WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Flyover Features: Meta vs. the Fact Checkers

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Emma and Sophia discuss the decline of so-called "Fact Checkers."

You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Verini, and I'm here with Sophie Amand. And today we are going to be discussing a Wall Street Journal article entitled Fact Checkers Become Rent Seekers. The decline of journalism may have hit rock bottom with the end of Meda's censorship regime. This is by James Toronto, and it was released on January 16, 2025. This is an opinion and commentary. article. This article comes after Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has declared that he is going to stop using

fact checkers on all of the meta sites and apps. So this article sort of discusses what's been going on for the past couple of years, four to five years in terms of fact checking on a lot of websites, especially Facebook and Instagram and what that all means. So let's just get right into it. We're probably going to bring a lot of anecdotal stuff into this. Just because we've all been experiencing this, if you've been online, if you've been using apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, maybe not all of those, but at least some of those, you have seen these little fact check tabs that come up. These were all just sort of paid for by meta and these other companies and apps to these apps paid different independent researchers to sort of fact check for them.

So there was that sort of incentive there to do that. But also we've just seen the way these fact checks have been happening and what they've been saying. And I know people all have different opinions, but I think that it can generally be agreed that a lot of this stuff was just way overboard. Yeah, it's also very selective. effectively chosen fact-checking opinions, which is kind of funny. And it's also like, I don't know, it's kind of funny.

And it's like, quote in the other says, says, a political fact-checker is a journalist pretending to be a judge, a counterfeit authority. Because it's like, well, okay. But, oh, well, I don't know. Yeah, I like the way he divides it into two groups of fact-checking. One is a little bit more honorable in the sense that there's sort of this internal accountability that different newspapers and websites have where there is a fact checker that is either hired or it's somebody's role to be a fact checker. And that's something that they do.

It's not an external fact checker. It's just a form of integrity and accountability that different journalists have. So that was the first definition of fact checking. in the context of this article. And then they introduced the other type that you were just talking about political fact-checking, which is totally different because companies like Meta are outsourcing that fact-checking to these other sort of fact-checking companies, paying somebody else to do fact-checking. And a lot of times there's obviously bias that's going to be there.

Yeah. And the problem I have with it is, well, for one, it's kind of funny how it's very like political. It's like, do you really care about truth or just sharing your opinion? is that sometimes for what I've noticed recently with Snopes and with Politifact is there are times when they'll say something's like false or like half true when they're misconstruing the statement that was originally said or kind of rewording it to where their analysis of whether it's true or false is pretty propagandistic and not necessarily the whole story. Um, which is kind of messed up. Like, not every single Snopes fact check is like this, but it does bother me that some of them are. Or they'll be like, you know, is such and such a terrorist mixed? They've been committed for terrorist acts, but they also like, you know, what does terrorism mean? Exactly.

I don't remember the exact reference, but that they do have one like that, that kind of went viral. It sort of makes you feel like you're going crazy. Yes. It's like, yeah, this person's a criminal. Well, actually, like, they were charged with arson. Yep. But, like, such and such is calling them a criminal. And, well, it's actually a little different than that.

It's like, no, it's not. It's not any different. That's just an example, not anything that I've actually seen. But I see stuff like that all the time where they try to get all pedantic and be like, well, technically, that's not the case. And it's like, well, nobody actually talks that way. Yeah. Nobody's trying to, you don't have to be all pedantic to get the proper point across. Yeah.

Well, it's also like Trump says some crazy things, but it's kind of insane how you will read mainstream news sources that claim Trump's saying something. And then you read the context of the statement and it's taken out a context where his actual statement is different than what they're arguing. And so at that point is just like, I mean, you're just trying to be, you know, full of propaganda to say this. it bothers me. Like, there was a comedy made to Liz Chenney that wasn't positive, but it was definitely selectively edited to be more angry and edgy than the whole context of a statement or other things like that. It's very bothersome.

They don't really care about truth if they're trying to shift a narrative with half-truths to make it not entirely accurate. Yeah, I've noticed that. I've also noticed that a lot of it ends up being automated. For example, on Instagram, and I know you don't have Instagram, but back during the height of all the COVID propaganda that was going around, I remember going on Instagram and I would get posts that were automatically flagged and they'd be like, okay, I want to view this post. There's like an option.

It's like this post might contain misinformation. And then there's like a little option to go to this little hub where you can like learn about the COVID vaccine and stuff. But I uncover these posts and a lot of them have nothing to do even with the vaccine. They might have like the word shot in it. And that might trigger the program to be like, oh, well, we have to, you know, put the COVID-19 information center here so that you can go to it. But a lot of it's just automated fact-checking and it's really poorly done.

Mm-hmm. And very biased. Very biased. Yeah, like all sorts of fake things from different perspectives or shableness. it all the time, but only certain specific ones get fact-checked. It is funny. So I deleted it, but for a time I had Twitter. And honestly, I thought their fact-checking was generally pretty accurate, which is kind of funny. Do you remember? Do you use Twitter enough to notice that? I do use Twitter. When were you using Twitter? Was it like X or Twitter? X, X, not Twitter,

so technically X. I guess I apologize. That's the official name. It's so easy to get it confused, though. Well, after Musk took over and it became X, they did community notes instead of fact-checking. Yeah. Which is like, let's be real. It's the same level of authority. It is. It is. The original fact checkers, except they're being more upfront about the fact that it's just like, you know, probably some guy in his mom's basement with a mountain do can's piling up in the back who's writing a response.

Like, it's the same type of, you know, authority going into it. Except, you know, it's actually more open to different points of view under Musk's Twitter. I've seen liberals and conservatives alike fact-check things on Musk's Twitter, which is never something that was going on when it was Twitter under Jack Dorsey. Hey, they're just being more democratic, protecting our democracy by having it be like a democratically chosen fact-checking group of people who spend too much time on the online. world and whose fathers ask them if they're winning son. Sophia is referring to a meme. Yes. In popular culture, wherein a son is playing video games in his room and the dad peeps his head in and says, are you winning son?

Yep. Yeah, that meme has been distorted to, you know, represent many different formats and ideas. Yes. Sometimes it feels like me when I, I'm reading some crazy, weird, pre-Socratic book or Heidegger or something crazy like that. And I'm just thinking, you know, and my dad walks in and he's like, what are you reading, Sophia? And I just feel like, this feels like, are you winning, son? I'm just in my room. Are you winning when you're reading pre-Socratic fragments?

I think I am. I think, not maybe socially, but I am like in some ways. I think that's an enjoyable pastime. It is. It is. Yeah, that was a joke. But like, the father feels like a relatable figure sometimes. Yes. The father sort of conveys someone who's sort of out of the loop in terms of what the son is doing in this meme format. Yes. He doesn't really understand the games that the son is playing. But, yes, that's what Sophia is referring to. He has a sort of like happy, innocent, naive. about him that lifts up one's spirits because even if they're even if he doesn't understand what the sun is engaging and he still feels love or joy for his offspring.

Exactly. This is the best analysis I've ever done of this meme. Yeah, I don't think anybody's ever put that much thought into it, but maybe it's worth doing. Anyway, there are really weird YouTube channels that exist online that have surprisingly deep analysis of memes, but I haven't seen whatever one exist for that one yet. Well, yeah, memes are a big part of our culture. They are a big part of the way that we share information and learn more about things that are going on. And yeah, I think they carry a lot of implicit messaging. That's important to, you know, understanding the society that we live in.

Yeah. Anyway, I really like it on the one of the last paragraphs here, or maybe not one of the last. I think it's about halfway through the article. But it basically says political fact checkers could satisfy this objection by simply marking their work as opinion, but that would shatter the pretense of authoritativeness. And that's sort of talking about the label that fact checkers had, that they were the sort of independent authority that didn't really have a vested interest in whatever content they were providing a fact check for. and I think once you start to realize that a lot of the fact-checking that's going on is opinion, and I think that's what we realize under Musk's Twitter,

because we have community fact-checking that's just as authoritative as it's ever been. And, I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of it's just opinion, or a matter of opinion, or something not being portrayed completely. Yeah. I like where there's another line in this article that says that the worker's somehow super factual, straighter than straight news. And apparently someone said, if fact-ticking dies or phase away, the idea of capital T truth dies with it. Substac blogger Chris, who once worked in mainstream media, wrote last week with no evident

irony. I think this sort of goes back to one of the first episodes we did. Yeah, it does. We were talking about news objectivity. Yeah. in the report that was released about that. And just how do you get objective news? And I think one of the big takeaways was that you can portray news as objectively as you want.

But getting sort of pedantic over matters of well, is this portrayed exactly the right way, the way fact checkers do? Sort of makes you question the entirety of the content that's being fact checked, which is just completely counterproductive. Yes. But yeah, I think that it's not entirely possible to be so unbiased that there's just no prejudice in what you read whatsoever. That's just not possible. Which is, I think, what the journalist who wrote this would agree with. But, yeah, fact checkers just want to have this sort of dogmatic truth that they push on everybody else. Yep. Well, it's like, as Parmenides would say from the pre-Socratic philosophical fragments, they talk about this world, we're kind of. everything really is one, but it appears to us as kind of like a dialectic or many, and it's, I think, a representation of truth exists. Capital T truth does exist, but we as human beings have a very limited ability of knowing this truth, only if you may know it, and even if you know it, I don't believe they would necessarily get the entire picture of it. I definitely believe in truth, but I also think truth is complicated. So, with that comes the idea of supposedly thinking that things can be so simple as you can be totally objective there seems to be a spectrum i'm not going to say that's not existent but it seems

hard to reach total objectivity especially if you get really weird you know it's also like all these terms which i had thought about before with other thinkers but recently in that i'm taking a course of them heidegger seems to illustrate fairly clearly is like you know when it comes to for example being is his example. Being actually doesn't seem to be that really, it's like kind of assumed as self-evident, but it's not really explicitly described or explained all that much, or it's almost like there's this vague sense than an explicit definition. Objectivity or truth. Like, truth means different things to different people. I think there is a ultimate truth. I totally think there is. But like even that, like all these deep definitions for words, we think they know

what they mean, you take them far enough and there's this limit to them. Yeah, I think that you can say that it's really hard to get at some objective truth, especially in the limited medium of journalism or something like that. Like, that's totally valid. But the minute you take that and obscure that and pervert that truth and say, well, I guess we just can't have truth at all the way we discussed in one of our first episodes with the Cronkite Journalism School where they said, well, you can't have objective coverage at all. That's also not true. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because you can, you can take the idea that there are like multiple ways of looking at a situation and just totally blow that out of proportion and say, well, I guess we, we can't make an effort to be, be truly objective

because people are oppressed somewhere. So there are definitely, we, there are definitely two extremes here. We need to not. Yeah, you still must try. I also just wanted an excuse to bring up Parmenides and Heidegger. It does have to do it though, I think. That is valid. Probably distinction is important.

And, you know, generally speaking, if you're writing an article, you're just trying to explain things as they appear to have happened. You're not getting at deep ontological claims about the nature of the universe. Yeah. Yeah, that's for the philosophy journals or something. You've been

listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant, speaking with my co-host, Emma Vrini. So all these fact-checker sites also have certain donors with vested interests that support them, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our favorite little billionaire. He's very, very definitely like loving and caring for all the children. Well, anyway, we're talking about the funders list of Politifact right now. Maybe we'll go through another one too. But yeah, Sophia pointed out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Also, some other groups that I have not heard about, but obviously Facebook and Google News Initiative.

Craigslist, believe it or not. Something called Democracy Fund, which is just like a very like, run-of-the-mill, a democracy, like building a multiracial democracy foundation. Yeah. Oh, here it is. It's working to build an inclusive multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. Draw your own conclusions there. Let's see. TikTok.

Oh, our favorite little Chinese company. Yeah, Microsoft, of course. Microsoft. Yeah. Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, there's plenty of that going on. And obviously, most of these groups have a very left-leaning political outlook.

Oh, yeah. So that could certainly tell you about what sort of fact-checking is actually going on. obviously places like Proletifact nonprofits like Politifact would lose their funding if they said something that offended

any of these groups so I think that it's very evident that when it comes to fact-checking there are a lot of interests that are actually involved and it's not just an objective statement about whether or not something is true Follow the money. That's a good advice in journalism.

Yeah, follow the money. Yep. And then you've got independent fact checkers just as authoritative, just not funded by, you know, maybe Bill Gates on Twitter, who seem to be a lot more independent. They seem to actually be accurate about saying if something's false or not on Twitter, whoever does it. It's surprisingly good. I would say, well, it's the community that does it. Yeah. And I mean, I've seen, like I've said, I've seen stuff on the left and the right. I've seen total leftists fact check something and it's been true. And I've seen people on the right fact check something and they've also been right about it.

So it just gives a level of accountability to everybody and it's become a much better place now that that's happened. Yeah. Now here I'm going to read the conclusion of this article because I think it's particularly good. and articulate. So the fact checkers became rent seekers, paid functionaries of a corporate censorship regime that came to operate in concert with the government. A sclerotic media cartel seeking to defend its economic and intellectual market power wound up in repeating the ideas of free expression and free and press independence. At the end of it all, standing exposed in reality's cold light is surrendered even the pretense of authority.

saying meta always held the cards. So sort of just, you know, pushing it right back onto Mark Zuckerberg. He's the one who's paying for these fact checkers anyway. So that's why all this has happened. And it's just, it's very weak. Yes. And, well, I mean, it's a new era now that RFK Jr. And the raw milk shares in the land of raw milk and the land of,

More individuals, apart from more groups delineated as experts or authorities, are actually seeming to have some sense of power now. Or it appears that way. It probably is false. But, you know, that's my optic. I could be wrong. You've been listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Verini, and I'm here with Sophia Manned.