Like any other work, it can be reviewed by supervisors within the company and/or the client (Meta). If a sample of an employee's work shows that they often hide content that isn't factually false, they are performing their job poorly. If Meta doesn't like the job the company is doing, the contract can be cancelled.
> If we could have legitimate fact checking that really works, then I guess we wouldn't need any politics at all.
You absolutely need both. Politics is about which decisions to make within the context of shared facts. The amount of the US national debt, the number of people caught crossing the border illegally in 2024, or the number of people sleeping on the streets in San Francisco are all matters of fact. What to do about them is politics.
It are also facts that many politicians are corrupt and are fooling us. But they arranged it nicely so that they aren't being fact checked.
And the ones in power and with money can decide who the fact checkers will be. And the ones in power and with money can help and support each other. Because we want to keep the money inside the family, to protect the facts you know.
When you grow up you start to understand that you can't trust all authority all the time.
I was answering your question. You asked how fact checkers can be fact checked and the answer is like any other job. Fact checking isn't magic, and it's existed for a long time. It's basically what newspaper sub-editors do.
> When you grow up you start to understand that you can't trust all authority all the time.
I think you know I'm not arguing for this. Don't misrepresent my position, please.
Well I think what you are calling fact checking is actually journalism.
The concept of fact checking is a very recent movement, with the idea that we could filter out the "fake news" on the internet, which is also a recent concept.
But it turned out that the so called "fake news" wans't always so fake, and that the fact checkers weren't always so factual.
So it turns out that you can't trust any group to determine what the facts are for the rest of the people.
You can fact-check for yourself, but don't put your "facts" on other people like they're real facts. Leave other people in their respect, and let them think for themselves. You can of course share your knowledge, but you should let the other person ultimately decide what they believe for themselves.
It sounds like you are disagreeing with the concept of facts, but facts do exist. If someone claims that a politician said a particular thing in a speech yesterday, and the politician gave no speech yesterday, then the claim is factually false. It's not a matter of respect or disrespect to say so, and it doesn't matter what you choose to believe on that topic.
> The concept of fact checking is a very recent movement, with the idea that we could filter out the "fake news" on the internet, which is also a recent concept.
Again, this is not accurate. Look at the job sub-editors have been doing for a century or more. Their main role is to save the newspaper from getting sued or looking silly by striking out or questioning any claim that can't be proven to be true, or corroborated by multiple sources. Fact checking is not a new discipline.
Well it has a lot to do also with the way you say things, how you interpret the words. Maybe the politician did give some kind of speech, but maybe it wasn't an official speech. There's always more to the story, and multiple ways of interpreting things.
Of course some facts are less flexible than others. Like most people wouldn't argue whether a football is round. Although it matters if you're talking about an American football or a soccer football. So context also matters, and that can be confusing sometimes.
So the facts that the fact checkers were called in to tackle, were so flexible that it turns out it's not doable in a secure way.
And newspapers also don't always have the correct facts. Often things in the newspapers are wrong. And no they are not always being sued for that.
Again, you can fact-check for yourself, that is totally fine, and I would even encourage it. Then you make up your own mind and you are more independent and less shapable by others.
I sort of don't want to get into specific moderation examples, especially with Covid, because so many aspects of Covid are contentious. I'd just point out that this example has nothing to do with third party fact checkers, it was direct influence from a government on Meta; that can and will still happen even with Zuckerberg's policy changes. In fact I'd argue it will be even more likely now. If Meta had a robust policy on fact checking and removal of harmful content, that would be a weapon to push back on government interference.
It's also not necessary for third party fact checking to "always work" to have value, there will be some level of false positive rate that's still acceptable. Even with something like Covid, there is unambiguously false information with probably harmful consequences ("you can cure Covid by drinking a bottle of bleach", for example) that would be worth taking down by fact checkers.
If fact checking doesn't necessarily "always work", then you should not call it fact checking. That is already a great reason why Community Notes are better.
And, don't you see the connection? If the government can tell Facebook to censor content, they can also tell them what facts to publish.
Community Notes is from the community, not from Facebook, so not directly influencable by the government. The government could of course tell Facebook to censor certain Community Notes, but the community would notice. With the fact checkers, which are in the hands of Facebook, the community doesn't know.
> If fact checking doesn't necessarily "always work", then you should not call it fact checking. That is already a great reason why Community Notes are better.
You can still call it fact checking, just as you can still call air travel by that name even though a very small percentage of planes crash. Suppose the fact checkers had a 0.1% false positive rate and a 0% false negative rate. For every 1,000 pieces of reported content they review which should be left up, they take one down, and they never leave anything up that should be taken down. Wouldn't we say that the system, broadly speaking, works and has value? Even though it doesn't always work?
Do you think Community Notes will "always work"?
> Community Notes is from the community, not from Facebook, so not directly influencable by the government.
It wouldn't work like this. Meta still own the platform, profit from it, and are responsible for it.
Governments will always want to talk to Meta about the material they host, because Facebook reaches millions of people. Sometimes the governments will have a valid case, like when material on Facebook can be linked to inciting genocide[1]. And sometimes they won't, and will be trying to pressurise Facebook for political or self-serving reasons. The point is, those governments will not simply be satisfied and go away if Meta throw their hands in the air and say "Sorry, but we fired the fact checkers and have no control over the material on our platform. It's up to the community, talk to them."
If Meta are trying to solve the government interference problem, the solution is to strengthen their fact checking and moderation systems. Then they'd be able to push back and say that actually no, they are confident that the content on Facebook is appropriate and can credibly stand by it. Abdicating responsibility is just going to get them into more trouble.
Well as long as we can't guarantee that fact checking is so secure with such a low error rate, we shouldn't call it fact checking.
That's already a great reason why Community Notes are better, just because of the name.
Aside from that, if the community is making notes, and the government censors or modifies it, the community would be able to find it out. With an internal fact checking department, the community wouldn't know.
Of course the government will still try to take as much control as they can. So this news should also make us aware of the fact that such huge global networks are not a safe place anyway for independent thinking.
