Add news
News Every Day |

Fact-Checking Was Too Good for Facebook

Yesterday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would end fact-checking on its platform. In the process, a partnership with the network of third parties that has provided review and ratings of viral misinformation since 2016 will be terminated. To some observers, this news suggested that the company was abandoning the very idea of truth, and opening its gates to lies, perversions, and deception. But this is wrong: Those gates were never really closed.

The idea that something called “fact-checking” could be (or could have been) reasonably applied to social-media posts, in aggregate, is absurd. Social-media posts can be wrong, of course, even dangerously so. And single claims from single posts can sometimes be adjudicated as being true or false. But the formulation of those distinctions and decisions is not fact-checking, per se.

That’s because fact-checking is, specifically, a component part of doing journalism. It is a way of creating knowledge invented by one particular profession. I don’t mean that journalists have any special power to discern the truth of given statements. Naturally, people attempt to validate the facts they see, news-related or otherwise, all the time. But fact-checking, as a professional practice linked to the publication of news stories and nonfiction books, refers to something more—something that no social-media platform would ever try to do.

[Read: This is how much fact-checking is worth to Facebook]

Here at The Atlantic, every story we put out goes through a fact-checking process. That usually takes place after the story has been reported, written, and edited. Some of that process is pretty straightforward: A quote from a source might be verified against an interview recording or transcript; dates, locations, or statistics might be compared to the sources from which they were drawn.

Other aspects of the process are more discursive. Is the writer’s sentence fairly paraphrasing someone’s statement? Does it—and the publication—mean to present that person’s statement as informative, dubious, or something else? Sometimes additional research, follow-up interviews, and internal negotiations will be required. In some cases, fact-checking has more to do with evaluation, judgment, and wordsmithing than getting any single line “right” or “wrong.” The process can be very strange. It’s often time-consuming.

Outside of newsrooms, though, fact-checking has come to have a different meaning, and a smaller scope. It may describe the surface-level checks of claims made by politicians in live debates—or of assertions appearing in a dashed-off post on social media. Small-bore inspections like these can help reduce the spread of certain glaring fabrications, a potential benefit that is now excluded from Meta’s platforms by design. But that’s a whack-a-mole project, not a trust-building exercise that is woven into the conception, research, authorship, and publication of a piece of media.

Fact-checking, in this broader sense, assumes its practitioners’ good-faith effort to find or construct truth, and then to participate in the interactive process of verification. When done seriously and deliberately, it imbues a published work with an ethos of care. Journalists retain detailed records of their reporting, annotate them, and submit them with the stories they file. They may be asked to provide additional support or to consider possible objections. The scope of each claim undergoes consideration. Scene-setting—writing that describes a situation or environment—will be subjected to the fact-check, too. “Even the bathroom wallpaper had a bovine theme,” I wrote about a filling-station bathroom in a profile of the children’s author Sandra Boynton, who puts lots of cows in her books. The fact-checker asked if I could prove it. Having anticipated the question, I had taken a photo in the filling-station restroom. Would we have printed the line had I not done so? That’s not the point. Rather, such evidentiary concern suffused the entire effort, not just the part where someone made sure I wasn’t lying.

This process sometimes fails. It may be foiled by sloppiness or haste. But many posts on social media lack even the aspiration to be true. Some people posting may intend to mislead, coerce, or delude their audiences into believing, buying, or simply clicking. Others are less malicious, but still, as a rule, they are not engaged in journalism and do not necessarily share its values. That makes their content not lesser, but different in kind. On social media, people share their feelings, the things they saw, the images they made of the activities they performed (or pretended to perform). They comment, like, and share posts that spark delight or fear, and they may do so without too much concern for their effects on other people’s choices or opinions.

As I’ve written before, giving everyone with a smartphone the ability to say anything they want, as often as they want, to billions of people, is a terrible idea. In the deluge that results, verification is impossible. Sure, one might take the time to affirm or reject the truth of a tiny subset of the claims posted to a platform, but even modest efforts run afoul of the fact that different people post for different reasons, with different goals.

The effort Facebook attempted under the name fact-checking was doomed. You can’t nitpick every post from every random person, every hobby website, every brand, school, restaurant, militia lunatic, aunt, or dogwalker as if they were all the same. Along the way, Facebook’s effort also tarnished the idea that fact-checking could be something more. The platform’s mass deployment of surface-level checks gave the sense that sorting facts from falsehoods is not a subtle art but a simple and repeating task, one that can be algorithmically applied to any content. The profession of journalism, which has done a terrible job of explaining its work to the public, bears some responsibility for allowing—even encouraging—this false impression to circulate. But Facebook was the king of ersatz checking. Good riddance.

Баста

Большой сольный концерт Басты в Новокузнецке: легенда хип-хопа раскачает дворец спорта

Реклама
Top 6 nutrition questions men should ask themselves after 40

To maintain health and remain full of energy, men will be helped by this

T-Mobile closes Lumos deal after dropping DEI

Roadies XX: Even after Gautam Gulati's return, Elvish Yadav remains the richest gang leader on the show; A look at his net worth

Here’s more of what you’ll see through Meta’s $1,000 smart glasses

Hyundai’s Insteroid is an EV one-off for gamers

Ria.city
Реклама
  • ИП Попов А.П.
  • ИНН: 602715631406
В г.Колумбус начали выдачу средства для восстановления потенции

В аптеках г.Колумбус найдено средство, усиливающие потенцию в 29 раз! Им оказался обычный...






Реклама
  • ИП Попов А.П.
  • ИНН: 602715631406
Ревматолог: "3 апреля 2024 в г.Колумбус запущена квота"

Каждый человек с больными суставами имеет право получить...


Реклама
  • ИП Попов А.П.
  • ИНН: 602715631406
Ревматолог: "3 апреля 2024 в г.Колумбус запущена квота"

Каждый человек с больными суставами имеет право получить...

Read also

Crockett responds to Bondi's 'threat' over Musk criticism

UNICEF warns of worsening healthcare crisis for children in Afghanistan

Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain Was 'Startled' by Octogenarian's Mental Decline Before Trump Debate: New Book

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Roadies XX: Even after Gautam Gulati's return, Elvish Yadav remains the richest gang leader on the show; A look at his net worth

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

Hyundai’s Insteroid is an EV one-off for gamers



Sports today


Новости тенниса
WTA

Эрика Андреева в трёх сетах проиграла Чирико на старте турнира WTA в Чарльстоне



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Чемпионат по боксу Уральского округа Росгвардии стартовал на Южном Урале



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Правопорядок на хоккейном матче в столице обеспечили росгвардейцы


Новости России

Game News

Atomfall surpasses 1.5 million players to become Rebellion's most successful game launch in 32 years


Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine

Реклама
Top 6 nutrition questions men should ask themselves after 40

To maintain health and remain full of energy, men will be helped by this

Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine

Russian.city

Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine



Губернаторы России
Пулково

В аэропорту Пулково отменены 17 рейсов


НАТО СПОСОБНО НАНЕСТИ ЯДЕРНЫЙ УДАР ПО США И ЕВРОПЕ? НАТО СДЕЛАНО ДЛЯ ЭТОГО. СЕНСАЦИЯ! НОВОСТИ! СПЕЦOПЕРАЦИЯ "ЗИС". Россия, США, Европа могут улучшить отношения и здоровье общества?!

«Ассоциация Блогеров и Агентств» и «Рейтинг Рунета» выпускают первый в России рейтинг агентств с экспертизой в инфлюенс-маркетинге

Как Рязань отметит День Победы в 2025 году, рассказали в мэрии

Рейтинг пяти лучших маркетинговых агентств: VICTORY GROUP занял первое место


Карди Би обвинила отца своих детей в покушении на убийство

Рэпер ST выступит на «Мото Драйв» 2025. Фестивал пройдет на автодроме «Игора Драйв» 7 и 8 июня

Сергей Шнуров не разрешает детям слушать свои песни

В Московской области завершился второй этап федерального проекта «КЛАССИКА ДЛЯ ВСЕЙ СЕМЬИ»


Собчак не видит причин осуждать Касаткину за смену гражданства

«Это привилегия». Елена Рыбакина высказалась о том, что представляет Казахстан

Хьюстон (ATP). 1-й круг. Гарин борется с Ритшардом, Тьен сыграет с Микельсеном, Бруксби – с Даниэлем, Этчеверри – с Ковачевичем

Вероника Кудерметова одержала разгромную победу на старте турнира WTA-500 в Чарльстоне


Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine


Axenix и «КОРУС Консалтинг» объявили о стратегическом партнерстве для реализации проектов на платформе интегрированного планирования In.Plan

Рейтинг пяти лучших маркетинговых агентств: VICTORY GROUP занял первое место

Контроллер внутри стены: новый смарт-дюбель fischer мониторит здоровье дома

«Ассоциация Блогеров и Агентств» и «Рейтинг Рунета» выпускают первый в России рейтинг агентств с экспертизой в инфлюенс-маркетинге


В Московской области завершился второй этап федерального проекта «КЛАССИКА ДЛЯ ВСЕЙ СЕМЬИ»

Ярославский «Локо» сыграет с московским «Динамо» в плей-офф

В Hybrid Platform обновлена интеграция с Яндекс.Метрикой

Петрова презентует книгу «Теннис. Методические рекомендации» 5 апреля в Москве


С 1 апреля вступили в силу поправки в ПДД

Повышенную зарплату получат в мае некоторые россияне

Из-за Казанского марафона перекроют улицы в центре столицы Татарстана

В Германии назвали главный символ слабости страны


Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine


Путин в России и мире
Реклама
Top 6 nutrition questions men should ask themselves after 40

To maintain health and remain full of energy, men will be helped by this



Реклама
The most beautiful beach towns with cheap living

A huge number of people around the world dream of one day breaking out of the daily routine



Реклама
Top 6 nutrition questions men should ask themselves after 40

To maintain health and remain full of energy, men will be helped by this



Реклама
Top 6 nutrition questions men should ask themselves after 40

To maintain health and remain full of energy, men will be helped by this

Персональные новости Russian.city
Пол Маккартни

Пол Мескал сыграет Пола Маккартни в фильме про The Beatles. Премьера состоится в апреле 2028 года



News Every Day

Here’s more of what you’ll see through Meta’s $1,000 smart glasses




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости