Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

No, I refer to things like attaching counter opinions to opinions of people with high visibility for example. So if the concern is the power of the famous, never display their tweets alone, display it with a few other tweets.

Maybe do issue follow ups, so if someone says something and later it is contested prioritise the contestants until they get similar reach. For example, if a politician says he never met with someone and a photo of them together is revealed make sure that their claim is displayed together with the new photo.

Things like this.

View on HN

> I refer to things like attaching counter opinions to opinions of people with high visibility for example

That's what fact-checking is. It's widely heckled.

The problem with fact checking is the presumption of authority over the truth. I don't suggest fact checking, I suggest equal exposure to contesting ideas.

I guess NASA tweets might receive pairs who claim that the Earth is not a globe :) That's OK, NASA can respond to these with equal visibility and if people are not convinced I guess NASA would need more convincing arguments.

All your "free thinkers" that are browsing these posts for 5 minutes while they take a dump won't be taken in by the mere stamp of authoritativeness on the fact-check posts, right? I mean, obviously all users are able to make good judgments and competently weigh all the facts on every topic. Why are you so worried? What makes a fact check post more authoritative than NASA?

Btw I'm not advocating for active suppression of ideas. I just understand if a particular company chooses to do it on their website. I'd do the same in their place. It's not their job to give everyone a voice.

Is saying something is widely heckled similar to when someone says "we all know.." before making a controversial statement?

I wasn't aware "many prominent people don't like fact-checking" was a statement that needed a citation. In any case, you're free to disagree with that. I don't really care enough to try to prove it to you.

According to a Pew Research poll "do fact checkers favor tend to favor one political side"

It's split down the middle

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/27/republicans...

As to prominent people- What do you consider prominent, would most people agree with that, and do you have a poll of these people.

Saying most prominent people blah blah blah is debatable on two levels

Your own link says that nearly half of all Americans and 70% of Republicans think fact-checking is biased. That's the attitude I was referencing when I said that fact-checking is "widely heckled". If half of an audience boos you, that's a lot of booing.

I have no idea what you're arguing. Your own link says what I said.

I'm not saying anything about the fact-checking itself. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook. I haven't seen any fact-check posts. I'm sure they try their best to be accurate. I prefer to get my information about the most hoax-prone topics from authoritative sources - primary sources, news agencies, newspapers of record - the more boring, the better.

I like this notion.

However, some sort of "fair & balanced" law would have to enforce this.

Edit: and to respond to sibling comment about fact-checking being heckled...

The mechanism here would have to somehow force a similar amount of views. For example, if a lie gets 1MM views, then the proof of the lie should have to gain 1MM views before the original author can gain leverage of the algorithm again.

Of course the new system will eventually be abused, however, it's a step in the right direction. And when that eventually fails to be recognizable, another set of checks and balances must be layered on top.

We had that in broadcasting; it was an FCC rule called the Fairness Doctrine. Reagan dismantled it, and that directly led to the extremist radio empires that fuel a lot of the misinformation online today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com