A government … only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
No, it is not the slippery slope fallacy. If you create an instrumemt that obligates fact checking, you have to give someone authority to define what are facts and what arent. And as this is obligatory by law, these fact checkers are subject to supervision or are directly part of the government.
So now the government gets to decide what are facts and what are not. Which can easily be abused. Especially as disinformation through so called fact checkers can move as fast as any other disinformarion.
So at the very least you need to create a sanction regime, e.g. criminal punishment for the abuse of the fact checking, as well as a right for people to have the fact checking checked and challenged, if they think it spreads lies against them. This way you can have it analysed by courts, as the most neutral authority in a state of law.
I dont get how people in Europe, where i live by the way, especially with the experience of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco fascism, as well as all the Warsaw pact authoritarianism, GDR surveillance, red scare policies in the Western countries during cold war, etc. are just treating this so lightly.
Authoritarian regimes based on lies and forbidding the truth are not some abstract. They are both an extensive reality of the recent past as well as looking at Orban, Melloni, Wilders, Merz and many others they are reemerging right now.
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
How would you solve that problem?
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”
Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.
A government … only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
Dude, facts are facts or they are not. There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
this is mostly an american take, and most of the rest of the world tends to disagree with this “free speech absolutism”
it’s the slippery slope fallacy
No, it is not the slippery slope fallacy. If you create an instrumemt that obligates fact checking, you have to give someone authority to define what are facts and what arent. And as this is obligatory by law, these fact checkers are subject to supervision or are directly part of the government.
So now the government gets to decide what are facts and what are not. Which can easily be abused. Especially as disinformation through so called fact checkers can move as fast as any other disinformarion.
So at the very least you need to create a sanction regime, e.g. criminal punishment for the abuse of the fact checking, as well as a right for people to have the fact checking checked and challenged, if they think it spreads lies against them. This way you can have it analysed by courts, as the most neutral authority in a state of law.
I dont get how people in Europe, where i live by the way, especially with the experience of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco fascism, as well as all the Warsaw pact authoritarianism, GDR surveillance, red scare policies in the Western countries during cold war, etc. are just treating this so lightly.
Authoritarian regimes based on lies and forbidding the truth are not some abstract. They are both an extensive reality of the recent past as well as looking at Orban, Melloni, Wilders, Merz and many others they are reemerging right now.
That’s a solvable problem, not a reason to reject fact checking as a concept.
So if the US would make obligatory fact checking under a Trump administration. How would you solve that problem?
In the end it always boils down to the current administration getting to decide what the facts and what the disinformation is.
This is easily abusable and for instance Goerge Orwell predicted such problems with the “Ministry of Truth” in his book 1984.
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”
Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.