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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Well... that seems to be working? The story isn't a fact. Got marked as not a fact. What's the problem?

"Repeat offenders will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertised removed." Is the problem, a satire post by a satirical publication has been notified their distribution and monetization could be penalized as a result of their satire, because a 'fact checker' decided to identify the content and treat it like a news piece.

Maybe they should mark the content more clearly as satire to avoid causing confusion?

Just to be clear what you're saying, you personally, or for the sake of others, need satire labels to identify that "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine to Spin News Before Publication" is satire? That is the statement you just made?

Well evidently someone somewhere was confused in practice... as they fact-checked it. People mistake satire all the time on the internet. It must be the single least effective way to communicate humanity has ever invented.

Maybe these posts should have metadata? Mark things like sarcasm, hyperbole, etc. People already do that here - with the /s tag.

Exactly - the Onion was the original satire site on the internet of which _everyone_ should be aware and Reddit has an entire sub dedicated to people who ate the onion without realizing it.

70 million people voted for Trump. Yes, many people will read that headline and tell all their friends about how CNN is spinning the news. Have you not met many people?

Even knowing it's satire, the headline makes an implication that CNN is misleading people by "spinning" the news they report.

Anyone who thinks they (and all the rest) don't has Gell-Mann amnesia.

Babylon Bee is already clearly labeled. How much more clear do you want them to be? Only a true moron could possibly be confused by such a headline.

> Only a true moron

At Facebook's scale there are very many 'morons' out there who might see it.

And this article demonstrably confused at least one person... as it got fact checked didn't it?

Does that not say more about the fact checker than it does the Babylon Bee? It's clearly a satirical site. It takes all of seconds to recognize it if you look at the site.

Maybe? Not sure it matters either way? I think the conclusion in both ways is: satire confuses people and it'd be good to mark it.

The Babylon Bee is like the Onion and is at least as well known.

While I agree that there are people who take ridiculous stuff seriously, they're beyond what a fact checker--or anyone else--can help.

> they're beyond what a fact checker--or anyone else--can help

I'd disagree. I think a literal huge 'satire' flag on the post would help.

It'd help on your post, too, but ultimately we live in a world that contains vagueness. I feel more comfortable not marking a post about a giant washing machine being used to spin news with a blinking SATIRE sign than your post, though, because I can't take it seriously.

That said, they clearly label the site as satire on the 'about' page if there was somehow any doubt that articles about spinning news in a washing machine were not serious.

When they are wasting time fact checking satire and also censoring facts from renowned medical journals, it points to some failure in the system occurring.

This comment has been marked as not fact, but opinion.

Have you seen the tweet? Facebook threatens consequences for "repeated offenders". So the point of fact-checking them is to accumulate enough checks to be able to kick in these consequences.

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