Comment by coliveira
6 days ago
Owners of social networks are terrified that they're accountable to society in any way. That explains why Musk and now Zuckerberg are so happy to throw away the last concept of accountability that society tried to create in the last decades. Basically they've taken over and are making all the rules.
What is accountability? A platform picking what the truth is?
Presumably you liked the fact checkers before because they were of the same political persuasion as you. Now that Trump is in power would you prefer if Musk/Zuckerberg placed right wing fact checkers in place and punished any opinion which is outside of the platform's Overton window?
Musk removed picking fact checkers and replaced them with community notes. Zuckerberg says he'll do the same. Isn't that the societal accountability that you want?
I'm wary of the concepts of "fact-checking" and "mis-information," but there really is a lot of bullshit being said without any corresponding check on "yeah, but is that true?"
Of course, if your worldview is sufficiently different from mine, we will disagree on what is true. But lying is lying.
> The document explains to employees that epithets like "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" are now allowed under the new policy.
but yeah, its definitely the fact checking that people are most upset about
> Presumably you liked the fact checkers before because they were of the same political persuasion as you
Or perhaps the GP liked the fact checkers because they were on the whole doing a good job of actually checking facts.
I don't know if that's true or not; I haven't been on social media in years. But it's an incredibly weak argument to assume that someone only likes something because it aligns with their politics.
I think these visitors from another planet would be more confused about the phrases “right/left wing _fact_ checker”…
> That explains why Musk and now Zuckerberg are so happy to throw away the last concept of accountability that society tried to create in the last decades.
This is only a tiny part of the reason.
The main reason is that fact-checking works so well against the right, and has almost no benefit for the right.
Why?
Because almost everything the right says is a lie of one kind or another, but almost everything the left says is either mostly or wholly grounded in fact.
So “fact checking” is an almost useless tool for the right, since it rarely ever contradicts what the left says. And yet, the right can get very severely corrected by fact-checkers with almost everything they say.
Musk and Zuckerberg are killing fact checking because they NEED misinformation to carry the day. Because if we truly understood how badly the Parasite Class were bleeding the Working Class dry just for a few extra thousandths of a percentage point of wealth accumulation, we would all rise up and bring out the guillotines to dispose of them once and for all.
Misinformation is the way they control the working class.
Who do you think was employed as "fact checkers" and who paid them? If Zuck wanted biased misinformation, he could have hired people to push it as fact and fact-checked anyone else. It makes far more sense that "fact-checking" and related censorship is antithetical to the foundational principles of the US and a tool of oppression, so we are just going back to normal.
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> Because almost everything the right says is a lie of one kind or another, but almost everything the left says is either mostly or wholly grounded in fact.
I am not “right wing” by any definition but this is naive and bubbled to the point of ridiculousness. Very little political discourse on social media is grounded in fact regardless of the ideologies involved. Layman discussion based on headlines and vibes has no place in serious politics and the real danger of these platforms is that they’ve elevated that to the standard
Who deserves a voice then? The high priests of the media annointed by billions of dollars in funding? There has to be middle ground. If I have the right to print and sell a book about any political or technical topic, why can I not post on social media? Is the threat of people being heard and finding consensus really that bad? Unless these "laymen" are calling for lynchings or something, they have every right to be heard.