> it's exactly the same sort of debate that is occurring in newsrooms
I'm going to have to contradict you there. Anyone who was following the 2016 Russian Interference campaign, and related news stories, would know that Facebook used to pay people to moderate news stories, perhaps in a manner that was like a news room... But then they fired those people because they were not promoting conspiracy theory news stories, and so conservatives claimed FB news was "biased".
This essentially created the environment where no one at FB was willing to fact check for fear of losing their jobs. When you hear about FB saying they will not fact check political content, it's specifically because if they did, they'd have no choice but to point out all the lies and inaccuracies in Trump's statements. So instead, they simply refuse to touch any of it, which leaves the door wide open to political actors to spread any disinformation they want.
As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a backbone with regards to standing up for truth over dollars, then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last time. Facebook has never been able to demonstrably prove it cares about election meddling, and you shouldn't believe empty words in their press releases.
> As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a backbone with regards for truth over dollars, then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last time
I find it somewhat sanctimonious for the traditional news media to be calling out Facebook for favoring dollars over truth when they themselves were just as key as Facebook was to normalizing and publicizing Trump. CNN executives made a conscious decision to give Trump lots of coverage, in an effort to compete with Fox News. They too presented Trump's views as being just as legitimate and valid as the views of those opposing him.
I'm going to have to contradict you there. Anyone who was following the 2016 Russian Interference campaign, and related news stories, would know that Facebook used to pay people to moderate news stories, perhaps in a manner that was like a news room... But then they fired those people because they were not promoting conspiracy theory news stories, and so conservatives claimed FB news was "biased".
This essentially created the environment where no one at FB was willing to fact check for fear of losing their jobs. When you hear about FB saying they will not fact check political content, it's specifically because if they did, they'd have no choice but to point out all the lies and inaccuracies in Trump's statements. So instead, they simply refuse to touch any of it, which leaves the door wide open to political actors to spread any disinformation they want.
A few related stories, for the interested: [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/facebook-... [2] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/facebook-will-reintro...
As the [2] reference says, unless FB has suddenly grown a backbone with regards to standing up for truth over dollars, then any new effort will fail in the same way it did last time. Facebook has never been able to demonstrably prove it cares about election meddling, and you shouldn't believe empty words in their press releases.