Meta's community standards specify that they prohibit potentially harmful misinformation and that part of it is predictive (common misinformation like "vaccines cause autism") and the rest is third-party fact-checking. It doesn't mention anywhere that they have to fact-check, but they do mention it's their responsibility in order to reduce harm. Community notes will achieve the same goal in the end.

Citing experts and their reproducible work is most of how the scientific method works - it's also how wikipedia became one of the best sources of knowledge in human history. If I can show a scientific paper from a reputable source cited by experts working in the field supporting my opinion, chances are I am closer to the truth than all drunk uncles "doing their own research" combined.

100%.

META states as a company objective they strive to reduce misinformation. but its not tied to their ToS. the ToS is a contract users sign for their behavior on the site, its not a contract the platform has with fact checking obligations.

this has been the scam of ToS agreements for decades, the platform generally has VERY loose responsibilities, whereas the user has a list of them so long no one could possibly even keep them in mind while using the platform. and violations of the ToS are subject to platform discretion, just as companies like blizzard nuked accounts for ToS violations via automated detection that were bogus and took months of appeals to overturn.

The problem you run into is when there is no consensus and you have fact-checkers who are not themselves experts who get to cite whatever they’d like. Even real experts fall into traps like confirmation bias all the time, which is why you can not accept their arguments based on authority.

“People disagree with this” is a much more useful statement than “this is incorrect”.

This board is pozzed beyond belief with all the appropriate actions taken.
That said Faceberg/Meta whatever the hell it wants to be named is a horrible platform, banning people for saying things like Kyle Rittenhouse was not guilty of what he is charged, or that maybe we should stay away from a new novel medical therapy rushed into existence because its a bad idea.
They would ban people for saying Water is Wet if it fit their agenda.
I think 'Fact-checkers' 'Zuccs' and all the like minded people of those groups should be skinned alive, and thrown into the Dead Sea to the theme music of the Mary Hopkins song Those Were The Days.

When there actually is no consensus then there is no truth to check against and no community note to be added either to be fair. Don't mix up "no consensus in the scientific field" with "actual idiots disagree because they want to feel smart" though. E.g. climate change is real by scientific consensus, but I am not convinced that the majority of facebook users agree, at least in some bubbles a lot of the people on jsp frequent.

This post was edited by SkySwallower on Jan 8 2025 10:24am

Lysenkoism is real by scientific concensus

The climate is certainly changing, but the timeline for any particular milestone (e.g. summer ice free north pole) is incredibly hard to predict, and that's why someone like Al Gore has made such a fool of himself. It's uncertain what the end impact will be, as well as how to manage societal trade-offs regarding economic development and environmental conservation. Environmental science is no better equipped to navigate that conversation that epidemiologists were equipped to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. It's one small part of a much wider equation, one which ties together economics, political science, and foreign relations, as well as experts representing the various industries (manufacturing, energy, technology) tasked with carrying policy over the finish line.

Even when there is consensus, defaulting to the authority of that consensus is wrong-headed. Galileo wasn’t confined for telling the truth, he was confined for defying the consensus.

“The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to firmly established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s work. Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights." -Carl Sagan

I don’t care if someone is wrong, honestly I don’t like community notes either but they’re at least better than partisan fact-checkers.

That's insane