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Post by robeiae on May 9, 2018 15:12:48 GMT -5
Good piece at RCP: www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/05/04/fact-checking_a_business_or_a_public_service_136972.html#2Read the whole thing. One of the critical issues raised: I admit that I like the fact-checking sites, that I go tom them and rely on them (even though I sometimes find them wrong). But I follow the sources they put in the fact-checking, to see full context and to confirm that they are fairly presenting facts. I'm guessing most people just accept the pronouncements, especially when such pronouncements align with their personal politics.
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Post by robeiae on May 10, 2018 7:36:43 GMT -5
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Post by cray on May 10, 2018 7:45:35 GMT -5
actually this isn't even close to being a problem yet. imho, the main problem is that most people don't go to fact checking sites at all.
trump points to the green grass and says 'that's beautiful blue grass.' republicans: 'omg. that really is beautiful blue grass!' *tells their kids that the grass isn't green anymore because the president said it's blue.*
cnn reports that trump ate a live baby for breakfast. dems: 'omg! he ate a live baby!!!!' *tells their kids that the president will probably eat them someday.*
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Post by michaelw on May 11, 2018 18:12:25 GMT -5
I'm guessing most people just accept the pronouncements, especially when such pronouncements align with their personal politics. I wouldn't doubt there are many who do that, but I wonder whether there are actually more people who are the exact opposite, who are simply closed off to fact-checking because they don't like being told they've been duped. It's easier to fool a man than to convince a man he's been fooled, as Mark Twain probably never said. Or because the fact-checks don't align with their politics, as you noted. (Although some fact-checkers like Snopes don't limit themselves to political claims, to be fair.) In both cases, I think actually reading the fact-checks would go a long way in helping with these problems. I'll give an example from my own experience. A friend of mine sent me this article in a Facebook message, probably hoping it would sway me toward Christianity. I sent him the Snopes piece on it, in response. He believes pretty strongly that Snopes is unreliable, and proceeded to post it on his FB page, where it was shared a number of times by others who also believed it. The problem, of course, is that the fact-check doesn't require anyone to trust the veracity of Snopes. As noted in their fact-check, the site--World News Daily Report--has a disclaimer on their own page noting that their pieces are satirical. Anyone who bothered to take half a second to scroll down to the bottom of the page would've seen it. Snopes could be full of shit on a regular basis and that still wouldn't mean the original source was legit. Granted, I think not every piece on Snopes and similar sites is so easy to self-verify. But many of them are. The fact that so many people simply don't bother is deeply pathetic, IMO.
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Post by Christine on May 11, 2018 20:17:36 GMT -5
I admit that I like the fact-checking sites, that I go tom (sic) them and rely on them (even though I sometimes find them wrong). That's very interesting. You rely on them, yet sometimes you find them wrong. Huh. You can confirm when facts are or are not being fairly presented? How do you unfairly present a fact? Yeah... I think you are, like everyone else, using your own intuition, and your own set of beliefs, and your own prior knowledge, to determine whether you think something is fact or not. That's what everyone else does, it's just that you think you're smarter. I'm guessing not, but I'm not surprised you think so. I think people, by and large, use fact-checking websites to find facts, to determine whether something they've heard or read is true or false. And many of them, myself included, click on the source material and dive down those rabbit holes, and feel as uncertain after as before. And that's why the OP article is troubling -- some fact-checking websites might not be totally honest. And how are people -- outside of people like your magnificent, brilliant self -- supposed to know that? One other "fact" is that over half the population doesn't give a rat's ass, let alone read the news--real or fake--or care about politics at all. Half the population thinks it's ALL bullshit. And to add insult to injury, they're probably right.
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Post by robeiae on May 12, 2018 6:57:37 GMT -5
That's very interesting. You rely on them, yet sometimes you find them wrong. Huh. Correct. Huh. I'm sure it's what plenty of other people do, but I doubt it's what everyone else does. I disagree. Again, I think that's not what most people do at all. They see something they think is bs on social media or the like, they look it up at Snopes, and if Snopes says it's bs, they tell the person that what they said is bs because Snopes said so. I don't think there's much diving going on, at all. Well, that's more or leas true I think. But if we side with that half, we can close up shop and go home.
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Post by Amadan on May 12, 2018 9:06:04 GMT -5
I disagree. Again, I think that's not what most people do at all. They see something they think is bs on social media or the like, they look it up at Snopes, and if Snopes says it's bs, they tell the person that what they said is bs because Snopes said so. I don't think there's much diving going on, at all. I think most people who bother to use Snopes and similar sites at least read why Snopes says a story is true/false/unverified, as opposed to just looking at the top of the screen, checking whether the verdict is red or green, and running with it. How many actually follow all the links and read all the original source documents and then do their own independent evaluation of their credibility? Probably not many. I certainly don't do that for every story I "fact-check." Only when I find the fact-checker verdict to be ambiguous or suspect. I am aware that Snopes may have biases or get things wrong sometimes, but I think it's reasonable to assume that they are not outright making things up (and would get caught if they were).
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Post by robeiae on May 12, 2018 9:55:28 GMT -5
I don't disagree. And this wasn't really about fact-checking sites being untrustworthy. I don't think they are; they try to do a good job for the most part, but the human element is always there, so bias is always a possibility.
The issue I was raising--as detailed in the piece--is of transparency, given the influence of the fact-checking sites, because let's not forget that news sites and talking heads love to use the fact-checkers, as well.
Still, I accept that many may agree with cray: this really isn't much of a problem, as far as problems go.
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Post by Optimus on May 13, 2018 15:33:15 GMT -5
When it comes to political reporting, it's a sad, yet unsurprising, commentary on the current state of journalism that "fact-check" sites/groups exist in the first place. Actual news stories should implicitly be focused on fact-checking to such a degree that obviates the need for separate fact-checking by other sources. But, I digress... That's very interesting. You rely on them, yet sometimes you find them wrong. Huh. Correct. Huh. That's very interesting. Doctors rely on cancer screenings, yet sometimes they find those cancer screenings wrong. Huh. I'm guessing most people just accept the pronouncements, especially when such pronouncements align with their personal politics. Yeah, I agree. That's what most people do with most stories anyway, whether fact-checked or not. Susceptibility to falling for the bullshit, though, seems to be largely attributable to the fact that people are generally cognitively lazy. Recent research suggests that people who are more likely to perceive false/deceptive headlines (i.e., "fake news") as accurate are less likely to put much thought into those perceptions. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3165567Also - and unfortunately - the more a person is exposed to fake news headlines, the more likely they are to perceive them as true, even if they are flagged as "suspicious" or "disputed." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2958246
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Post by Christine on May 14, 2018 17:40:01 GMT -5
That's very interesting. You rely on them, yet sometimes you find them wrong. Huh. Correct. Huh. My nebulous and esoteric insinuation was that (1) I find it odd to rely on a source one sometimes finds wrong. Personally, there would have to be a very rare incidence of wrongness for me to continue to rely on it, and those rare incidences of wrongness would have to have reasonable explanations. And (2) I can't remember a time where snopes or the like turned out to be wrong, nor how one would determine such, outside of perhaps personal knowledge. Unless the fact-checking was just not up to par and easily discounted, which would, again, remove reliability. Ergo, the idea you that rely on them yet sometimes find them wrong is interesting. Ergo, HUH.
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Post by robeiae on May 25, 2018 7:44:36 GMT -5
This is a good piece, insofar as it points to the a lack of transparency--or clarity--when it comes to "rating" claims: www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/05/17/a_tale_of_two_fact_checks_137054.html#2It concerns two pieces at Politifact-- here and here--that were "rated" by the same fact-checker. The first gets rated "half-true," while the second gets a "mostly false." The RCP piece argues--correctly, imo--that there's little sense in this, insofar as--given the evidence the fact-checker uses--the ratings could be easily swapped. Indeed, the first could fairly be portrayed as simply "false," based on the evidence.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 5, 2021 11:03:51 GMT -5
More fact-checking stuff: www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/02/05/snopes_and_the_fact-checked_claims_that_werent_really_made.htmlThis is an interesting piece, insofar as it makes a pretty good case that some Snopes "fact-checkers" need to be fact-checked themselves, because they're essentially fabricating claims just so they can fact-check those claims. It's like if I did a fact-check on the claim "The Colline Gate has more active users than any other website out there." It would be easy to show this claim is false, but shouldn't it matter that no one has made this claim?
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Post by michaelw on Feb 7, 2021 5:05:31 GMT -5
I definitely rolled my eyes at this bit...
Huh?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's totally fair to criticize Dapcevich if she thinks something isn't a detention camp just because it's not called that by the government. But the RCP piece is being equally ridiculous by saying it's just a matter of opinion whether something is a detention camp and therefore isn't a valid focus of a fact-check (presumably, not even if the fact-check is better quality than what Dapcevich is offering up, right?) Sorry, but that's a bit of a stretch, IMO. If someone claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has never been held by the US government in a detention camp, I think it would be totally fine for a fact-checker to rate that as false, rather than throwing up their hands and saying, "well, who can really say what a detention camp is, you know?"
Really, both Dapcevich and the RCP writers seem to be veering toward the kind of thing we were making fun of in the Myanmar thread.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 7, 2021 9:51:32 GMT -5
While I grok what you're saying--the RCP writer is nit-picking to achieve the didtinction--I think the larger point it still that the "fact-checking" being done was about a claim that really wasn't a widely-accepted thing. I mean, I can find someone claiming almost anything on the internet, right? In this case, the fact-checking was done for this: "Legislation proposed in the New York State Senate in 2021 called for the establishment of COVID-19 “detention camps.”" Look, here's a piece that actually explains the bill and why the reactions to it are misplaced, without claiming to be "fact-checking": www.newsday.com/opinion/newsday-opinion-the-point-newsletter-1.50113820It's so much stronger than the Snopes piece, it's scary. Because again, I think the Snopes piece reflects the new model for fact-checkers: strawman fact-checking, where an easy-to-refute claim it "checked," even if that form is not really prevalent.
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Post by robeiae on Feb 28, 2021 17:33:06 GMT -5
*headslap*
For anyone unaware, Kessler is the WaPo fact-checker...
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