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posted by martyb on Thursday February 13 2020, @09:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the truth dept.

Facebook starts fact-checking partnership with Reuters:

A newly created unit at Reuters will fact-check user-generated photos, videos, headlines and other content for Facebook's U.S. audience in both English and Spanish, the news agency said in a statement. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Facebook works with seven other fact-checking partners in the United States, including Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

Back in the day when Facebook had six fact-check partners, The Hill wrote:

Together, Facebook's six partners have 26 full-time staff and fact-checked roughly 200 pieces of content per month.

Experts who spoke to The Hill said those changes were insufficient to make a serious dent in the fake accounts and disinformation they say are rampant on Facebook.

[...] "Just the scale of the company itself makes responsible fact-checking pretty difficult, even if they were invested in doing it," Sarah Miller, co-chairwoman of Freedom from Facebook, a coalition of progressive groups calling for breaking up the company.

Facebook has also been criticized for not subjecting posts from political figures to fact-checks.

[...] Miller told The Hill that fact-checking is a distraction from the problem of microtargeting ads, which allow "any bad actor" to "target users with propaganda or scam content."

Traditional journalism has been struggling financially. Perhaps the role of social-media fact-checker will be profitable.


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  • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday February 14 2020, @08:47AM (1 child)

    by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Friday February 14 2020, @08:47AM (#958131) Journal

    I guess Facebook using such fact checkers to remove your posts would be censorship, but [reasons why some people think that's ok].

    Then we agree that fact-checking by Facebook is censorship. But you wrote earlier:

    Someone fact checking someone else is not censorship.

    Make up your mind. Or maybe deplatforming and shadow-bans are not censorship, because you can still see the posts yourself?

    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 14 2020, @06:30PM (#958231)

    I hesitate to even file this under "critical thinking needed" since it is more like basic reading comprehension, but OK let's try and sort this out.

    "Someone fact checking someone else is not censorship."
    Completely accurate.

    "Facebook using such fact checkers to remove your posts would be censorship"
    Also completely accurate.

    The difference being that the censorship is done by Facebook not the fact checkers.

    Analogy time!

    You are driving down the road and your vehicle informs you via a handy dashboard light that you are low on oil. You pull over and add more oil.

    Question: Did the car change the oil? Have I been doing the work of my machine all these years like a sucker?