Ask HN: Should HN implement a fact checker for its links and why/why not?

1) It would have to be a human. Existing "AI" solutions aren't close to being as good as humans, at least when they're only fed articles without context.

Even humans aren't exactly infallible when fact-checking, and truth is a debated term. The training data for any AI would be "biased" to some people and not to others.

2) HN is already great at this. That's why I read comments first.

Absolutely not.

First, because "fact checking" has become tainted and appropriated for the sake of political demagoguery. Any attempt to do so will be assumed to be an attempt at censorship or misinformation, and result in people from different camps arguing their "facts" against other "facts."

Second, because this is a forum which is supposed to cater to people with intellectual curiosity. That should mean people don't expect their hand to be held and be told what the truth is. It's bad enough this place tries to correlate karma with quality, the last thing we need is a score for truth as well.

Third, the purpose of Hacker News isn't, and shouldn't be, to curate facts. It should be possible to have a civil and intellectually thought provoking discussion about the flaws in a linked article, as well as the facts.

There's no need. Most links aren't simple yes/no facts to be evaluated and the comments provide reasonable discussion. Hacker News doesn't tend to discuss hoaxes which would need checking either.

NLP along with an awfully difficult problem that would've probably been solved somewhere else first? I don't think it's worth the effort. The community does a fine job moderating itself.