Should "Fake News" be surpressed on social media?

The New York Times weighs in with a really pushy piece of writing on this question, insisting that Facebook has a duty to put a stop to "Fake News". Whose perspective should that be determined from according to the NYT? Why theirs, of course.

Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook was interviewed for the piece. Much to his credit, he realizes that this is for Facebook a Gordian knot that has to be untied a-fresh every single day, forever. While he recognizes this is a problem, resolving this in the partisan way that the NYT is advocating is just not what Facebook is about. The purpose of Facebook is to provide a social networking service that is a front for the sale of advertising and other products, which a great many people earn money from.

Getting involved in this question to the extent that the NYT is suggesting does a lot more to undermine that purpose than it does to advance it. It would be a source of unending controversy and aggravation to its users, which Facebook surely would like to have less of, not more. It would also be expensive and administratively extremely complicated to administer.

This is so lacking in self-awareness and so saturated with the denial of "traditional journalism's" spectacular failures of exactly the same sort that he is attributing to the non-traditional media that it is a little hard for me to believe that he is really this ignorant about himself and the sins of his profession.

And then the author goes on to rail against conspiracy theories and the like, blah, blah, blah, before outlining a proposal for a conspiracy among "traditional journalism" for a "hyperfactual counterinsurgency that treats every false meme as a baby Hitler to be killed in its crib with irrefutable facts."

I am not making that up. Here it is quoted in context. Or click the link above and go to the bottom of the page. See for yourselves:

Did I just read that in print at the New York Times? Bwahahahaha! Of course they consider themselves to be the source and arbiters of all truth and fairness, but especially during this last election cycle, they have clearly demonstrated, time and time again, that they are anything but.

This article smacks of a desperation to "control the narrative" in an obsessive and even almost a maniacal way. I get that the Democrat left is feeling despondent about their political losses right now. I am well aware of how that feels, having spent most of the last eight years burdened with a range of feelings of this same sort, which after less than two weeks, they are only just beginning to experience. I don't want to hurt these people, but there are things in our society that are more important than their process of catharsis or their struggle for intellectual political dominance.

These "journalists" are supposed to be more than anyone else in our society, defenders of freedom of speech. No, I am not referring to Facebook's freedom of speech, although they have that too. I am referring to the freedom for a diverse political dialogue that includes opinions that are frequently offensive, not infrequently dishonest, and nearly always in a state of disagreement and conflict.

Let's remember, we fight with words, in the streets, on the internet, in the newspapers, on television, in Congress and across the country, as a replacement for fighting with guns to institute political changes. If people like these were to have their way, the only "truth" that would be permitted would be truth arbitrated, created and approved by them. Their opponents would have no voice, which would leave their only form of redress to affect political change as the violence and bloodshed that democracy exists to avoid.

Do we really want to go back to that? That is not 'progress,' it is regress. Those people who call themselves 'progressives' should try to appreciate that better.

 

There may be occasional exceptions, but the vast majority of this sort of stuff does come from the left.

 

The problem is the application of the classifications, especially equally and fairly. We can all come up with straight forward examples of news that is and isn't honest. The problem comes at the margins and around stories about which the veracity is being sincerely debated, even if there is a group that believes it is an open and shut case.

Facebook and Twitter can pursue this in either an even-handed manner or a partisan manner. If they try to do the former, they will in all likelihood wear themselves out trying to split hairs and maintain a fair and even balance. It will never end.

Of course another way is for them to say that they have their political preferences and if we don't like what you are saying, it will be filtered out or banned. If you don't like that, then beat it. So far they have not done this, but this would be easier than trying to try to screen all of this stuff out in a fair and equal way.

Or they could just say they will filter out the most ridiculously egregious articles and beyond that, everyone just has to deal with it.

If I had to make a guess, I suspect they will end up at basically with this last option, which based on what Mark Zuckerberg said in the NYT article above, sounds like where Facebook is basically at at the current time.

 

So here is an example of "Fake News" published by NBC News:

NBC News under fire for misleading tweets about Trump chief of staff's answer on Muslim registry

NBC News came under fire Sunday morning for two tweets that removed context from an answer Reince Priebus, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for White House chief of staff, offered on the idea of a Muslim registry.

Priebus appeared "Meet the Press" and was asked by host Chuck Todd whether he could rule out the idea of placing Muslims on a registry.

Here was the exchange:

TODD: Can you equivocally rule out a registry for Muslims?

PRIEBUS: Look, I’m not going to rule out anything. But, we are not going to have a registry based on religion.

The public relations account for NBC News tweeted out the exchange twice but left out the second part of Priebus' response:

"Can you rule out a registry for Muslims?" asks @ChuckTodd.

"I'm not going to rule out anything..." says @Reince on @MeetThePress #MTP
— NBC News PR (@NBCNewsPR) November 20, 2016

WATCH: WH Chief of Staff @Reince “not going to rule out anything” when asked about a possible Muslim registry. #MTPhttps://t.co/pSd0PZCuaa
— NBC News PR (@NBCNewsPR) November 20, 2016

The tweets quickly faced criticism.

"This quote is in fact opposite of what PR tweet indicates," tweeted Maggie Haberman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.

Charlie Warzel, a senior technology writer for BuzzFeed, called it an "irresponsible half-quote w/o even a link for context."

Others flooded the NBC News account with messages calling the tweets "misleading" and "dishonest."

A representative for NBC News declined to say whether the media organization would issue a retraction, but the Twitter account dug its heels in the sand in a reply to Haberman.

@maggieNYT Full @meetthepress answer for reference. He *does* say "I'm not going to rule out anything." pic.twitter.com/7PXxvfWEAg
— NBC News PR (@NBCNewsPR) November 20, 2016

Trump has often criticized the media, accusing it of unfairly covering his campaign and, more recently, his transition into office.​

That is "Fake News" being published on Twitter by traditional media behemoth NBC News.

Does anyone disagree?