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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

We have judges and legal systems because we need to resolve disputes. But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

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> Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

Not sure I would trust high end newspapers either, in Germany we had a small scandal with Claas Relotius who received over a dozen awards for outstanding journalism. Most of his articles where more fiction than fact. The newspapers publishing his articles outright ignored any complaints by his victims and even the papers claiming to have "world class" fact checkers didn't bother to review the output of high profile authors. It seems that to journalists anything is fine as long as it captures the attention of their target audience.

> But what is the problem that fact-checkers exist to solve? Their brief is essentially the same as any other journalist, and I've generally found that the high end of newspapers/magazines are more credible than the majority of fact-checking sites.

First, fact-checkers don't just publish fact-checks. They also work behind the scenes at the "high end" newspapers that you mention.

Second, websites like Snopes originally appeared to fact-check things like chain emails, memes, and other rumors. Mainstream news sites now do this to some extent, but there's still not a 100% overlap.

Also, sometimes there just isn't a story to a fact-check. The reader just wants to see a check of all the facts in a political speech or a debate. A series of 100 bullet points is not a compelling article, but it might be a perfectly fine fact-check.

> Also, sometimes there just isn't a story to a fact-check. The reader just wants to see a check of all the facts in a political speech or a debate. A series of 100 bullet points is not a compelling article, but it might be a perfectly fine fact-check.

Why? What's the difference? Analysis of a political speech or debate is definitely the kind of thing I expect from newspapers or equivalent, and it's not like changing the name makes it easier to read.

The problem fact checkers are trying to solve is that most people don't have the resources to do the fact checking themselves, so that malicious actors can sway public opinion with wrong or misleading information. That is extremely dangerous in democracies.

You don't solve the problem, you just defer it to the fact-checkers. Who fact-checks the fact-checkers and ensures they are not themselves used to sway public opinion?

what's stopping anyone from fact-checking the fact-checkers? Also, it would be great if fact checking was presented in an argdown form, or someway to distill the bases of disagreement

Right, but fact checkers can't help with that problem unless there's some countermeasure that prevents the fact checkers themselves from being malicious actors. (I don't think many fact checkers are malicious in the sense of being cacklingly evil, but they are usually highly partisan, which ends up having much the same effect). And if you do have such a measure, it would probably be more effective to apply it directly to the news sources themselves rather than to the fact checkers.

Wouldn't it be extremely dangerous to democracy if malicious actors were to take over fact-checkers? How would you know they already haven't?

You reduced the problem of keeping an eye of everything posted to keeping an eye on the fact checkers. That seems easier to me.

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