The entire idea of "fact checking" on social media is premised on the notion that fact checkers have some kind of superior epistemic merit compared to the checkees. When you're fact checking random people or journalists that may or may not be true, but why does Zucc think facebook's checkers are superior to the BMJ? What are the fact checker's credentials, and most importantly what is their track record? The extreme opaqueness of the process is certainly not an encouraging signal.
It's true, there are fundamental problems with the concept of "fact-checking".
Often the "fact" is just the majority consent, as e.g., demonstrated by the banning of the Wuhan lab leak theory prior to it becoming mainstream.
But more broadly, there is a stark imbalance between the resources of the fact-checker (a few minutes or hours to decide) and the author who (e.g. in this case) conducted a month-long, in-depth investigation.
The same is true for the author who can be highly specialized in a given topic and the fact-checker who necessarily has to check a wide range of content.
Given that, "fact-checking" necessarily has to be overly broad and erring on the side of censorship.
I’m really uncomfortable with Fact Checking on the Internet, particularly because we don’t know who we are anointing as the checkers. But I have yet to see a better alternative. The status quo of just giving everyone in the world a megaphone is clearly worse and not working.
It would be better if, instead of trying to claim that they were some kind of authority on what is a fact and what isn’t, they just said “this content is not the kind of content we want to host” and got rid of it that way. There’s no need to justify it as some search for the True Truth.
At the end of the day, Company X hosts the servers and decides what they host and if Company X don’t want to host some kind of content they won’t. If I started posting the n word all over HN, they have the right to get rid of it/me. They don’t want that content here and they have the justification to ban it.
I find the notion of allowing an organization with zero reputation to censor a peer reviewed medical journal that has been continuously published since 1840 to be particularly ridiculous.
Sure you have - openness! Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I'd much rather not see ANY censorship and instead have the tools to make my own decision and filter out content I don't want to see. The downside is that takes work; many people seem content to be spoon fed as to what to believe/not believe or can't be bothered to get informed on their own so I get why some people seem to think the solution is "better" fact checkers - when that will NEVER be a solution since everyone has biases. Especially the people screeching the loudest that they don't - ha! They are the worst of all. If they can't even be honest with themselves why should I expect them to be honest with me?
The most valuable service these "fact checkers" provide is plausible deniability for their pet censorship decisions. If you think these fact checkers have your interests at heart - I have a really nice bridge in the desert I'll let go for cheap too!
Filtering and sunlight are opposites of each other.
Sunlight requires you to see the stuff you think is inaccurate, and for you to put work into criticising that content. Not only that, but you have to do it unpaid, and it feeds Facebook's bottom line.
>> I’m really uncomfortable with Fact Checking on the Internet, particularly because we don’t know who we are anointing as the checkers. But I have yet to see a better alternative. The status quo of just giving everyone in the world a megaphone is clearly worse and not working.
> "But I have yet to see a better alternative."
> Sure you have - openness! Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I'd much rather not see ANY censorship and instead have the tools to make my own decision and filter out content I don't want to see.
Except that is literally the kind of thing the GP described as "clearly worse and not working." I think the error you're making is applying individualist thinking to social problems, which has led you to come up with a "solution" that's actually fuel for the problem (e.g. someone getting exposed to QAnon, making their own decision to believe, then filtering out the content that contradicts the lie).
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant," is a slogan. It's pretty clear it's not a very good general purpose solution, at least.
> At the end of the day, Company X hosts the servers and decides what they host and if Company X don’t want to host some kind of content they won’t.
That's very reductive. There are many laws limiting how companies can behave, especially once they exceed a certain size, because a laissez-faire approach has been shown to be harmful to society. Workplace safety, food safety, building codes, anti-trust, etc.
Such laws do not yet exist for social media activities, but that's not an argument that they shouldn't, or that these companies shouldn't try to behave better even absent such laws compelling them.
I'm not saying they should or shouldn't fact check, or censor according to their whims. I am saying that you can't dismiss it as "they're a private company they can do what they want".
That is a whitewash of what the early wuhan lab leak proponents were doing. At a time when very little was known about the origins, lab leakers latched on to the hypothesis not due to facts, because there were none, but because they acted as if they could absolve themselves of pandemic measures and our own poor preparation.
Be careful not to jump the gun here. The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false, and it's to their credit that social media platforms link a refutation.
But when you have a huge number of stories, there are going to be edge cases, and BMJ got snared by one here. As I understand it:
BMJ found legit problems with one vaccine's clinical trial. But this kind of thing gets seized on to promote a broad anti-vax narrative. Facebook's approach is to label it with the least-significant category, "needs context", i.e. please don't go overboard with drawing conclusions from this. But then they apply that label to all postings of the story, even ones who were sharing it with the subtext of "Pfizer is corrupt" rather than "don't get vaxxed".
Facebook claims that this category doesn't result in the story or poster being penalized, but I'm not inclined to believe that since the users were reporting that they got nasty messages saying their posting in general would get de-prioritized and show up less if they kept reposting such stories.
"The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false,"
Prove it, and prove that the underpaid non-specialist moderator who labelled it as such was justified even if they were right.
Facebook is not and can not be an arbiter of truth in the abstract, and in the concrete the specific people doing the work certainly are not. Where are Facebook getting these experts who know so much about all the hot issues of the day? Are they calling Harvard PhDs in to look at this specific post? Are they getting people with decades of experience in the fields to debate and come to consensus about whether or not this post is in the gray area or shading to the white?
Or are the "fact checkers" random shmoes being paid a pittance to do even less due diligence on what is being posted than the person writing the original post, just checking things off a list that probably fits on a handful of sheets of paper? Assuming it even gets that far, of course, because it's probably also largely just an AI.
Fact checking is a marketing term scam. There is no such thing, or at the very least, Facebook moderators staring at things for a few seconds and clicking based on official Facebook dogma isn't it. Facebook moderators are no different than any other random poster on Facebook, they've just got a particular party line to enforce and a special megaphone nobody else gets. That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?
>Prove it, and prove that the underpaid non-specialist moderator who labelled it as such was justified even if they were right.
>Facebook is not and can not be an arbiter of truth in the abstract,
I'm not sure you're replying to the right comment, because I wasn't claiming that the BMJ story was demonstrably false[1], and I wasn't defending any action that labeled it as such. The action was to label it as "needs context", a category which specifically exists not to claim that the story is false.
So what are you replying to?
And are you really disputing that social media spreads a lot of clearly false stuff that isn't a mere matter of interpretation? Why do you consider that so implausible?
Edit: As exhibit A, I could probably cite your attribution of claims to me that I didn't make. Now, imagine all the people on social media without your exacting standards of integrity!
[1] Just the opposite -- I accepted that they found legit problems!
> I wasn't claiming that the BMJ story was demonstrably false[1], and I wasn't defending any action that labeled it as such. The action was to label it as "needs context", a category which specifically exists not to claim that the story is false.
which stories on facebook dont need context?
this is not snark and the question is not trivial. nothing - NOTHING - means the same in isolation as contextually. facebook isnt applying this label equally. theyre selectively moderating and claiming impartiality.
Probably not many, but the label is like a "watch your step" sign. People should be careful all the time, but sometimes it's best to remind them. You don't put those signs on everything and you don't put them on nothing, you put them in situations where there's a reason to think it's necessary.
>> "The vast majority of fact checking exists to call out stuff that's demonstrably false,"
> Prove it,
I mean, isn't it obvious from recent history that social media fact checking emerged as a band aid, because of demonstrably false blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery were spreading like wildfire on social media?
And at every step of the way the social media companies dragged their feet before they tried to do anything to address that problems
IMHO, social media fact checking is a bad solution to a real and serious problem. However, the proper solution is probably to nuke social media from orbit; but technology doesn't serve us, we serve technology, so that's not going to happen.
> That's all it is, a corporation's enforced opinion, not "facts" or "truth". Why should you trust a corporation's official enforced opinion any more just because the corporation found out they can call it a "fact check" and it slips past people's fully-justified cynicism about official corporation enforced opinion?
"Corporation" is a loaded word with negative connotations. Let me put it this way: institutions are far, far better at reliably determining facts than individuals. That's true because the world is complicated, busy place and it requires far more effort and knowledge than one person can possess. Corporations are a class of institution, and some of them actually do a fairly good job of fact checking (e.g. publishing and media corporations). That said, Facebook is a shitty institution, but it's the only one in a position to do anything about the crap on its platform.
Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
Powerful people have acted to suppress dissenting opinions; whether it's whether Covid leaked from a lab or Galileo Galilei's 'Eppur si muove' way back in 1633[0], and most likely this has been going on long before that.
When I look at social media I can't help thinking of that line: "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so'?"
>Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
More often than not. Just look at the politicization of COVID. In the last couple of months we have seen a complete 180 on messaging around the lab leak theory, the vaccines don't prevent infection after all, vaccines don't prevent spread by the vaccinated after all, CDC director admitting that at least 40% of COVID hospitalizations weren't because of COVID but because people went to the hospital with something else why also happening to have COVID...
I could go on. All things that would get you "fact checked" just a few months ago (and hell probably still will get this post flagged). It's nuts.
If you really want to get angry just do some searching on Japan and the much maligned horse dewormer. Millions of people sentenced to hospitalization when there are multiple treatments that we know (now and then!) that could have prevented them? Many of these "fact checkers" were (and still are) in the middle of peddling politically motivated BS instead of actual science.
People are literally dying because of it - and still folks here are advocating for better fact checking. Simply amazing...
>> blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery
> Not the specific issues you mention, but the problem with this approach is that just occasionally "blatant lies" turn out to be true.
> Powerful people have acted to suppress dissenting opinions; whether it's whether Covid leaked from a lab or Galileo Galilei's 'Eppur si muove' way back in 1633[0], and most likely this has been going on long before that.
That's certainly true, but it's also important to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, either. It doesn't help those "dissenting opinions" if they're drowned out in a sea of lies or if the lies (collectively) do far more damage.
Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen by anyone (in fact, this case it was little more than a caution sign), and IMHO it's probably better for the truth if it has to pass some hurdles and gets slowed down a bit, just as long as those hurdles increase the single-to-noise ratio. There's reason process like scientific peer review are respected.
> It doesn't help those "dissenting opinions" if they're drowned out in a sea of lies or if the lies (collectively) do far more damage.
It's a fairly central part of the scientific method to be able to construct falsifiable hypotheses and then to attempt to test them.
> Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen [..]
Except it just did: discussion on the origins of Covid was almost completely shut down for well over a year by the actions of one or more bad actors, hugely amplified by well-meaning but weak-minded media and social media outlets?
>> Social media fact checking isn't some kind of hard block that can suppress any idea from being seen by anyone (in fact, this case it was little more than a caution sign), and IMHO it's probably better for the truth if it has to pass some hurdles and gets slowed down a bit, just as long as those hurdles increase the single-to-noise ratio
> Except it just did: discussion on the origins of Covid was almost completely shut down for well over a year
So? The idea made it out, though it's far from proven. In any case social media chatter and speculation about the idea like that has little value.
And this is something I'm totally fine with. I think it's totally in the service of truth to let an idea cook, before it's blasted to the public over social media at a loud volume.
>So? The idea made it out, though it's far from proven.
It only "made it out" because (thankfully) not all communication has yet to be fully gatekept through "fact checkers".
In the world you are advocating for it would have never made it out.
If that doesn't scare the utter crap out of you I would strongly advocate you are GROSSLY ignorant of history and need to do some serious learning - especially about how a certain party in Europe happened to come to power before world war II. And if you don't think what we are going through right now isn't a precursor on that level - again do some serious reading (preferably from books with copyrights before the 1990s and not online) about the rise of said party. The parallelism going on right now is pretty breathtaking when you stop and really look around.
> false blatant lies like Pizzagate, Q Anon, Stop the Steal, and all kinds of Anti-vax crankery
You start to assume that criticism against your position comes from one of these places. It is a real strawman for once. Pretty sure that the media story of Russian election interference was made up by PR agencies and we heard about it for month. Nobody asked real questions and demanded evidence. Voters were lied to and it was easy since people that believed in QAnon acted as a distraction. But in the end it was much more damaging because official sources mirrored lies.
> "Corporation" is a loaded word with negative connotations
Corporations do what they believe is best in their strategic interest. That does not make them evil. But they cannot ever defend any moral position that runs counter to their goals and management has a responsibility to all their employees.
This is not a negative connotation, it is just the reality of the situation. And if you accept that fact there can be quite a productive exchange with corporations, even with their handicap on ethics.
I’m not sure about the prevalence but one major peeve of mine is when someone states, X is ten meters high. Fact check: Wrong, X is 9.6 meters high. It takes away credibility.
I mean, the little cartoon meter is pretty arbitrary. What’s the difference between half true and mostly true? Those two phrases seem mostly equivalent to me.
But the more important thing is the analyses I think, they are quite similar in content. And raise the same caveat about the civil war taxes. These fact checks were 3 years apart, so it may be completely different groups of people writing these fact checks. Yet, they both arrive at similar conclusions with slightly different language. I’d say that’s an okay result.
To me the main issue would be that an income tax prior to 1913 were temporary taxes. Technically, yes they were based on income. But when we talk about income taxes today, we don’t talk about them as necessary tools to generate revenue in support of a war that would have an end date.
It wasn’t a permanent fixture. Today it’s a permanent fixture and short of one of the Paul clan winning the office, it will continue into the foreseeable future.
Snopes acknowledges that a convicted terrorist (ie, someone that targeted civilians to enact political change) sat on the board of a BLM funding body then concludes 'mixture' because there is no universally agreed definition of 'terrorism'.
> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
I'd like to watch them sweat if you forced them to fact check "The 9/11 hijackers were terrorists" using the same priors.
> In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions of Mohamed Atta - leading a group of young men to hijack planes and fly them into buildings — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
It's kind of beside the point, but Mohamed Atta would never be considered a domestic terrorist. He travelled to the United States on a tourist visa, specifically to engage in terrorism. That disqualifies his actions from being 'domestic'.
I understand what you are saying, but at the same time the claim was that she was a “convicted terrorist”, when in fact she was not convicted of terrorism. That’s just a fact. You can look at her convictions, and there is no conviction for terrorism.
There’s plenty to say about her actions, which are certainly terroristic, but her being “convicted” of terrorism is straight up not true, no matter how you feel about it. That’s why they say it’s mixed and subjective, because there is no objective fact you can point to that would back up the position that she was convicted of terrorism. She wasn’t.
You’re playing the same fuck-fuck games that Snopes plays.
The claim is “convicted terrorist”. Those are two claims: 1) she is a terrorist and 2) she was convicted. Even Snope admits she was convicted of crimes linked to terrorism, but the link is subjective.
”it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
What was this left-wing revolutionary doing with hundreds of pounds of illegal explosives? Starting a mining company?
It’s just splitting hairs to such a degree you try and weasel out of a perfectly rationale take.
It’s like saying someone is a “convicted robber” then saying the claim is “mixed” because they weren’t convicted of robbery but rather assault and theft. Well, ok, but clearly that’s a distinction unworthy of calling out?
This Snopes fact check goes into a measured analysis of the claim. It presents all sides fairly. It arrives at a conclusion that one aspect of the claim is subjective, and they aren’t wrong about that. Therefore they give split rating with caveats and context.
You and others are arguing an absolutist position that removes all the nuance, and blurs technical crimes with subjective interpretations of those crimes. Moreover, you claim those who engage with the nuance are weasels playing fuck fuck games (I know you didn’t say that but you endorsed the comment that did).
For example, I could say that the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan 6 were terrorists. Hundreds have been charged, some convictions are coming down, none of which are terrorism. Would it be fair for me to say they are convicted terrorists? No, there is a lot of nuance here that is lost if I do that.
> For example, I could say that the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan 6 were terrorists. Hundreds have been charged, some convictions are coming down, none of which are terrorism. Would it be fair for me to say they are convicted terrorists?
If they're convicted of planning an attack on civilians then yes. How many instances of this happening do you know of?
"Convict and a robber" seems like the appropriate description to me.
They could also be convicted of any number of things, that aren't robbery.
By saying convicted robber, you're assigning more certainty to your claim that they're a robber than there is. You're trying to argue that they're a robber when you're saying somebody is a robber and they haven't been convicted of robbery. Saying that they're a convicted robber pretends that it's already been proven beyond reasonable doubt, which it hasn't
I’m sorry I don’t know what a fuck fuck game is, but I’m not sure you aren’t playing one with me.
You’re trying to tell me that “convicted” is not an adjective applying to the following word terrorist? Is that your argument?
Anyway, even if we accept what you say here, that there were two claims: one she was convicted of crimes. True. Two she is a terrorist: subjective. One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. A verdict of “mixture” given this split seems appropriate.
By this logic no claims can ever be proven because in the end everything is subjective.
To quote Bill Clinton, it depends on your definition of “is”.
Terrorism has a pretty well accepted definition - violent acts against civilians to gain political power. That’s exactly what she was doing when caught with hundreds of pounds of explosives.
But again, it’s a distinction without worth - the claim implies she is a violent radical. Whether she was convicted of terrorism, kidnapping, illegal explosives or smuggled firearms is moot - she’s a terrorist that was convicted of terrorist acts.
That's not a well accepted definition though. It doesn't matter if it's a civilian or military target. Any violence done by somebody without social/economic/political power on somebody with that power is labeled terrorism
Critically, lots of these things are viewed through a political lens. So the same exact acts can be interpreted differently depending on how the politics or motives of the actor are interpreted.
> > Terrorism has a pretty well accepted definition - violent acts against civilians to gain political power. That’s exactly what she was doing when caught with hundreds of pounds of explosives.
> the same exact acts can be interpreted differently depending on how the politics or motives of the actor are interpreted.
It seems you didn't read the comment you were replying to, which addresses this point.
> no claims can ever be proven because in the end everything is subjective.
That's not true, because Rosenberg was convicted of crimes. It's a fact to state what those convictions were. There's no arguing with that.
- Rosenberg was convicted of weapons and explosive possession: 100% true statement
- Rosenberg was convicted of fraudulent document possession: 100% true statement
- Rosenberg was convicted of terrorism: not 100% true, there are multiple, valid, although subjective interpretations of the facts that relate to terrorism.
> Terrorism has a pretty well accepted definition - violent acts against civilians to gain political power.
If we go by this well accepted definition, then almost every government on the planet fits, particularly the US government. I'm sure you will now argue a caveat and qualifications to the well accepted definition you presented above, but that would undermine your point that the definition is well accepted. We can go back and forth for a while about what the definition of terrorism is, but that would just further prove the Snopes article right - that the definition of terrorism and how that applies to the facts is subjective, and would need to be determined by a court of law.
> the claim implies she is a violent radical. Whether she was convicted of terrorism, kidnapping, illegal explosives or smuggled firearms is moot - she’s a terrorist that was convicted of terrorist acts.
Then why not just say that? You believe she was a terrorist because she was convicted of illegal weapons and explosives possession. That's a fine statement to make, and the Snopes article agrees. But it's different from "convicted terrorist".
You believe there is no distinction, but others disagree. Notably, the Snopes article covers this nuance, includes sources, and makes clear that your viewpoint is valid. It also makes room for other valid viewpoints here, which you refuse to do. Nevertheless, I disagree that words are meaningless, especially highly politically charged words like "terrorist".
I'm advocating for nuance here, and your continued replies seem very absolutist to me. You're instructing me to ignore the nuance in the Snopes article, and replace it with a black-and-white view of the world that aligns with your own. What's astounding to me is that you say the Snopes article is playing games with words and definitions, when in reality it provides a well-sourced and nuanced point of view on this issue. Meanwhile you're trying to tell me that "convicted terrorist" means "someone who was convicted of unstated crimes and is also separately a terrorist". I mean, come on. That's not a fuck-fuck game?
"Susan Rosenberg sits on the board of BLM and I believe she is a terrorist." That would be a factual statement (although as the Snopes article points out there's a little bit of nuance about being on the "board" of BLM. She's on the board of a group that works closely with fundraising for BLM, but is not exactly BLM).
>> Terrorism has a pretty well accepted definition - violent acts against civilians to gain political power.
>If we go by this well accepted definition, then almost every government on the planet fits, particularly the US government.
Violent acts specifically targeted against civilians to gain political power.
> I'm sure you will now argue a caveat and qualifications to the well accepted definition you presented above, but that would undermine your point that the definition is well accepted.
I think it's rather than the person you're replying to assumed their audience was acting in good faith. I believe that you are an intelligent person and likely already aware that in the common definition of terrorism, acts have to be specifically targeted towards civilians. I think you're just supporting for football team rather than trying to seek the truth and I feel bad for the parent they're engaging with you.
Just to answer your other post > do you think Mohammed Atta was a terrorist
I think he was a terrorist, but he's not a convicted terrorist. I don't believe he's been convicted of anything to this day.
> Violent acts specifically targeted against civilians to gain political power.
Like I said, the definition of terrorism presented was characterized as "well accepted", but as I predicted, you've now presented an amendment to what was already purported to be definitional. If the definition given by the other poster isn't the well accepted one, how can I be sure yours is? How are you sure it is?
Your own definition of "Violent acts specifically targeted against civilians to gain political power" is equally unsatisfactory. Governments bring violence specifically against their own civilians all the time to gain political power.
In fact, the Snopes article provides what I would say is a generally accepted definition of terrorism, 18 USC § 2331(5), which offers a concise framework we can use to evaluate the case of Rosenberg. Crucially, applying this framework would require facts that have not been established in a court of law. You can say to yourself that the application of the facts fit this code as you see them, and that's valid. But at the same time this code is not a criminal statute, and moreover itself contains a subjective assessment of intent -- "...appear to be intended...". Therefore it's quite hard to get from "I think this person is a terrorist" to "this person is a convicted terrorist".
So I would say that the general accepted definition of terrorism actually is itself subjective, and would hinge heavily on the issue of proving intent, or at least the appearance of intent.
> their audience was acting in good faith.
Please stick to the topic, let's not turn this into personal attacks, thank you.
> likely already aware that in the common definition of terrorism
Literally I'm not. You can't even agree with the other poster with your definition, or the US Code for that matter. Within the span of 3 posts we now just as many "definitions" for terrorism.
And anyway, we are not talking abut common definitions here, we are talking about criminal statutes when the word "convicted" is thrown into the mix. I simply reject the notion that "convicted terrorist" was meant as anything other than "someone convicted of terrorism". And we really don't have to speculate on the intent of that phrase, because the next sentence of the post under fact check was:
She was convicted for the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assoc
Which is a flat out not true. She was not convicted for those acts. It's true she was convicted of possessing weapons and bombs. It's true she was convicted for having forged documents. It's not true she was convicted for terrorism, and it's not true she was convicted for a single bombing, let alone three. Given this, I don't see how anything other than a mixed verdict is okay.
> I think you're just supporting for football team rather than trying to seek the truth and I feel bad for the parent they're engaging with you.
If you don't want to engage with me, or the other poster doesn't want to, neither of you have to stick around. I'm happy to keep talking about this issue, but please keep the personal attacks to a minimum, thanks.
In fact if you want to know what my football team is, I'm a pacifist and I find the Weather Underground and its members abhorrent. Rather than assume things about me and using those assumptions to draw conclusions about my intentions, you could have just asked me my personal opinions. If I'm rooting for a football team here, it would be the team of nuance in political discussions, rather than labeling people "convicted terrorist" and "convicted for ... bombing[s]" when they literally are not.
> as I predicted, you've now presented an amendment to what was already purported to be definitional.
Please read the post you’re replying to, which specifically addressed this point.
> let's not turn this into personal attacks
You have not been personally attacked. I insisted you were an intelligent person and understood the logical conclusion that terrorism has to be targeted at civilians, and your actions are in bad faith. Criticising your actions is not a personal attack.
Why? What specifically did I say that is taken in bad faith? I've engaged with all your points, I've replied to you extensively, I've given responses with citations and spoken directly to the facts in front of us... and yet you say that my intent here is to deceive? How is that not attacking me, if you are saying my intent in posting here is deceptive? This sounds like an ad hominem argument to me. I'd prefer to stick to arguments relating to the actual Snopes article, and not your interpretation of my intentions.
If you really think I'm acting in bad faith, why are you still engaged in this conversation?
> Please read the post you’re replying to, which specifically addressed this point.
It really didn't, and neither did you. Let's just back up a step and get some perspective. The original claim under fact check was this:
“This is convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg, she sits on the Board of Directors for the fundraising arm of Black Lives Matter. She was convicted for the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assoc.”
Let's sidestep the fact that the second sentence is flat out wrong; Rosenberg was not convicted for any bombings.
Your problem with the Snopes result of "mixed" is that it hinges on the idea that the definition of domestic terrorism is not universal or well accepted, making the determination that she's a terrorist subjective. You are arguing that there is in fact a generally well-accepted definition of terrorism. In support of your position, you proffered a definition that you claimed is a "logical conclusion" and flatly asserted it's generally well-accepted. Notably, you have not provided a citation for your claim, you haven't provided a proof (I assume you have a logical proof, since you said it's a logical conclusion), and you haven't grappled with the fact that your definition is so broad that it applies to literally all governments on Earth.
If you want to assert that your definition of terrorism is generally well-accepted, then prove it. Presumably you can do so without calling me disingenuous. If you can't, then I think you need to reevaluate your original premise: that there's one generally accepted definition of terrorism.
--
Here's my bottom line:
I have a problem with Susan Rosenberg and what she did. However, I would never describe her as a "convicted terrorist" because she wasn't convicted of terrorism. I also wouldn't describe her as being convicted of bombings because she wasn't convicted of bombings. This alone makes the "mixed" fact check verdict well-deserved, and frankly I would be very concerned if a fact checker labeled a thing as "true" which is demonstrably not.
I think it's important to point out that this individual harbors a violent past, but I don't think it's okay to misrepresent her past in doing so. I think the original tweet is deceptive, lacks context, and lacks sourcing; and I think the Snopes article is very thorough, nuanced, and well-sourced. It does not attempt to exonerate or white wash Rosenberg's actions, and actually provides a great summary of all the relevant facts. Reading this article, I am left with a very negative portrait of a violent person, whose past nevertheless was exaggerated and misrepresented in the original tweet. Her past is violent and problematic enough without misrepresenting it.
In short: fewer inflammatory tweets, and more well-sourced nuanced fact checks like the linked Snopes article would benefit political discourse greatly.
>"If I'm rooting for a football team here, it would be the team of nuance in political discussions, rather than labeling people "convicted terrorist" and "convicted for ... bombing[s]" when they literally are not. "
What bugs me the most about this is that someone out there was trying to raise awareness about this person's background. But apparently, they made the fatal mistake of using the word "convicted" and now everyone is fixating on that as the linchpin of the argument. Not only does it feel like misdirection, it feels like missing the forest for the trees.
Using the word "convicted" was not a mistake. They could have raised awareness about Rosenberg's background without lying about it. But sure, let's agree right now that saying "convicted terrorist" was an unfortunate mistake. How do you justify the next sentence:
She was convicted for the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. Naval War College and the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assoc.
Talk about misdirection, this is 100% false. She was not convicted for any of those bombings. Not in any way, shape, or form. How do you square a perceived innocent intent of the first sentence with this doozy of a lie in the second sentence, which obviously serves to bolster the claim of "convicted terrorist".
I agree it's important to make clear the history of violent people, and to avoid them when possible. At the same time I would say that mischaracterizing and overstating their past is not a good way to do so credibly. Perhaps that may cause people to miss the forest for the trees, but that's all the more reason to keep one's statements moored to facts.
>"In 1988, Rosenberg was charged with aiding and abetting a series of bombings which took place between 1983 and 1985, at the Capitol building, Fort McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Computer Center and the Washington Navy Yard Officers’ Club, all in Washington, D.C. Bombs were also planted, but did not detonate, at several sites in New York: the FBI’s office in Staten Island, the Israeli Aircraft Industries building, the South African consulate and the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
>"However, prosecutors dropped those charges in 1990 as part of a plea deal involving other suspects in the bombings. As a result, Rosenberg was never tried or convicted on any charges relating to the 1983-1985 bombing campaign."
There we go, people are 100% factually incorrect on the claim that she was a convicted terrorist because of the 1983 bombing. Etch it into stone.
As far as actually evaluating the core message, though, the person on Twitter who wrote this is largely accurate and I am confident I know why that person on Twitter used the word "convicted". This is because she was actually convicted charges that any reasonable person would likely categorize under terrorism:
>"Rosenberg was tried and convicted on the following charges: “Conspiracy to possess unregistered firearms, receive firearms and explosives shipped in interstate commerce while a fugitive, and unlawfully use false identification documents …; possession of unregistered destructive devices, possession of unregistered firearm (two counts) …; carrying explosives during commission of a felony"
As for the specific claim that she was convicted for the Capitol bombing, yes, you're right she was never actually convicted for the 1983 event. However prosecutors believed they had sufficient evidence to charge her for her involvement with it and those charges were ultimately dropped on a plea deal. I can see how an average person would use the words they did when trying to warn about this person. The majority of people making statements about anything are not subjecting their words to the kind of legalistic rigor required to satisfy a fact-checker.
>"How do you square a perceived innocent intent of the first sentence with this doozy of a lie in the second sentence, which obviously serves to bolster the claim of "convicted terrorist".
I really don't think it is that much of a doozy of a lie, to be absolutely honest. It is wrong - as has been proven, extensively at this point - but it is not the same kind of "categorically, undeniably wrong with absolutely 0 relation to the heart of the matter" kind of wrong that I sense is being thrown around.
> It is wrong - as has been proven, extensively at this point - but it is not the same kind of "categorically, undeniably wrong with absolutely 0 relation to the heart of the matter" kind of wrong that I sense is being thrown around.
> As far as actually evaluating the core message, though, the person on Twitter who wrote this is largely accurate
But also in very critical and important ways quite inaccurate and therefore misleading. Hence the Snopes rating of the overall claim as "mixed" rather than "false" or "true". Again, I don't see the problem with the fact check. Even you admit that it's not 100% true. Okay, and I've admitted it's not 100% false either. Great. The verdict is "mixed". I think we're in agreement here.
> I am confident I know why that person on Twitter used the word "convicted". This is because she was actually convicted charges that any reasonable person would likely categorize under terrorism
If that were the case, why didn't they cite her actual convictions to bolster the claim of "convicted terrorist"? Instead of sticking to the facts, they instead say she was convicted for things that she wasn't. If the crimes for which she was convicted are enough to prove to any reasonable person she is a terrorist, why did this person lie about her convictions?
This may not have been an intentional lie. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that the person who tweeted this was just wrong and conflated her history and record. I know the average person knows the words "indicted, charged, convicted, exonerated" etc. but probably can't actually tell you what they mean from a legal standpoint. I feel bad returning to the position of "meaningfully correct, yet technically incorrect" but that's what I sense is really going on. Someone on Twitter said something, it got fact-checked 'till-kingdom-come and now people have wildly different takeaways primarily based on the wording of the communiqué rather than the events it is trying to communicate about.
But if that's the worry, I don't see how this Snopes article actually runs counter to the intent of the original Tweet. If the intent of the tweet was to show that Susan Rosenberg is dangerous, then the Snopes article does a fantastic job of achieving that goal. The tweet was "meaningfully correct, yet technically incorrect", but the fact check was "meaningfully correct, as well as technically incorrect". That's the best kind of correct.
The Snopes article gives ample background context, goes over all the alleged crimes in detail, and it's all fully sourced! It's very hard to come away from this Snopes fact check concluding that Susan Rosenberg is not a dangerous individual.
I don't know how to clearly capture my sentiment. Is there a logical fallacy for completely missing the intent of the argument because one aspect of it can be legalistically interpreted as completely invalid?
I am reminded of how Orthodox religious folks manage to get around scripture by fixating on a few qualifying words and weaseling (for lack of a better term) out of what seems to be intent of the law.
I saw fact checkers going to town to discredit someone not going with the "accepted" narrative. For example they would say:
- Wrong, X is 9.999999 high.
- Misleading. While X is indeed 10 metres high, the author of the claim measured it from top to bottom instead of generally accepted bottom to top way of measuring.
When fact checkers “add context” to a statement it exposes that the fact checking isn’t about correctness or truth, but rather about narrative control. Which means it’s biased and one begins to wonder what context they’re leaving out of all the statements they rate as true. In the end calling it fact checking is bullshit, it’s just propaganda. This is also demonstrated by the fact that fact checkers almost always have a range of rulings, some number of pinocchios, pants on fire to mostly false to half true to mostly true. Truth is binary. Contextual addition is trying to control how the reader feels about the truth. I.e. propaganda.
My name is Steve and I’m 35 years old. This statement is half true.
The speed of light is 3x10^8 m/s. This is false, but really not far from the truth.
I think given these examples, there is definitely room for a spectrum rather than a binary. Otherwise everything is false because language cannot 100% accurately represent reality, and therefore you’ll always be able to find an angle to claim something is false.
And why should Facebook and its partners decide on what the conclusions to be drawn from this story should be?
I'm sorry, but to me your attitude seems arrogant and condescending: the masses cannot tell truth from lie and cannot be trusted to reach the correct conclusions. And I suppose that, if asked, you would advocate for education with emphasis put on critical thinking.
But you can't be both for critical thinking and for this paternalistic attitude where people get their cues from the truth-arbiter du jour.
Such a large part of social media is nothing but newspaper websites with the numbers filed off. With those fact-checking doodads, Facebook is getting one step closer to being a full on content producer itself.
Having read the original article and BMJ's follow up I think Facebook is right here. The original article does lack context and is not a measured response to the problems found. Especially so considering it was published in November 2021 after hundreds of millions of doses were given and the vaccine was obviously safe and effective. They should have known better than to give fodder to the anti-vax movement.
You seem to be making a normative statement, that journalism should be making editorial decisions in order to nudge toward the outcome they believe is correct (or that some societal watchdog believes is correct?) rather than what's normally considered the goal of detached and dispassionate reporting.
Did you read the original BMJ article? It was not detached and dispassionate reporting. That's the problem. It was alarmist and blew the issue way out of proportion because it lacked appropriate context.
The only mitigating information they gave was that the company only conducted trials on 1,000 out of 44,000 enrolled patients. But that was buried 10 paragraphs in.
There was no neutral party evaluation of the seriousness of the errors.
There was no neutral party evaluation of the implication of the errors on the soundness of the study.
There was no mention of the obvious effectiveness and safety of the vaccine.
In short, it did lack context and it should have been obvious to the BMJ that it would be inflammatory fodder for the anti-vax movement. It should have been nixed and rewritten to frame the errors in a more, as you say, detached and dispassionate way.
> But then they apply that label to all postings of the story, even ones who were sharing it with the subtext of "Pfizer is corrupt" rather than "don't get vaxxed".
Not getting a vaccine because the producer is corrupt seems logical to me. What am I missing? The average person has almost no power in evaluating these vaccines and relies almost entirely on trust.
It is only logical if you assume that the producer is the only source of information that can or can not be trusted.
That is not reality. There are many sources of information supporting the same claim even if an important one of them (the manufacturer) can not be trusted. An untrustworthy manufacturer can still make a good product.
You don't think "The public safety problem of supporting this corrupt company" can be a bigger problem than "The health risk of not taking a vaccine"? I don't believe that's true in this case, but I also don't believe I get to make that decision for everyone.
Did Facebook really censor the lab leak idea? Last I checked, Facebook only censored the idea that the virus was manufactured, not that it merely leaked - and that theory is still fringe.
When Peter Daszak drafted the Lancet letter which was published in February 2020 it pretty much shut down any open discussion of origins. "It's of natural origin, or you're a conspiracy theorist".
It took the Lancet 16 months(!) to publish a conflict of interest statement revealing that Daszak was linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance.
> Facebook HIRED Peter Daszak as a 'factchecker' [..]
Worse, Daszak was also part of WHO-led international mission[0] to investigate the origins of the pandemic(!!) in early 2021, though he eventually recused himself in June 2021[1]
Did Facebook ever actually hire Peter Daszak? My understanding is that Facebook censored posts which contradicted his infamous Lancet letter (and that's bad enough) but I haven't seen evidence of Facebook paying him or giving him editorial control.
It hasn't been considered a conspiracy theory since the CSPAN video from 2016 surfaced showing him talking about paying someone in China to make killer viruses.
It's at the following link, at about the 1 hour 17 minute mark.
No, it was preventative to hinder people to jump to false conclusions while there cannot be definite certainty about it.
I do condemn this lie and believe people had a right to know that it is a possibility. But the condition for that would be that people are able to restrain themselves to not act on suspicions. This was not fully the case.
But even with that they should have come clean with their suspicions and adapt them as further evidence surfaced.
In their defense, most members of the mainstream media are so scientifically ignorant that they probably don't even understand the difference between those theories.
Perhaps they should have somebody on their team who isn't scientifically ignorant explain things to them before they start spewing crap to millions of people?
They not only censored in individual instances, it was literally part of a written policy of Facebook (that was even public) that asking if Covid was man-made was an illegal thought and to be censored and it got some press coverage when they finally got rid of it: https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/28/facebook-covid-man-made-la...
This is an important distinction. Claiming someone else's statements are false in fact is not censorship. What it is though is confirmation that Facebook is a publisher which publishes editorial opinions about things. (It's incidental that they claim their opinions are facts, publishers have been doing that since the beginning of time.)
The only real question is why the government exempts this particular corporation from following the usual rules that publishers have to follow.
First of all, those warning significantly reduced user interaction. The chilling effect is nothing to write off, when we're talking about hundreds of millions of posts.
Second, Facebook has removed, completely memory-holed, twenty million posts relating to Covid "misinformation" without any accountability.
I can't find how many of those related to the lab leak theory (a significant fact itself), but I think it's pretty safe to say that many of those 20 million removed posts related to the novel coronavirus lab situated a few miles from the novel coronavirus outbreak.
To this day the lab leak theory is seen by many as unscientific or a conspiracy theory, and that's in no small part entirely due to FB and Twitter deciding that they had the right to tag and remove information on a question that was very, very clearly not actually settled by science.
With main stream organizations stealth editing the past, we almost need new language to describe this or else the argument around ‘that is not censorship!’ instead of the issue at hand.
I love how people think fact checking is censorship, but banning nipples and other "not advertiser friendly" content is A-O-K.
One thing which annoys me about this is that internet corps have gotten with avoiding the framing of "editorial control". Facebook (and others) would like to pick and choose out of the following
1. We have things like the internet, which are utilities and only exist to convey their users intent. They are regulated (at least in europe strongly, in the US to some degree), and your ISP is simply not liable for what you say using them. Facebook doesn't want this because they don't want the commoditization and regulatory control
2. We have media which has editorial control: you have control on what is published on your platform, you can pick and choose for monetization, but you are liable in the end. Of course none of the big corps want this
3. And then there is the sad attempt of a middle ground carved out by the DMCA and similar laws which try to do something in between, but fail to meaningfully specify the amount of legal liability for non-copyrighted material. Who is responsible for publishing this? The platform isn't AFAIK, they only have to worry about brand impact.
Let's clear this up, either put some of the legal responsibilities and liabilities that newspapers and publishers face on the platform and see the problem of fake news vanish as facebook shuts down hard on what they allow on their platform OR classify them as something like a utility and demand openness OR something else, but let's stop the doublethink of "spreading propaganda is okay, but anything that hurts us making money is ok to censor". People might even migrate to new platforms based on their editorial style then
Yup - this is the real problem with Section 230. Originally it was intended to shelter ISPs that just carried Internet traffic from being responsible for the contents of that traffic. We've allowed sites, especially the big tech sites, to pervert that into some sort of carte blanche excuse to exert editorial control disguised as moderation.
With zero transparency into supposed content moderation decisions and blatantly obvious unequal application of their "rules", anyone who thinks big tech isn't exercising editorial control is either naïve or just blind because the "moderation" happens to align with their personal and political beliefs.
Personally I think before you get any of the Section 230 safe harbor provisions you should be required to post your content moderation rules, and for any content moderation document the decision on how you got there - and show how the decision is supported by rules that existed at the time you made the content moderation decision. No more hiding biases behind opaque "content moderation" decisions that are far often flat out censorship of opposing views.
Want to be able to exercise editorial control and don't want to play it straight? Then fine - open yourself up to get sued like any other sites that have editorial control.
It might be true for the fact checking groups described here, but to state that as a general case is incorrect.
> Fact checking is better referred to as "authority enforcement" or "mainstream validation".
Fact checking at its core is about analysing assertions that can be objectively verified.
Fact checking must bring forth strong references/sources or proofs to either go in or against the initial assertions.
> Here's how you know the fact checkers are actually propagandists: you can't find their name or their credentials, or who they work for/paid them.
If a fact checker does not provide this kind of info, then yes, it does not seem very trustworthy. Although you could still evaluate them based on the sources they are using for their fact checking.
But, obviously, it does not have to be the case. Fact checkers can and will provide info about their funding, affiliations, composition, etc...
As you can see, they clearly state that they received funds from Google News to set things up. They also share details about their partners, members, etc.
> Fact checking at its core is about analysing assertions that can be objectively verified.
"Missing context" does not meet this standard of objective verification. Many fact-checking desks and organizations dish out Pinocchios in cases where the "proper context" is political/ideological.
If the proper ideological context is "we want to go to war with Iraq"
The statement "Iraq has WMDs" switches from false to true
Similarly, "we want to go to war with China" vs "we don't want to go to war with China" switches "the virus is a lab leak" to "the virus is not a lab leak"
There are definitely lineups like that, yes. It's a bit unfair to put all lab leak stuff in the China sabre-rattling camp, but there's plenty like that too.
Havana syndrome is another one. I was accused of being a unwitting stooge for Putin (on HN) for doubting "Havana syndrome", or at least saying it's also really quite plausible that there's nothing there -- no weapon, no attacks. Now the CIA itself says it does not exist. Which is an interesting position to be in because based on historical precedent you should never trust a word the CIA says, unless they're admitting "we did that"!
>"about analyzing assertions that can be objectively verified."
Knowing what I know about BS-ing corporate power points and how data can be spun multiple different ways using statistics, the objectively verified information is not enough to prove/disprove an assertion. It always comes down to subjective interpretations and meta analysis of the context behind the facts themselves.
The idea behind "fact checking" is that facebook wants to push the burden for the crap they broadcast to someone else, and it works, lawmakers go along with it.
What really bugs me here is, everyone yells at facebook, saying it is spreading propaganda, lies, societal harm, etc.
Then, fact checking is attempted, and people claim censorship, an imperfect job, and the idea that "How dare they!"
I literally loath, hate, and despise facebook. But come on, they're only doing this because everyone piled on them, claiming they must fact check and validate things.
If I was facebook, twitter, or google seeking this, I'd rightly think that listening to people is dumb, and they should just ignore them.
They should indeed just ignore them, free speech wasn't arrived at as an optimal path by accident. Nothing changed to make it not-optimal.
People need to adapt to not believing every stupid thing they read on the internet and actually thinking critically about things. The information streams of the world should not be tailored to the critical thinking ability of complete morons.
It blows my mind we went from "trying to censor cop killer is a bridge too far no matter the merits of doing so" to "you can't say things that compromise the interests of powerful individuals, offend the chronically sheltered, or that might confuse the braindead under any circumstances" just in my lifetime. Free speech seemed absolutely unassailable in my youth and has been completely destroyed relative to that in present day.
> People need to adapt to not believing every stupid thing they read on the internet and actually thinking critically about things.
Sure, free speech is optimal if this happens. But what if it doesn't happen? People are extremely irrational [0], and that certainly won't change anytime soon. What changed is that we got better at exploiting that irrationality at scale.
There's no practical value in stating "in an ideal world, free speech is the solution". We don't live in that world, and we don't get any closer to it by complaining on HN about people not doing enough critical thinking.
This assumes there are no negative externalities to the curtailing of free speech, which is laughably untrue. People now are no less rational than they have been the past few centuries when free speech was allowed to prosper unmolested. And they are no less grasping and unscrupulous when it comes to the reasons unbridled free speech was held up as an exemplar to begin with. The fact that the result of all this censorship and narrative massaging has indisputably been the pushing of harmful agendas is illustrative of the above.
No one is saying "in an ideal world" that's a strawman.
Fact checkers, corporations, the media, the state, and any of the elite are just people and so extremely irrational, Why on earth would you want to give any of them power above and beyond the general public, it's so easy to manipulate the so called "rational" with selective publication of information. Do we just forget that covid human to human spreading was "fake news" for an entire month, and basically changed the course of history because some bureaucracy decided it had more authority on the matter than a doctor treating the patients.
Or what about the "Ricard Spencer is a nice guy in Germany" effect, because people in Europe can't see the hate speech he makes, so they think he's fairly reasonable person.
To me it seems that it's the general public, from Snowden to Li Wenliang that is keeping fake news in check, not the elite, keeping the public in check.
I think a few broad trends reinforced each other in the U.S. But kind of prerequisite, people came to get too much of their notion of free speech as a scholastic doctrine in state schools. Mills's On Liberty argues that a doctrine elevated above criticism comes to be held in an empty way, and gets lost over time even if it's true. It seems like that happened here to the idea of free speech itself.
(I'd quibble at your "completely destroyed". We don't want to see what completely destroyed will look like.)
> everyone yells at facebook, saying it is spreading propaganda, lies, societal harm, etc.
Well, no, not everyone - the half of the people that wanted to silence the other half accused facebook of spreading propaganda to justify censorship. Now that they've won, the half that's being censored are pointing out that it's as bad as they said it was going to be.
I think one could conceivably both criticize FB for enabling the spread of false info and for their censorship via fact-checking.
The argument would be that FB optimizes sharing false info, and the proper fix is to either get rid of it completely, or fundamentally change it. Not tack on some "fact checking".
Perhaps these walled gardens erected walls because they wanted to become gatekeepers. Those demanding censorship were largely the same partisans who set the tone for the fact check narrative.
I don't see them as victims of demands for truthiness, but as actors participating in a deliberate charade.
> but why does Zucc think facebook's checkers are superior to the BMJ
Because they are his fact checkers. It isn't an argument against Zuckerberg or a condemnation, this is just the obvious explanation.
Whoever came up with the concept of fact checkers plainly wanted to establish some form of authoritative voice or judge. I believe the concept is futile and the motives often dishonest. It will not work for whatever reason though.
Is a bad teacher better than no teacher? My parents had to pull my brother out of third grade because his teacher routinely picked on and harassed him, even going so far as to give him an in school suspension for talking back because they refused to believe "sphere" was a word even after being shown numerous dictionary entries.
So this would imply they are trustworthy and dedicated to the truth, because we know major newspapers are neither trustworthy nor have any connection with the truth these days
You could just as easily say “wow, if not even those untrustworthy major newspapers will hire them, they really must play fast and loose with the truth”.
This what gets me. Zuck is a well educated fella. He must know this is wrong. Why is this happening? Has he lost control of Facebook? Is he not interested?
If I share an mp3 the record industry demands ridiculous compensation.
If I steal a paragraph in a college exam and get caught, I'm sent home without credit or refund.
If I sell a drawing of a certain cartoon mouse, or draw a red shirt on Pooh, I can literally go to jail.
... But if I invest my life savings to start a company based on an insightful idea and read of the market, a trillion dollar company can rip me off wholesale and people will call it "business" and "not related to morals"?
Please tell me that sounds as batshit insane to you as it does to me.
Usually general business models are not protected as intellectual property in the same way as bit-for-bit copies in the case of mp3s/writings. I’m not saying it should be.
The bigger issue that you are pointing to is that the tech companies are becoming large trusts that do everything and can leverage their size to win everywhere. E.g. see Amazon competing with Intel now.
The anti-trust movement needs to be stronger if society says: ‘wait, this isn’t a good idea to let one company win at everything’
