing valid arguments on incorrect facts. Both of these are problems. It's not an either or situation.
Well, it would not eliminate spin, of course. It may make spinsters limit themselves to spinning true facts - as opposed to spinning invented ones. "Fact checking" has inherent limits - and one must recognize them and not turn fact checking into opinion. But, it serves it purpose. It's not a magic formula to win every argument - it's just a way to keep arguments from turning completely insane.
> The problems aren't facts. The problems are what completely distorted pictures of reality you can implicitly paint with completely solid and true facts.
I think this has huge potential for abuse. Let's say politifact or snopes or both happen to be biased. Let's say they both lean left or both lean right. Now an entire side of the aisle will always be presented by Google as false. I know that's how most people perceive it anyway, but how's it going to look for Google when they're taking a side? Also, I have to wonder whether this will flag things as false until one of those other sites confirms it, or does it default to neutral?
These are objective fact checks, aren't they? It's harder to quietly include bias than in say, a newspaper or cable news.
If one/both of them starts getting power-mad with their influence, they can get booted off the list, and replaced, or have others come in next to them.
If two of them say "This is true", and a third says "This is false", then that third one, if it can present good data for it's POV, can quickly become more trusted.
Not only was the number that Sanders quoted significantly lower, but his campaign provided Politifact with the study that they referenced while Trump's campaign did not respond.
The campaign providing them with a study has no effect on how true the statement is, which, as a fact checking organization, was their job to discover. This is surely evidence of, if not bias, gross incompetence.
1. 51% and 59% aren't "similar" on such a large scale.
2. The vagueness of Trump's statement allows for far more misinterpretation, which it is his responsibility to avoid in order to be factual. Sanders mentions a specific age range of 17 to 20, which the study that his campaign later referenced was looking at.
If you read the two pages, it is pretty bad. The fact checkers point out the same BLS numbers for each, but then go on to expand into areas Sanders was actually less clear on. They gave him a huge benefit of the doubt to using the think tank numbers, but then they don't apply those same numbers to Trump.
> They gave him a huge benefit of the doubt to using the think tank numbers
It's not "benefit of the doubt" when you contact someone and ask for the basis of their claim and they provide it, and it matches the claim numerically quite specifically but the terminology used is still misleading and so you dock for that.
> but then they don't apply those same numbers to Trump.
Trump's camp didn't say that they were referring to those numbers, and their claim doesn't match those numbers. The fact checkers actually go out of their way to find another labor statistic that approximately matches Trump's numbers (but which is not the unemployment rate), which seems to be the entire basis for rating the claim only Mostly False false rather than simply False, which is an example of benefit of the doubt.
> It's not "benefit of the doubt" when you contact someone and ask for the basis of their claim and they provide it,
Of course not, but now that they knew about that data, it should have also applied equally to Trump's claim. They are trying to see who can debate it better or provide better numbers. They should use the same set of facts to judge everybody.
The fact checkers are incredibly biased. There is a Repub one out there does does the same. If you think they two aren't even slightly biased, then you probably drank too much of the Cool-Aid already.
> but now that they knew about that data, it should have also applied equally to Trump's claim.
But Trump's claimed number doesn't match that data either (nor has Trump claimed that was the intended referent.) It can be interpreted to approximately match a different potential measure of workforce participation (that is even less like an unemployment rate as usually understood) that the fact checkers went out of their way to find, which is why it is rated merely "Mostly False", rather than flatly False.
> They should use the same set of facts to judge everybody.
But the two claims aren't the same, and do not have the same relation to the facts.
They should have used that institutes data for both. I'm saying he should have been adjudicated as correct, but was abut the same as Sanders, may slightly more hyperbolic, but not enough to dock him that much.
At the very least they should have made a reference to the study that Sander's team brought up and said why it didn't apply.
The biggest issue is that this isn't an isolated incident. That fact checker routinely errors on the Dem side. If this was one of many more balanced cases this would be different.
"Similar" is a weasel word; they were notably different numbers, and one had an identified basis which allowed showed a clear connection to the truth despite inaccurate terminology which resulted in it getting not rated True.
And the rulings were not at the two extremes, they were two points apart on the six-level scale, with one one position removed from the positive extreme and the other two positions removed from the negative extreme.
They're both really just summaries of Tara Sinclair's view, aren't they? Not that it makes them more objective for showing someone else's bias, but the interpretation of the metric selection is essentially a summary of her statements in both.
I looked into this when it made the rounds and I don't agree that it is evidence of intentional bias on the part of Politifact.
I do believe it is a good case study that exposes the weak points of their approach toward condensing a quote down to a true/false rating. I think they would do much better to decompose a quote into separate claims and fact check those separately.
The Sanders quote that was fact checked can be read as making three separate claims, and Politifact discusses each before lumping them together for the true/false stamp:
1. The "real unemployment rate for young people" is not the same as the typically accepted rate
2. unemployment for blacks >> unemployment for Hispanics > unemployment for whites
3. The "real unemployment rate for young people" is 51%, 36%, and 33% for those groups, respectively
Sanders doesn't explicitly spell out (1), but he at least uses the qualifier "real" instead of simply saying "the unemployment rate", and his campaign later clarified what he meant. (2) is supported by the study his campaign supplied. The numbers in (3) match the study his campaign supplied.
In contrast, the Trump quote is:
"If you look at what’s going on in this country, African-American youth is an example: 59 percent unemployment rate; 59 percent"
and Politifact is only fact checking the "59 percent unemployment rate for black youths". Trump's campaign did not respond, but the Politifact research found that "it appears likely it comes from a computation of all 16- to 24-year-old blacks who aren’t working and may not even want a job, including high school and college students." Since the fact-check is focused on the statistic itself, this tips it into the false category.
Of course, a potential criticism is that Politifact should be fact-checking the higher-level claim that Trump is making. But from this quote, it's very difficult to tell exactly what this claim is. Trump tends to use words to paint emotional pictures that are intended to resonate with a broad audience, rather than making a chain of argument to support specific claims. How do you fact-check a claim about "what's going on in this country"? Any interpretation of such vague phrasing is going to rely as much on the personal experience of the audience as it will on the actual quote.
So I do agree that this exposes a weakness of Politifact. But in this case the Sanders and Trump claims are not equivalent, and Politifact has a clear chain of reasoning behind their ratings.
Another, higher-level potential criticism is that Politifact, as an organization with limited resources, has to make editorial decisions and clearly can't fact-check every public statement made by a candidate. I don't know how they decide which quotes to fact-check, so I don't rely on them to provide a complete account of what is happening in the world. But I'm happy they're able to dig in deeply in some cases where clarification is needed.
The lesson to take away is to read articles from fact-checking organizations for what they're good at. Read and understand their cited evidence and reasoning, not just the true/false stamp.
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.
There can also be tons of bias in how something is presented. How will google handle a post that has factually correct information presented in a biased way?
I find that usually the people checking one side's arguments are their partisan opposites. It makes for pretty comprehensive coverage given the adversarial nature, but it also leads to stupid shitflinging when they just cant resist inserting their own opinions into it.
Which the other side checks, and does the same thing.
Could you provide a few examples of left-leaning bias for Snopes or other 'verifiers'? I am genuinely interested in considering items from a political viewpoint that is likely different than mine.
I'm going to go through the list, but I think that often, I'll use Politifact, skew the results. What a Dem might get a neutral or slightly false will get a Repub a pants on fire or complete lie result. Here is one interesting quote (I only understand the econ stuff so that's where I pulled from:
"Trump’s 100-million figure of "out of work" Americans is highly misleading. This number -- in reality, a bit lower at 94 million"
The overall rating on this was completely false. Really? 7.4% off is "highly misleading". The article speaks to a quote Trump made where he did make a mistake in how the unemployment rate is calculate. He did, but his general point was that those not looking for work aren't represented in the unemployment numbers. And tht is a true claim. Trump put it tht they were considered employed, which is clearly wrong.
The article then veers into territory it should tread lightly on where they build their model of who is really out of work but still wants to work. It isn't very good. They aren't good economists, and more importantly at this point it becomes an opinion piece.
Trump's major sin was confusing the different status of recently unemployment people. I would have given him neutral to somewhat false.
There was on of Bernie being off in his numbers too and he god a mostly right rating. I've seen some real disasters where the statement by a Dem was completely unfactual and that was excused because the opinion-based non-factual analysis behind it was deemed to be true. That is no longer fact checking at all.
Many facts being disputed can be either true or false depending on interpretation, so the interpretation decides if the person is a liar or not.
For example, "if you like your doctor, you can keep him/her" is true if you include paying for him/her yourself but false if you limit it to what insurance covers.
This is where sites like politifact really get wiggle room to change the narrative. Just interpret the meaning in the most favorable strictness for who you want to call a liar.
I honestly can't tell if the people who defend politifact are unscrupulous or genuine. It's infuriating that, no matter what is said, nothing is ever accepted.
Most political discussion isn't precise enough to produce a yes/no, and often claims are being made about nebulous stuff like the future, morality, the thoughts and intentions of others. Or, for example, one may display a direct quote from someone without mentioning if they are being paid to spread certain views. The quote may be accurate, but presented in a context that makes it prejudicial. It isn't uncommon to read article of pure rumor and innuendo -- so if something is presented as a rumor do you classify it as "true", because it is true that there is a rumor, or false, because the speaker can't verify the rumor? And then if you mark that false, is all speculation marked false?
For example, I would personally mark any article false if it included any statements on the goals and mindset of Vladimir Putin, unless the author was Vladimir Putin. There are people who probably can't even tell why their wife is upset with them guessing the mindset of a foreign career intelligence officer, politician and tyrant from thousands of miles away.
He took the "best case scenario" there, or the scenario in which it may be most difficult to screw-up the fact-checking.
What I'm more worried about is what happens when CNN, NBC, and WashPost agree on a story narrative that is is actually false.
I mean, how many media entities said Iraq had WMD before the war? Most of them? In that scenario, will Google be able to figure out who is actually telling the truth? And would "reputable" sites such as those have their articles flagged for falseness if Google does come to a different conclusion?
Or will Google only target lesser known sites for flagging because "nobody cares if they disappear from the internet or are flagged the wrong way anyway" (which is actually the pro-censorship argument).
Let's not forget China has used the "We want to stop false rumors" argument since the creation of the Great Firewall. And surprise, surprise - it wasn't used just to stop "false rumors".
> I mean, how many media entities said Iraq had WMD before the war? Most of them?
You're conflating two different categories of error. In the case of Iraq WMD, the claims were attributed to the government agencies making them and most stories noted when experts (e.g. the UN inspectors, French intelligence, etc.) either disagreed or simply pointed out the lack of corroborating evidence. Additionally, all of the credible media published followups and corrections over time.
What we've been seeing a lot more lately are National Enquirer-style complete fabrications where no detail in the story is backed up by a verifiable source and nothing will be retracted, no matter how flagrantly wrong.
Google could stop the latter by flagging sites which don't cite real sources or retract known fabrications. That doesn't mean that they need to be the content police – a site which wants to say policy X is terrible could still run op-eds or simply quote real people (“Sen. X says other party's plan will …”).
The problem is that BOTH of these "fact checkers" lean hard left. We say them bending the truth (if not out right lying) in their fact checking. One candidate says a fact and it's marked as true, another candidate says the fact and it's false.
Nonono, you see, 51% and 58% are totally different and also Bernie provided sources which makes the exact same fact true whereas Trump didn't which makes it false. Politifact is completely unbiased.
/s. I'm just getting this comment in here before someone puts it in unsarcastically, which invariably happens on HN and reddit.
Okay, I didn't want to say it, but I personally think snopes is biased. I'm going to use a few made-up examples because I don't want take the time to hunt down real examples, but I used to see this occasionally and stopped using them.
Myth: Donald Trump said he loves women.
Verdict: Mostly false
Facts: He said he loves women. He's also said mean things about Rosie O'Donnell.
Myth: Bill Clinton said he loves Mexicans.
Verdict: Mostly True
Facts: He said he loves women. Some women are Mexicans
>I don't want to take the time to hunt down real examples
That's fine, but I advise nobody to put any credence behind your claim (snopes is biased) until you are willing and able to provide evidence. Until then, it is safer to continue with the general understanding that snopes is not biased.
You can't just toss shit over the wall and hope for the best, man.
> Until then, it is safer to continue with the general understanding that snopes is not biased.
Are you serious? You think it's safer to consider them not biased?
That's just bizarre. Snopes is a business. Their purpose is to make money by generating clicks. Why in the world would you consider them some kind of unbiased, altruistic truth-seekers? Because they say so?
That's the most unsafe understanding you could have, because it leaves you completely vulnerable to deception. Place your trust in them and you let them have their way with your understanding of the world. You're like putty in their hands.
> You can't just toss shit over the wall and hope for the best, man.
Well, you're nailing it to the wall and calling it truth, man. At least he realizes what he's doing.
I read a good half 3/4 of that article and didn't see Snopes coming out shady. It's one thing to check facts on external events, it's another to essentially testify on events on your own life. The article sets up a bunch of ridiculous expectations and then goes on about how they don't fit them.
EDIT: I read the rest, and I hold the same opinion.
If you're saying they do that occasionally, and their bias is as obvious as what you claim with your examples, you should be able to find at least one example of Snopes doing something like that. I don't understand the point of making a claim like that but being too lazy to find actual examples of a clear bias. I don't use Snopes enough to know if they're biased or not; I'm just saying.
Even if it were all objective fact reporting, related facts can be left out that change the picture. Imagine someone reporting that some new supplement is correlated with a 500% increase in some specific deadly disease, and that whatever study that produced that number is bulletproof. Sounds risky! But the disease's base rate, not reported, is only 10^-6, so 500% over that really isn't that much.
Let's look at one recent (3 days ago) example from Politifact. [1]
> "There was a very large infrastructure bill that was approved during the Obama administration, a trillion dollars. Nobody ever saw anything being built." - President Trump
Politifact's response?
> "Mostly false" >> It "Underplays the law's actual achievements."
There are _so_ many ethical questions and conclusions you can make about this one article.
On Trump's side?
- The bill wasn't entirely about infrastructure, but he implies that the entire thing was. Wait... would you consider what he said an implication? Or a claim? What percentage of the bill's total funding, actions, and verbiage need to be about infrastructure before it becomes an "infrastructure bill"?
- "Nobody saw anything" --> Hyperbole, which means fact checking is incredibly difficult. Do we fact check on his hyperbolic aim (maybe "The bill didn't fund as many infrastructure projects as it should have") or do we fact check the statement?
But on Politifact's side...
- If we fact check the statement as-is, its not "mostly false"; it is false. At least one person saw an infrastructure project. The article even says so.
- Most reasonable people would interpret his statement as hyperbole. Politifact clearly does in giving him a "mostly false" rating. If we fact check the hyperbole, how do you decide what the actual intention of his statement is?
The point is: When we are fact checking every sentence politicians say, even if they're very short summaries of a much deeper issue, there is no such thing as objective fact. Period.
In this example, Trump cannot reasonably be expected to fully talk about every part of the bill Obama passed. Its a long bill. He summarizes his position on it. This is what comes out. There is hyperbole. There is rounding error. There is factual error. Its imperfect. Humans are imperfect.
The flipside of that is also true: Politicians summarize and use hyperbole, but fact-checkers do the same thing. That politifact article takes thousands of words of research, argumentative facets, points against, points for, hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work... and just says "Mostly false." Does that really explain the situation? Really?
Most readers will not read past that single line: "Mostly false". Yup, Trump lied again, bad Trump! Politifact is responsible enough in providing the rest of the data. And, really, we can place some of the blame on lazy readers who don't read the rest of the article. Not politifact's fault.
Yet, think of the corollary between a lazy reader and a machine. A machine cannot read the rest of that article. It cannot understand the intricacies of this debate; not without much stronger AI than we have today. The algorithm sees "mostly false" and thinks "ok lets factor that into the score."
And that's assuming the algorithm even considers this fact-checking website. What makes a fact checking website reliable? Who gets to decide which websites we trust? Is it that they are right 100% of the time? I've already outlined how much room there is for bias just in this single instance; how can we even truly decide what "right" means when the statements we are fact checking aren't scientific papers, with every data and variable accounted for?
This whole thing is dangerous. I hate it. I hate Google for doing it. I hate Facebook for doing it. They have no respect for how much power they wield. They have no respect for the bubble their decision-makers live in. They are children who, almost accidentally, stumbled upon the nuclear football. They flip switches and dials with no responsibility, and if Australia gets nuked up in the process, they'll be there to sell you iodine.
> If one/both of them starts getting power-mad with their influence, they can get booted off the list, and replaced, or have others come in next to them.
How will the algorithm know a source is getting power mad?
> Let's say politifact or snopes or both happen to be biased. Let's say they both lean left or both lean right.
They outline how to get your fact checking into their system. Presumably if your fact checking is relevant and correct, you can be included in the results. At the point where an organization is trying to be included, but is being excluded or marginalized because of opinion or politics and not because of the validity of their assessments, then we can have a discussion about abuse. Until then, let's use what we have.
> Also, I have to wonder whether this will flag things as false until one of those other sites confirms it, or does it default to neutral?
It's extra information added to things that are fact checked from the knowledge graph. I don't think they'll be tagging everything, since the vast majority of searches will have no associated info. Stub fact check data marked as "pending" could possibly be spidered though, and I suspect items associated with that might come up with an "Unknown" or "Pending" value in the fact check expansion area.
I want to think about this both optimistically and pessimistically.
It's a great start and hope it leads to improvement, but this has the same psychological effect as reading a click-bait headline (fake news in itself) -- unless readers dive deeper. And just as with Wikipedia, the "fact check" sites could be gamed or contain inaccurate information themselves. Users never ask about the 'primary sources', and instead justread the headline for face-value.
My pessimistic expectation is that this inevitably will result in something like:
Chocolate is good for you. - Fact Check: Mostly True
Chocolate is bad for you. - Fact Check: Mostly True
Nutritional advice is rarely supported by strong science, so "mostly true" for both headlines is easily possible, given the weak evidence for each statement.
People are totally going to game this just like they game SEO. No doubt about it. Oh god, I hope "Fact Check Optimizer" doesn't become a real profession.
Snopes and Politifact are not fact-checking websites.
>Snopes’ main political fact-checker is a writer named Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that — oddly enough — is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.
>While at Inquisitr, the future “fact-checker” consistently displayed clear partisanship.
She described herself as “openly left-leaning” and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as “teahadists.” She called Bill Clinton “one of our greatest” presidents.
---
I think fact checking should be non-partisan, don't you?
It would be nice if you would cite your sources. (http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/17/fact-checking-snopes-websi...) Your quotes look like little more than personal attacks, and a glance through Lacapria's list of articles on Snopes reveals plenty of debunking from both sides of the isle. http://www.snopes.com/author/kim/ Further, the articles seem clearly written, well cited, and as factual as I would reasonably expect.
Unfortunately, the same does not apply to the author who wrote the article attacking her. Not that the Daily Caller looks much like a high-quality source to begin with ("conservative HuffPo" doesn't inspire confidence), but the author seems to toe the standard conservative conspiracy lines (Soros, etc.), with an fair amount of misrepresentation in his attack article. If I had some hours I'd look through his articles to see what I could find as far as accuracy, but as it stands, I'm going to go off the headlines and say Snopes probably checked some of his articles, found them wanting, and he took offense.
When you want to debunk a shyster claiming he has supernatural abilities (pyschics, etc), who is the first person you should turn to? A magician. By that same logic, perhaps former spin doctors make the best fact checkers.
The problem is whether or not they are "former" spin doctors. One could continue their "spinning" with even more power when being put in charge of labeling media true or not.
I think that politifact, snopes, and most fact-checking websites I'm aware of are great and everyone should use them as sources of reason and skepticism in a larger sea of information and misinformation.
But they are not authorities on the truth.
Google is not qualified to decide who is an authoritative decider of truth. But as the de facto gateway to the internet, it really looks like they are now doing exactly that. I am deeply uncomfortable with this.
I actually find them to be quite a bit more dangerous than normal news publications precisely because they claim to have some higher standard for truth. When truth comes down to a score card, you can inject less spin and bias into the article than you would otherwise have to because so long as your readers see that something was at least "mostly true" or "mostly false" they will consider the case closed because it says "fact" right in the name of the publication.
a) it's possible, hypothetically, for an organization to exist that holds itself to a consistently higher standard of truthful reporting, both in basic facts in in how they report it
b) if yes to a), it's practical to make an organization like that
c) if yes to a) and b), should the organization attempt to advertise itself as being "more truthful" than other places that don't do that, such as by putting "fact" in their name?
This is incomplete: they need to also include the political affiliations of owners of "fact check" sites, and perhaps also FEC disclosure for donations above threshold, and sources of financial support. I.e. this site comes from PolitiFact, but its owner is a liberal and he took a bunch of money from Pierre Omidyar who also donated heavily to the Clinton Global Initiative. Puts the fact checks in a more "factual" light, IMO. Fact check on the fact check: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jan/14/...
Things have gotten hyper-partisan to the extreme in the past year or so, so you sometimes see things that are factually true rated as "mostly false" if they do not align with the narrative of the (typically liberal) owners.
What I wish they would do is use their fancy AI to put in a link to the original source. Tracking down original sources is extremely tedious, but it generally gives you the clearest idea of what's actually going on.
I see Google having good intentions here, but I fall back to my previous sentiment on trying to assign "true/false" for all political stories and discussions.
Fact checking is irrelevant. What's necessary is education. Just like spell
check will not allow you to magically compose elegant prose, fact check is not
going to prevent people from being misled. Notice how both of these "problems"
have the same solution. In fact, fact check can be counter productive as people
now sprinkle their articles with irrelevant facts.
Education, as well us cognitive augmentation. Our brains are incapable of keeping up with the influx of information we're interacting with on a regular basis. We need to develop systems capable of information processing tailored to ones individual needs, intimately connected to our intellects.
"If you find something incorrect, you should tell them or make an attempt to do so."
This seems like the common-sense approach, but who knows how long a proper "review" would take place and how much damage would be done (e.g. thousands or millions being improperly informed by a supposedly reliable service) in the meantime.
I am also highly skeptical of this effort, which essentially amounts to Google and a few parties trying to automate critical thinking skills.
> I would imagine that you; the reader, does. If you find something incorrect, you should tell them or make an attempt to do so.
Although certainly not perfect, I'd say Wikipedia does an excellent job doing just this. And at the beginning, everybody said something like Wikipedia would be impossible.
A better idea would be to look for disagreements. Given a news article or claim, are there any sources out there which disagree? Then the user could browse both claims and decide for himself.
Counterargument to that is the whole "teach the controversy" dispute. Evolution is the only scientifically accepted theory, there are sources which disagree but placing eg Intelligent Design on the same level as Evolution is disingenuous.
I don't see the fact check widget, but the first search result for your suggested query is a Forbes story with the headline "Google Moved Billions Of Dollars To Bermuda To Avoid Taxes... Again"
Reading the article, it looks like what is going on is that news publishers now can claim that their articles were fact checked, or certain article is a fact check article on another one, using special markup. They also say the fact checks should adhere to certain guidelines, but I don't see how it would be possible for them to enforce any of these guidelines. It looks like just self-labelling feature, with all abuse potential inherent in this.
This is a bad slippery slope - it suggests that a 'little sponsored banner' (which google chooses) can waive the necessity of being diligent in thought.
No. This does not replace anything. It's just one tool in a big war chest against bullshit. Fact checking is one tool. Good thinking is another. The list is big and we need every single one of those things to stave off this pandemic.
> Fact checking is one tool. Good thinking is another. The list is big and we need every single one of those things to stave off this pandemic.
Which pandemic are you referring to exactly? Fake news, deceptive reporting, gossip, libel, propaganda has existed pretty much as long as authority has existed. Now recently Trump became president and there is a national pandemic and no doubt we should place our trust in certain institutions to help combat this disease. If this isn't Orwelesque I don't know what is...
'Fact checking' should be limited to blatantly false news items fabricated and posted for online ad clicks ie 'Obama to move to Canada to help Trudeau run country' or 'Trump applies for UK citizenship to free UK citizens from Brussels despots'. These should be relatively easy to identify and classify.
There is a wide line between the fabrications above and news and journalism as we know it full of opinion, bias, agendas, propaganda and maybe some facts twisted to suit narrative.
The latter takes human level ai to sift through and even then detecting bias, leanings or manipulation depends on one's background, world view, specialization, knowledge levels, understanding of how the media works and a well informed general big picture state of the world.
This is impossible to classify for bias, falsehood or manipulation and will need readers to use their judgment. Trying to 'control' this is like trying to control news, favouring media aligned to your world view and discrediting those whose views you disagree with. It is for all purposes propaganda as we understand the term. Calling it fact checking is sophistry.
What if I told you (cue the Morpheus meme), that people consuming the "fake news" don't care that it's fake? It's called confirmation bias and winning. Education isn't going to solve this issue, you can't forcibly educate people nor can you change their core "values" and their determination to be "right".
The only "education" that I can envision working is quantifying the real-world-impact of their votes on the personal level. Ex: Your health insurance was cancelled? The representative you voted for caused that. This unfortunately is normally executed with a partisan goal, however should be applied as a public service to all Americans.
this is just gonna create a pavlovian response akin to "ah okay this is fact-checked i'll read" which'll just compound the problem. it presumes that google's fact-checking algorithms and methodology are sound.
Besides political debates, anyone else thinks this 'ClaimReview' schema put to use by Google is one step towards the application of Semantic Web? There might be something more than just a 'new app by Google' here.
There is obviously a lot of debate on whether or not fact checking is accurate and useful. I think simply presenting a fact check will help people think more critically about headlines they see every day. Like "Mythbusters Science". It's not perfect, but it helps people to think.
I'm amazed at how much cynicism I'm seeing here about this. People just keep repeating what can be boiled down to the same premise: complete objective truth basically doesn't exist. Truth is messy, tricky, subjective business. This is not new, this is just how the world is. Truth and understanding is best-effort and always has been, so why is a tool to attempt to combat some of the most egregious falsehoods even remotely a bad thing? Nobody should claim that its bulletproof, but I'm not seeing anyone really do this? The problem is some of us never deal in absolutes, we see nuance in everything (climate science, economics, political science) but there are others who do deal in absolutes and make a killing doing so. Sitting around having the same debate over and over about facts and truth doesn't do anything to tackle the problem.
My rule of thumb is that generally there is safety in numbers. Don't trust any single source and don't trust something that doesn't have a chain of reasoning behind it. I trust all kinds of scientific statements that I don't have the qualifications or time to vet myself - but we have to do our best and that often means doing a meta-analysis of how a conclusion was reached and how many other people/groups (who themselves have qualifications and links to other entities with similar qualifications) that the statements are linked to.
Fake news isn't 100 levels deep, its usually 1 level with no real supporting information. When people (like Trump) categorically denounce someone elses statement they often provide no real information of their own. Similarly, when refuting a fact-check, most people don't dig into it and refute something in their chain of reasoning, they just say "well that is just not true!" and leave it at that.
We don't need to fundamentally fix the nature of truth but we need to be able to combat the worst cases of misinformation and any tool that helps do that is great. Continuing the have the same philosophical debate about truth is fine from an academic standpoint but from a practical standpoint it is sometimes not helpful. I feel similarly about climate change - its great to acknowledge nuance but what good is that if we're trending towards pogroms and a totalitarian dictatorship (to be hyperbolic, maybe)?
Well, perhaps these trusted sources should implement a system similar to Quora/StackExchange but for opposing arguments?
Lots of comments call into question the biases of sites like Snopes/Politifact/etc. and allowing some sort of adversarial response would help claims about 'leftists wanting to control our minds.'
Maybe it's just a widget at the bottom of a fact check post leading to a StackExchange'd subdomain. A wiki or subreddit could work as well. Anyone looking for a side project?
One likely outcome from this is that Google Search and News will be now be perceived as partisan by the Hoi polloi. Same reason why the old media gatekeeper fell by the wayside.
Plus, as journalists in this thread have said, you might stick to the facts 100% (which I doubt Google will resist the temptation to abuse in the future, but let's leave that aside for now), your conclusion or subliminal message at the end might be entirely untrue and misguided.
Sorry, Google. You need wait the planet's collective IQ to drop by several tens still. It's not your time to dominate the news yet.
I really wish that major legitimate institutions of journalism (i.e., the ones that require multiple independent sources, publish corrections and retractions, &c.) would just stop pussyfooting around with nice simple accurate words like "lies" when they're reporting on somebody who's blatantly lying. False equivalency and cowardice is going to get us all killed.
> I really wish that major legitimate institutions of journalism (i.e., the ones that require multiple independent sources, publish corrections and retractions, &c.) would just stop pussyfooting around with nice simple accurate words like "lies" when they're reporting on somebody who's blatantly lying.
I'd prefer false statements be characterized as such rather than lies (which involves not just false statement but also a particular mental state by the one making the statement) by the media, unless there is overwhelming evidence that the statement is a knowing falsehood.
Obviously, information that suggests that the originator knew, or reasonably should have known, the statement to be false should be presented as well, where available.
Agreed. It's more disturbing that people seem so comfortable calling others liars without evidence. Or racist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. I heard Chris Matthews push that yesterday - saying things like "maybe they're challenging her like they are because she's a woman... I don't know". If you don't know, don't suggest it.
So what takes place when the inevitable happens, and an employee decides that an existing "fact check" (conducted by a third party, Google hastens to add) is philosophically inconvenient and thus removes it?
Also, FTA: "Only publishers that are algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion."
The blog title is "Fact Check now available in Google Search and News around the world". I think that the extra bit at the end is worthy of inclusion, as I expect this to become a point of contention over the years.
I would not be surprised if different governments take issue with Google adding any sort of editorial commentary, even if it's algorithmically determined etc.
It's a witch hunt. Science (rather, life sciences) has a similar problem. There are just enough (statistically significant) facts to push many agendas. Peer review weeds out some stuff, but that doesn't stop a lot of wrong conclusions being pushed to the public.
Maybe a better solution is adversarial opinionated journalism, rather than this proposed fact-ism.
Original title is "Fact Check now in Google Search and News"; the different capitalization vs the current HN headline ("Fact Check Now...") is significant, the new feature "Fact Check" is now available in Google Search and News, rather than a feature "Fact Check Now" being discussed in those services.
I may be naive but I sincerely think this is the first step in a larger sequence of events. Next 'fake' articles/sources will get a lower ranking in searches, then they'll be replaced with a button "this result is fake news, click here to read anyway". The final step will be complete removal of sources all together.
And what happens when Google is the subject of a hostile take over and those tools are in the hands of someone else? Slippery slope fallacy, you might cry but we'll see.
Your post made me think of the Google search as "pure" - yeah algorithms spat out stuff, but a keyword change here or there got different stuff. Now it isn't pure.
I know a person who eats those "alternative facts" like candy. When I tried to prove one of them wrong, I pulled out a website to do a fact check and his response was: "you trust Snopes?" so I have doubts this will help much, but I would like to be wrong.
I don't like this, at all. People need to rely on their own reasoning skills and critical judgement and not let centralized authorities have a large effect on what people can read. I like systems to be decentralized and this seems to be the opposite.
Like very often when google says "everywhere" they don't remotely mean everywhere and should instead be saying "in the usa". My country's edition of google news has no fact check at all.
I tried a slew of recent statements that are objectively false but that a certain politician in the United States has tried to say are true. Google returned fact checks for exactly 0 of the queries I tried.
A fact has no truth value. Truth only comes from reason, and reason only exists in each person's head. This is reducing the demand for reason, and thus destroying truth.
Snopes and Politifact, they can't be serious. Not that I expected them to pick a neutral source, nor am I surprised that Silicon Valley's Google picked 2 leftist "fact" sources. This is a stupid idea, everyone has a bias. This isn't to help people, this is to influence how people see things.
Obviously, if you disregard objective facts because they defy your assumptions or hurt your argument, you're deluding yourself.
But an argument that uses objectively true and verifiable facts may nevertheless be invalid (i.e. it's possible that the premises might be true but the conclusion false). Similarly, a news story might be entirely factual but still biased. And in software terms, your unit tests might be fine, but your integration tests still fail.
So here's what I tell people:
Fact checking is like spell check. You know what's great about spell check? It can tell me that I've misspeled two words in this sentance. But it will knot alert me too homophones. And even if my spell checker also checks grammar, I might construct a sentence that is entirely grammatical but lets the bathtub build my dark tonsils rapidly, and it will appear error-free.
Similarly, you can write an article in which all of the factual assertions are true but irrelevant to the point at hand. Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they're cherry-picked to support a particular bias. And some assertions are particularly hard to fact-check because even the means of verifying them is disputed.
So while fact checking can be useful, it can also be misused, and we need to keep in mind its limitations.
In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat's postage.