octopus_ink comments on Google decides it won't comply with EU fact-checking law

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago (11 children)

“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.

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.

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[–] Saleh@feddit.org 2 points 2 years ago (9 children)

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...

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[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 years ago (5 children)

That's a solvable problem, not a reason to reject fact checking as a concept.

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[–] Saleh@feddit.org 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

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."

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

you seem to think that this would be some arbiter of truth with no recourse, but we have courts that deal with defamation all the time, and the scientific method… these are all tools we use to, as a collective, come to conclusions about objective (or as realistically close to) truth as we can get

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[–] Saleh@feddit.org 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

And we keep the government out of finding scientific truths for good reasons. Independence of science is crucial. Also scientific trith is not absolute. No scientist worth his salt will say "x is true and y is false". They would say "we have strong evidence to support x and we have strong evidence that y is not the case under all tested circumstances."

Courts move slow and only in acvordance with the lae. For instance in my country politics decided to define Afghanistan as a secure country of origin by law, to make it impossible for people to seek Asylum from there. That was the legislative opinion of "fact". And that also was while the Taliban was retaking large swaths of the country and months later took full control. Iirc. it was only stopped when the constitutional court decided much later, that clearly this is wrong.

I am not against fact checking. But if you mandate it by law, you must observe the adherence to the law. And for that you ultimately need to grant the government the definition of what is true and what is not, simply in order to measure the adherence to the law by.

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 point 2 years ago

And we keep the government out of finding scientific truths for good reasons.

in australia we have the CSIRO, in the US there’s NASA and NSF, in europe there ESA and CERN and i’m sure there’s plenty more.

Also scientific trith is not absolute. No scientist worth his salt will say "x is true and y is false". They would say "we have strong evidence to support x and we have strong evidence that y is not the case under all tested circumstances."

true, however under claims that vaccines cause autism there should be labels stating that this is misinformation, if not straight up removed

Courts move slow and only in acvordance with the lae.

okay - i didn’t put this up as the way we should do it, i put this up as an example of how we already allow the government to arbitrate truth to some degree - being the judge in an adversarial process… the bar is “beyond reasonable doubt”, with processes for appeal etc

you ultimately need to grant the government the definition of what is true and what is not

you need to grant some entity the ability to run the process that arbitrates. this does not mean that there is an arbiter of truth; this means that there is a process that arbitrates truth, and that process can ensure independence; just like we can guarantee elections with proper process

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 4 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

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

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[–] Saleh@feddit.org -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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.

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 point 2 years ago

If you create an instrumemt that obligates fact checking, you have to give someone authority to define what are facts and what arent

yeah… and some things are just straight up facts… this is literally the perfect example of slippery slope

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[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world -4 points 2 years ago

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.

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